First Generation Web Site Design
The Web Design Phenomenon
In 1993, the National Centre for
Supercomputing developed the first freeware browser "Mosaic",
within a year there were about two million users of this program.
The mosaic browser is capable of viewing text and graphics,
but within a very limited layout arrangement. *
David Siegel, author of "Creating killer web sites" describes
these web sites as being "First Generation Sites". David's
comment is that they are linear, yet functional for scientists
around the world to share information. The technology of these
browsers limited the ability to provide graphic design information
for visual communication.
There were many other associated technological
restrictions at that stage which influenced the design of
web sites, including:-
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slow modem
connections (electronic devices that connect computers
to the internet) |
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monochrome
monitors |
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inability
of service providers (i.e. computers where the web pages
areactually hosted) to transfer the data quickly.
In addition, the layout of the first generation web page
design was:- |
| |
top to
bottom |
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left to
right sequence of text and images. |
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interspersed
layout, with numerous carriage returns and other data-stream
separators such as bullets and horizontal lines. *
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The background html was only capable of
displaying this teletype model for laying of pages. These
sites usually had headline banners, edge to edge text that
ran for the full page with blank lines for segmentations.
In 1994, the W3C Consortium was established
to set goals and standards for the future development of the
web language, html. The various levels of html code from that
time followed through html 2, 3 and now 4. Since html ver
1, the W3C, Microsoft and Netscape Corporations have worked
towards achieving a greater ability to provide dynamic content
over the web. Microsoft and the Netscape Corporations have
been in fierce competition to acquire the dominate market
share of their browser products and their web technology.
This competition has fuelled the rate of progress in the development
of the web technologies.
First Generation sites
Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools
http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/webeval.html
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