Editing Web design (section)

===1988–2001===
Although web design has a fairly recent history, it can be linked to other areas such as graphic design, user experience, and multimedia arts, but is more aptly seen from a technological standpoint. It has become a large part of people's everyday lives. It is hard to imagine the Internet without animated graphics, different styles of [[typography]], backgrounds, videos and music. The web was announced on August 6, 1991; in November 1992, [[CERN]] was the first website to go live on the World Wide Web. During this period, websites were structured by using the <nowiki><table> tag which created numbers on the website. Eventually, web designers were able to find their way around it to create more structures and formats. In early history, the structure of the websites was fragile and hard to contain, so it became very difficult to use them. In November 1993, </nowiki>[[ALIWEB]] was the first ever search engine to be created (Archie Like Indexing for the WEB).<ref>{{Cite web |last=CPBI |first=Ryan Shelley |title=The History of Website Design: 30 Years of Building the Web [2022 Update] |url=https://www.smamarketing.net/blog/the-history-of-website-design |access-date=2022-10-12 |website=smamarketing.net |language=en-us}}</ref>

====The start of the web and web design====
In 1989, whilst working at [[CERN]] in Switzerland, British scientist [[Tim Berners-Lee]] proposed to create a global [[hypertext]] project, which later became known as the [[World Wide Web]]. From 1991 to 1993 the World Wide Web was born. [[Text-based web browser|Text-only]] [[HTML]] pages could be viewed using a simple line-mode [[web browser]].<ref name="World Wide Web">{{cite web
  |title=Longer Biography
  |url=http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Longer.html
  |access-date=2012-03-16
}}</ref>  In 1993 [[Marc Andreessen]] and [[Eric Bina]], created the [[Mosaic browser]]. At the time there were multiple browsers, however the majority of them were Unix-based and naturally text-heavy. There had been no integrated approach to [[graphic design]] elements such as [[digital image|image]]s or [[digital audio|sound]]s. The [[Mosaic (web browser)|Mosaic browser]] broke this mould.<ref>{{cite web
  |title=Mosaic Browser
  |url=http://www.techopedia.com/images/pdfs/history-of-the-internet.pdf
  |access-date=2012-03-16
  |archive-date=2013-09-02
  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130902095803/http://www.techopedia.com/images/pdfs/history-of-the-internet.pdf
  
  }}</ref>  The [[W3C]] was created in October 1994 to "lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common [[HTTP|protocol]]s that promote its evolution and ensure its [[Interoperability#Software|interoperability]]."<ref>{{cite book
  |author=Zwicky, E.D |author2=Cooper, S |author3=Chapman, D.B.
  |title=Building Internet Firewalls
  |year=2000
  |publisher=O'Reily & Associates
  |location=United States
  |isbn=1-56592-871-7
  |page=[https://archive.org/details/buildinginternet00zwic/page/804 804]
  |url=https://archive.org/details/buildinginternet00zwic/page/804
  }}</ref>  This discouraged any one company from monopolizing a proprietary browser and [[programming language]], which could have altered the effect of the World Wide Web as a whole. The W3C continues to set standards, which can today be seen with [[JavaScript]] and other languages. In 1994 Andreessen formed Mosaic Communications Corp. that later became known as [[Netscape Communications]], the [[Netscape (web browser)|Netscape 0.9 browser]]. Netscape created its HTML tags without regard to the traditional standards process. For example, Netscape 1.1 included tags for changing background colours and formatting text with [[HTML element#Tables|tables]] on web pages. From 1996 to 1999 the [[browser wars]] began, as [[Microsoft]] and [[Netscape]] fought for ultimate browser dominance. During this time there were many new technologies in the field, notably [[Cascading Style Sheets]], [[JavaScript]], and [[Dynamic HTML]]. On the whole, the browser competition did lead to many positive creations and helped web design evolve at a rapid pace.<ref name=Browsers >{{cite book
  |last=Niederst  |first=Jennifer
  |title=Web Design In a Nutshell
  |year=2006|publisher=O'Reilly Media
  |location=United States of America
  |isbn=0-596-00987-9
  |pages=12–14
  |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bdf4vS2n7N8C&q=history+of+web+design&pg=PT42
}}</ref>

==== Evolution of web design ====
In 1996, Microsoft released its first competitive browser, which was complete with its features and HTML tags. It was also the first browser to support style sheets, which at the time was seen as an obscure authoring technique and is today an important aspect of web design.<ref name=Browsers/>  The [[HTML markup]] for [[HTML element#Tables|tables]] was originally intended for displaying tabular data. However, designers quickly realized the potential of using HTML tables for creating complex, multi-column layouts that were otherwise not possible. At this time, as design and good aesthetics seemed to take precedence over good markup structure, little attention was paid to semantics and [[web accessibility]]. HTML sites were limited in their design options, even more so with earlier versions of HTML. To create complex designs, many web designers had to use complicated table structures or even use blank [[spacer .GIF]] images to stop empty table cells from collapsing.<ref name="Chapman, Evolution" >{{citation |last=Chapman  |first=Cameron  |title=The Evolution of Web Design  |url=http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/the-evolution-of-web-design/|publisher=Six Revisions|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131030030802/http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/the-evolution-of-web-design/ |archive-date=30 October 2013}}</ref> [[CSS]] was introduced in December 1996 by the [[W3C]] to support presentation and layout. This allowed [[HTML]] code to be semantic rather than both semantic and presentational and improved web accessibility, see [[tableless web design]].

In 1996, [[Adobe Flash|Flash]] (originally known as FutureSplash) was developed. At the time, the Flash content development tool was relatively simple compared to now, using basic layout and drawing tools, a limited precursor to [[ActionScript]], and a timeline, but it enabled web designers to go beyond the point of HTML, [[Graphics Interchange Format#Animated GIF|animated GIFs]] and [[JavaScript]]. However, because Flash required a [[Plug-in (computing)|plug-in]], many web developers avoided using it for fear of limiting their market share due to lack of compatibility. Instead, designers reverted to [[GIF]] animations (if they did not forego using [[motion graphics]] altogether) and JavaScript for [[software widget|widgets]]. But the benefits of Flash made it popular enough among specific target markets to eventually work its way to the vast majority of browsers, and powerful enough to be used to develop entire sites.<ref name="Chapman, Evolution" />

====End of the first browser wars====
{{Further|Browser wars#First Browser War (1995–2001)}}
In 1998, Netscape released Netscape Communicator code under an [[Open-source license|open-source licence]], enabling thousands of developers to participate in improving the software. However, these developers decided to start a standard for the web from scratch, which guided the development of the open-source browser and soon expanded to a complete application platform.<ref name="Browsers" />  The [[Web Standards Project]] was formed and promoted browser compliance with [[HTML]] and [[CSS]] standards. Programs like [[Acid1]], [[Acid2]], and [[Acid3]] were created in order to test browsers for compliance with web standards. In 2000, Internet Explorer was released for Mac, which was the first browser that fully supported HTML 4.01 and CSS 1. It was also the first browser to fully support the [[Portable Network Graphics|PNG]] image format.<ref name="Browsers" /> By 2001, after a campaign by Microsoft to popularize Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer had reached 96% of [[Usage share of web browsers|web browser usage share]], which signified the end of the first browser wars as Internet Explorer had no real competition.<ref>{{Cite web|title=AMO.NET America's Multimedia Online (Internet Explorer 6 PREVIEW)|url=http://amo.net/NT/01-30-01MSFTIE6.html|website=amo.net|access-date=2020-05-27}}</ref>