The internet has changed a lot over the past twenty years. Audio, video, higher resolutions, JavaScript taking over the world, online applications, “the cloud,” malware campaigns… some still wonder if that change was for better or worse but fortunately we can say its history did not disappear. On the contrary, it is well preserved in portals like the Web Design Museum, which invites us to explore old versions of websites, programs, and mobile applications.
There was a time when every modem had to “sing the song of its people” before enabling access to the network. A time without YouTube, without social networks, without smartphones! The only gateways to the digital world were beige monoliths on our desks, with cathode ray tubes burning our eyes.
About twenty-five years? Less? We now have computers in our pockets, and the Web is a tap away. The road was long, but it would be a grave mistake to ignore it. In fact, I think we can still learn from that primordial Web, like simplicity and efficiency. That brings us to the Web Design Museum, one of the best repositories dedicated to the design of the “old Web”.
Web Design Museum: The Old Web for Today’s Audience
The main categories are three: websites, applications, and software. We can visit special exhibits such as “Search Engines in the ’90s”, captures of Flash portals that have disappeared completely, and old builds of popular iOS and Android apps. Personally, I think it’s strange to talk about “vintage apps”, but if we compare Instagram for iOS from 2010 with its current version, the distance between them can be measured in light-years.
Some examples are truly fabulous: The official Simpsons page pre-2006 looks great, with a partial aerial view of Springfield, additional details about the characters, and trivia games. Obviously, the museum does not restore the original functionality of the sites, but its material is more than enough to compare the differences between the old design language and its current editions.
Finally, the Software section is a bit scarcer but still interesting. There we find Adobe Photoshop (before Adobe ruined it, of course), web browsers (Mozilla, Netscape, Internet Explorer), and isolated examples like Microsoft FrontPage, a starting point for many web editing enthusiasts. Link below!
Official site: Click here
