Oldies but goldies – 90s webdesign – top five websites

The nineties is the period of time when maybe all the magic started. There was no web2.0, no bandwidth to surf the web like nowadays, but there was hope, especially in web design. I don’t know about you, but I remember that in the period 1996-2000 every person had the idea that they should start a webdesign company and many did so and succeed. Because that period of time was important for the evolution of web design I would like to show you a few websites, five to be more exactly, that I think you are still using nowdays.

1. First of all is Yahoo, because it’s a bit older than Google. How many of you remember it? Well here is a little print screen from 1996 to freshen your memory. If you compare it with the actual yahoo design you’ll see the differences (edgy corners, woeful gardinets). Even the 468×60 ad from The New York Times can make you a good impression of those times.

2. My favorite is Adobe’s website, which in my opinion looks better than some websites nowadays. Both menus from the header look great and are still used today with the same positioning. As you can see in the print screen bellow Photoshop was at version 4.0 in ‘96 and the top webdesigners of the year were two ladies Mignon Khargie and Elizabeth Kayrys.

3. I am sure that some of you use the portal Donwload.com to find new software and download it. And I am sure that you don’t know how this website was in 96. Well here it is! I like the use of color, forms and very important you should note, they were advertising Internet Explorer as you can see in that little banner, free download > infecting our brains . To bad there was no firefox!

4. America online or AOL.com is maybe one of the most visited websites in USA after Yahoo. Interesting is the fact that nowadays the logo is a bit different (rotated) and the design looks almost identically to Yahoo. Anyways it is nice to see how they had evolved since then.

5. Now the last website is Google because its design is unchangeable. The logo on top and under it, the forms and buttons. Because it has new services like analytics, gmail, maps and other ones, AJAX comes in handy to make things look better; web2.0 . As for how Google was at the beginning, in 98, well it was kinda ugly, just look at the print screen bellow. Who uses bevel and shadows nowadays for logo design . Damn! Also it is the best search engine, no doubts !