Surfing since 1991. Internet Evolution

It's going to be difficult unless I screenshot the screens as there seems to be many but the opening few paragraphs should suffice:

In order to surf the web, you need a web browser, and today there are several different ones to choose from. If you're looking for a lean, no-nonsense browser, Chrome is the one for you. Internet Explorer still stands as the odds on favorite when you want to make sure pages load correctly (not because of superior standards support, but because its majority market share have driven developers to code their webpages to look best on IE). Firefox has found more than a niche market by giving users near endless customization, and Apple's Safari purports to run circles around everyone else (it doesn't). And then there's the cornucopia of alternative browsers and browser shells, like Flock (Firefox-based) and Avant (IE-based).

No matter which browser you choose to surf the web with, the features you take for granted today are the result of nearly two decades of browser design. On the following pages, we'll take you through a visual tour, in chronological order, of every major PC-based (read: not Mac) web browser that ever was, starting with the very first one: WorldWideWeb. We'll tell you what made each one unique and, when applicable, what it contributed to modern browser development.
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Edit* Should maybe have added "browser" in title too but I guess it's ok...
 
Well not up to now no but since 1991 how much it change in the space of 10 years.
 
I remember always trying to download an X Wing vs Tie Fighter demo from Lucas Arts that was 30Mb big. It was on 56k. On top of that I tried saving the entire .exe to floppy :-/

I was young :o

But yup, it has changed in the last 10 years and it will continue to change.
 
Should it worry me slightly that the first thing that comes into my head when I hear/read the word 'internet' is... wait for it.... Porn.

Or are we all like this? :o
 
Generally, internet as a whole is going backwards, when design was taken away from graphics designers and given to simplistic coders the websites began to look worse - layouts are silly, typical non profit website is now a wordpress with a basic phpbb glued as a generic forum, typical profit website is a retarded 800 pixels table full of clutter floating in huge empty backgrounds "for those two people browsing it on phone". And most commercial websites still don't know how to optimize pictures. You go to places like autotrader for example - where pictures are the most important element of a content and it's like someone puked with a lot of unclosed tags, unfinished tables and jaggy pictures resized in MS Paint. Most shops "upgraded" interfaces over the years and you can't search for multiple words, or sort by what you need (like that large forest book shop, you would imagine by now they would let you sort few thousand hits by more than just price and bestselling rating, but no - why bother), and see closeups of what you are buying because clicking on tiny picture more often than not opens a popup with the same tiny picture. I am, in general, disappointed by most upgrades on interweb in the last 5 years, and stopped actively using a lot of websites when they followed backwards trend.
 
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v0n said:
Generally, internet as a whole is going backwards, when design was taken away from graphics designers and given to simplistic coders the websites began to look worse [...]
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Oh come on, v0n: it was graphic designers that made the early web such a pain in the rear!

Or have you forgotten all the websites made entirely of sliced images with non-selectable text, or the whizz-bang Flash-based sites where one optimistic click of the browser's back button helpfully returned you to the splash screen?

Graphic designers were the bane of the early internet - with nearly all of them coming from a fixed-format print media background, they tried to bend this new medium to their knowledge, and did everything in their power to negate the unique benefits that this new medium offered.

Luckily, a new breed of graphic designer has emerged, allowing the fundamentally important thing about the internet - information - to be more easily accessible than ever before.

I think the nub of your issue stems from the fact that the internet allowed everyone to think they were a creator; with no-one overseeing or controlling the publication of content, it was inevitable that there would be a wide range of quality [he said, diplomatically].

This culture of user-created content is responsible for the Auto Trader example you mentioned; the site doesn't have any control over submitted photos, descriptions etc. Hence it has the problems you describe.
 
simisker said:
Oh come on, v0n: it was graphic designers that made the early web such a pain in the rear!

Or have you forgotten all the websites made entirely of sliced images with non-selectable text, or the whizz-bang Flash-based sites where one optimistic click of the browser's back button helpfully returned you to the splash screen?
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No you are right - but that's the later coders era - the java sites that would use 100% of CPU to produce snow effect, the horrible flash stuff ( boy I hate Flash with passion). I'm thinking more like:
Compare this 1997 main page of a site - ( it was slick, easy to navigate, clean, very distinctive - it's now loading from archival caches, but when it was up it was very quick as well) and it's today's generic ACME corp powerpoint website version. The first one was done by 3D and graphics artists trying to appeal to other graphics artists, the second was most likely drafted and approved by someone who can't match t-shirt to his jeans like Russell Brand and has a well paid title like Chief of Global Marketing Operations. It now shovels pictures, looks like just about any corporate website done with dreamweaver templates and appeals to other Chiefs of Global Marketing Operations browsing with iphones on a train...
 
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markyp23 said:
Yeah, pretty much preferring the current version of that website!
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Well, you do have to remember the old version was "optimized for IE3" - it is going to look dated. But as a website - today's version is just drunken chaos. It's like the first time you enter BBC website - it's like brown stuff hit the fan - cack spread everywhere, layout like 1980ies tabloid, uneven columns, huge picture of free runners is bigger than marketing section. You wouldn't notice "Asteroid heading for earth, have sex now!" if you had 5 minutes to comply - that's how much blue tack and sticky notes there are all over the place, but you will get your food recipes and a picture of bats hanging upside down. Whatever happened to organized sections under menus in a side bar. /gets coat/
 
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