GRC 175 Class Lessons

Web Site Generations

References

See Chapter 3 of David Siegel's explanation of generations of web site in his Creating Killer Web Sites, Second Edition (The Art of Third-Generation Site Design)

See Web Design History available at innervisions.com.au

LECTURE 1   •   Site Types   

Background see also w3c.org

The Internet started as an experiement by the U.S. Department of Defence (DOD)in the late 1950s and 1960s as a way to communicate with its contractors. HTML, a text formatting language, was created in 1961 primarily to display text.

In 1969, the DOD commissioned ARPANET for research into networking and soon the government began to lay cables between its contractors and created a protocol so that the computers on the network could talk to each other. The first hosts of the Internet were Stanford, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah.

During the 1970s, the Internet grew into an international network. The first services it offered included email and Usenet (a worldwide bulletin board system that contained newsgroups).

In 1984, the Domain Name System (DNS) was introduced in order to map the Internet domain names to IP addresses.

Toward the end of the 1980s, portion of the Internet began available for commercial and commuity venues.

The 1990s has the lasting reputation of the decade when the Internet showed tremendous growth. The first web server was released in 1991;the web became popular to the common person after the first graphical browser—Mosaic—was introduced by the government iin 1993. Prior to this time, the World Wide Web was purely a text medium.

A year after Mosaic was released, traffice on the Web surpassed all other forms of Internet traffic and the World Wide Web became the main focus for those developing Internet technologies. Search engines, Java and JavaScripit began to be developed.

With each new wave of technology, designers for content placed on the Web had greater control of the presentation.

Technology is what drives the web and also plays into its design.

Below are listed the basic differences between the various generations of the Web.

First Generation HTML (1961–1993) sample 1 • sample 2

BOOK approach (read from front to back, with a little jumping around)

• linear (graphics were inserted into the stream of text)
• bare bones functionality
• text and interspersed graphics

Second Generation HTML 2.0 (1994–1996) sample 1 • sample 2

One year after the release of Mosaic, Netscape Navigator was released. The following features were added

LIBRARY approach (vast collection of information, indexed, organized; you search for what you want.

• menu driven
• gives user opportunity to explore
• icons replaced words
• bulleted lists
• simply a jazzed up first generation site
• based on technology (tables introduced)

Third Generation HTML 3.2 (1996), HTML 4.0 (1997–) sample 1 • sample 2

BOOKSTORE approach (more of an experience is created to find something of interest—displays, lounging/reading areas, shop keeper to assist you; much more of a directed experience.)

• design-driven
• provides user with an experience (from start to finish)
• guides or pulls user through with the use of themes, metaphors.
• not based on technology or browser capabilities, but how the technology is used

Fourth Generation

• data-base driven
• dynamic content
• customized experience for the user

LECTURE 1   •   Site Types