Web Design Theory
When I saw a Web page for the first time back in 1996,
I was overwhelmed. So much information, so little focus. In an earlier pre-Internet
era, this would have been called a "Circus layout," suggestive of a Barnum
& Bailey "three-ring circus" — long a synonym for a confused, incoherent
presentation.
I have not forgotten that first impression, or the thousands
of other low quality Web pages I've seen since then. I still get a gag reflex
when I see huge, uneven, ragged holes of white space between blocks of content
rendered in almost unreadable tiny text obviously meant more for search
engines than human eyes, scrolling infinitely down to some place
on the other side of China.
And what is with this perpetual scrolling? More than 500
years since the invention of the Gutenberg press — when the single
page became the standard unit of presentation — are we reverting back
to the method used by Moses, Pharoah Ramses and the ancient Egyptians?
So why are we devolving like this? Just because we can,
or because we don't know any better? Most likely the latter, and it's for
this reason that I decided to develop a Web Design Theory of my own.
