Page is a not externally linkable
- Code, Content, and Presentation
-- Site Graphics and Multimedia Design
---- So what is "so '90s" in Web design?

burkel - 9:14 pm on Mar 15, 2004 (gmt 0)


All excellent responses!

Seems like you can break all these down into a few categories like...

Cheesy/small/(hopefully early '90s) sites

  • Hit counters
  • Under construction road signs with the animated workmen
  • a photo of the site owner
  • a photo of the site owner's wife, children, friends, dog, cat, house, boat, or bicycle
  • clipart on every page
  • Best Viewed With
  • click here [webmasterworld.com]
  • This site named Joe's Site of the X
  • Inverted-L shaped frames
  • cheap midi music
  • anything that flashes

    Those who have the technology and think they might as well use it - badly

  • huge Flash animations that blink "Loading"
  • splash pages
  • rotating 3D text
  • flash intros with lots of thin lines moving all over the place
  • background music
  • annoying animated banners

    Just bad design

  • the swoosh logo and its variants
  • graphical effect with nested table borders
  • nested tables
  • 800px wide pages that display on the left side of the screen in higher resolutions
  • text that expands to full width making the lines too long and difficult to read
  • the dreamweaver netscape 4 resize layer function
  • tiny text in tight pixel pushed fixed width layouts
  • gratuitous use of iframes
  • gratuitous use of IE scrollbar css
  • Swap images
  • Anything with a gradient
  • smileys

    Miscellaneous

  • banners
  • "Golden boxes"
  • sites that made their name selling one product and have expanded into others - badly. Who wants to buy underwear at a bookshop?

    Choster: I loved the swoosh logo links - now I am seeing them everywhere (okay, I resisted using a smiley here this time).

    Seems like it's tough to say "less is more" as in less annoying flashy stuff = more professional appearance, without appearing to be trying to do less through lack of knowledge.

    Thread source:: http://www.webmasterworld.com/graphics_multimedia/1291.htm
    Brought to you by WebmasterWorld: http://www.webmasterworld.com