How has the appearance and layout of web sites changed over the last 8 or so years?

8 years takes us back to the beginning of sites really moving towards “standards”, meaning tableless layouts based on markup and CSS. That’s a huge change that was just finding widespread use around then. Now it’s assumed for any modern site.

That also takes us before asynchronous content was so common (AJAX, XMLHTTP, whatever you would like to call it) and that’s really changed what people expect in terms of features on the sites they use every day. Before that new content on the page always required a page refresh. So for example the preview feature here on Fluther, and the fact that you don’t have to refresh the page to see new posts were both considered voodoo magic at one point.

I would say those are the two biggest underlying changes in that time frame. Layout trends would largely be driven by those indirectly. Standards made fixed width columned designs extremely easy and so those became the norm. We’ve just recently gotten to the point where fluid (fill a percentage of the available screen) or responsive (adapt to the screen size including changing their layout) sites have become a likely option for sites built around changing content.

Colors, textures, typography, and interaction trends change on an ongoing basis fairly quickly. Most things fall off, the really good or useful stuff sticks for longer, but there’s so much experimentation and you can see the best in the world doing their thing (and how they did it) that we’ve been through tons of ideas in the last 8 years.

You have to remember that the web as a medium is really only about 15 years old, so 8 years encompasses a large portion of the history.

Short answer, huge changes in the last 8 years.

If you’re interested in seeing sites form 2005, Time does an article “50 Best Websites” a lot of years (I don’t know if it’s every year)... here’s 2005 with screenshots. The Wayback Machine probably has some of them saved if you want to check out how they actually operated as well.

Realistically, every 6 months there’s something new added to the “game” of web design and construction. My buddy who just graduated in 2011 is having a hard time keeping up with the latest trends because he’s in the work force now.

I started the internet she bang when I was a 4th grader and Google was brand new and stuff. I was there when Internet Explorer and AOL was the first big thing, when Xanga was the first real blog site, and yes I was one of those hooked on the doors opening and closing while on AIM. Webdesign seems more sleeker, more fluent and intuitive.

Appearance wise, 8 years ago nearly all of your graphics were raster image based. Now they are vector and you can build a graphic rich layout simply with code, without ever opening photoshop.

Layout wise, everything is table less now.

Clean, lean and fluid design are MUCH more in. It’s a hell of a graphics challenge to pull off while preserving an attractive look and without using browser and screen sniffing and dynamically delivering content based on the user’s device, one site for smart phones, another for tablets and yet another for PCs with a decent screen resolution. But it can be done and that’s where the bleeding edge of design is now.

Also, Google’s Panda update and its successors were massive game changers. All the former SEO cheats and tricks flew right out the window. Before Panda, they worked. Today, they get a webmaster sent directly to SERP jail and there are no early parole dates.

In the last 8 years, some of the most important websites have regressed in the functionality of their design.

On Hulu, you can no longer view listings of complete seasons of whatever shows you want. Instead you have to scroll through pictures. Pictures that load-as-you scroll. (Load as you scroll seems to give web designers orgasms…. while totally ruining the experience for real users).

On Youtube, you can no longer view hundreds of uploaded videos on a person’s page all at once. Now you have to scroll-down as Youtube loads up gray boxes that appear due to Youtube’s switch to endless-load-as-you-scroll. Google did this as well on their Image search. You can no longer view a hundred Google Images at once. Instead Google lazy-loads/load-as-you-scrolls just like they instituted at Youtube.

StumbleUpon got rid of their easy-to-use website in favor of some impossible-to-figure-out social networking scheme.

Some of the best sites are being managed by idiots.

Not Fluther though. It still works just like it should. And that’s due to no crazy changes.

Which reminds me: That’s how websites that change things for the worse tend to totally write off any complaints about it. They think you’re just being “resistant to change” not even coming close to realizing just how stupid they are being. The changes by the aforementioned websites do nothing to make using the sites easier. In fact some important functionality is completely removed and what’s the benefit? More pictures in most cases? Is that really a benefit when our ability to search & browse is being curtailed by web designers who have a fetish for giant pictures, lots of clicking, and load-as-you-scroll?