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Evolution of Websites: 10 That Have (And Have Not) Changed

wakeuplater.com — In the year 2008, having created websites for over half my life, I look back and see how much websites have changed in the last decade and a half. At the same time, I can see how little they've changed as well, and I've realized that the internet as we know it today is only a teenager, with many years of growth still ahead.

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  • topogio, on 03/24/2008, -19/+3very interesting, thanks
  • TomK88, on 03/24/2008, -11/+6Dugg for Terrelle Pryor in Yahoo News. :D
  • mvanhorn, on 03/24/2008, -1/+68Bring back the days when ESPN.com didn't auto start a video with audio.. ugh
  • fwertz, on 03/24/2008, -2/+36"Decaf or Java?" Hah.

    I think Star bucks had a pretty nice design in comparison to modern sites. You know, minimalist.
    • edwartica, on 03/24/2008, -1/+3I almost bought Starbucks.com in 1997. They didn't own it back then - no one did. I don't know why I didn't buy it. I have kicked myself ever since.
      • antdude, on 03/24/2008, -0/+7They would probably sue to hand it over.
        • edwartica, on 03/24/2008, -0/+4true. Which would of sucked considering I was a starving college student in those days, and they are a multi-national corporation.
        • spyrochaete, on 03/24/2008, -0/+4ICANN states on their website (google it) that domain names are not copyrightable. You can get in trouble for impersonating a company (e.g., phishing) but otherwise there is no entitlement when it comes to registering domain names; first come, first serve.
        • SSUK, on 03/24/2008, -1/+1Starbucks.com could have fetched you thousands of dollars. Wii.com apparently went to Nintendo for a six-figure sum in 2006. The person with amazing foresight to register wii.com deserves every penny.
  • damnitdaniel, on 03/24/2008, -2/+40This article will be much more interesting in 8 years.
  • anderzole, on 03/24/2008, -6/+9what about some love for one of the first search engines... webcrawler!
    • edwartica, on 03/24/2008, -1/+2Remember metacrawler? They even had the voyeuristic "metaspy" to see what others were searching for.
      • TimDigg, on 03/24/2008, -1/+1remember lycos
        • edwartica, on 03/24/2008, -1/+1yes! They had the best mp3 search tool this side of P2p.
  • joeridehouwer, on 03/24/2008, -1/+15Proves again that webdesign is dependent on technological advances... Higher resolution monitors, more bandwidth, flash plugin. You can clearly see all these sites progress from 640*480 to 800*600 to 1024*768.
    • doshindude, on 03/24/2008, -6/+1then 1280x960 and then 1280x1024 and on and on....for us monitorphiles.
    • TheSabre, on 03/24/2008, -0/+4Did it need to be proven again? I think it's pretty much a given that as technology advances, the way we use technology will advance too.
  • DeskFlyer, on 03/24/2008, -14/+13Obligatory: http://www.jgeoff.com/homepage/
    • groverblue, on 03/24/2008, -0/+5"Let ME design YOUR corporate sight!"
      rotfl
    • dimizzz, on 03/24/2008, -1/+1hahahahhah thanks it's awesome
    • edwartica, on 03/24/2008, -0/+2My gosh....I love the comments...
      "dear fag yuor web site is the gayest arse licken peice off ***** site i have eva seen
      i think u should get kicked in the balls with a steel capped shoe
      love tim"
    • blindmonkey, on 03/24/2008, -0/+2I hope nobody with epilepsy clicks that link...
    • DeskFlyer, on 03/24/2008, -1/+2I wonder if anyone who buried me realizes that it's just a spoof page.
    • SSUK, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1"I might have to create a "Sucky Page" Award JUST FOR YOU!!!!!!!!

      -Akasha
      http://www.angelfire.com/ca/0lush0"

      Protip: When saying someone else's website sucks, don't link to a ***** Angel Fire page...
  • elitistmusician, on 03/24/2008, -1/+73Anyone else miss frames?

    Me neither.
    • edwartica, on 03/24/2008, -1/+9I still use frames. Maybe that's why I don't get any hits to my website. :P
    • SSUK, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1Frames never died! They live on in my own personal internet I have set up in the basement.
  • annflower, on 03/24/2008, -4/+2Nike became better:)
    • keithc01, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1You mean Nike's better is better than your better
  • benbfree, on 03/24/2008, -8/+79I saw CNN today and 5 years ago and realized we've been in this stupid war in Iraq for way too long. sigh.
    • StealthMonkey, on 03/24/2008, -4/+10That was clearly done on purpose as a statement.
    • GruntboyX, on 03/24/2008, -1/+4ya think? Not to mention the headline "Clinton says Democrats hold keys to brighter future" Its this kind of crap that gives The Fox news viewers ammunition to their networks legitimacy.
  • wattersm, on 03/24/2008, -8/+3Change just for the sake of change isn't really necessary. If your site works why mess with it?
  • ShawnDEvans, on 03/24/2008, -4/+17uh? No mention of Google or were the changes so subtle that it wasn't worth including?
  • floppyparty, on 03/24/2008, -0/+10"Granted, it looks like the oldest version here might be missing its CSS, but it's still lagging behind in design."

    Yea, you know, because CSS doesn't really have much to do with webpage design.
    • Nextrix, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1CSS/XHTML actually does not have anything at all to do with webpage design. I know cause I have been making websites since before it came out, and I can even manipulate any design today without using it. It's just a tool that helps making and managing elements much easier than before where we had to either rely on some template engine like Smarty or even old school shtml and those virtual tags. Dam that brings be back. But ya the design aspects are all that is needed, and a base framework of thinking what you are creating has to be interactive and must flow.
  • GThrift, on 03/24/2008, -1/+3The site is dying. Anyone have a mirror?
  • poleag, on 03/24/2008, -4/+20maddox.xmission.com never changed, never will.

    • anononon, on 03/24/2008, -1/+5It's perfect. Don't mess with it.
    • spyrochaete, on 03/24/2008, -1/+1Easy to navigate, dark background, no ads. I agree that it's the best page in the universe. I've modelled all my websites after his.
    • JackHarkness, on 03/24/2008, -0/+2hasn't changed in 3 years, no new post or anything. now that's commitment
  • mikehill33, on 03/24/2008, -5/+3fail.
  • Scottc320, on 03/24/2008, -1/+2crashed?
  • Hobbes24, on 03/24/2008, -10/+2google:

    5 years ago: http://web.archive.org/web/20040911015641/http://w ...

    10 years ago: http://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/google.s ...

    stunning.
  • thetinguy, on 03/24/2008, -6/+1mirror plox
  • michaelsmusic, on 03/24/2008, -4/+0A few diggs and the server dies. Try the Google cache until it comes back.
  • Maddenman2000, on 03/24/2008, -1/+82Myspace now: http://www.myspace.com/
    3 years ago: http://www.myspace.com/
    5 years ago: http://www.myspace.com/
  • dulymachine, on 03/24/2008, -9/+1here's a really gaudy pos http://www.buffalowildwings.com/
  • coolcole93, on 03/24/2008, -1/+5Mirror?
  • MagnumVP, on 03/24/2008, -1/+3One that has never and will never change. www.ebay.com
  • doshindude, on 03/24/2008, -2/+15well....http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/ hasn't changed since '96.....it was a test to see if it could crash browsers.
    • edwartica, on 03/24/2008, -0/+7It looks like a Scientologist indoctrination manual to me.
    • ftyuv, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1And then there's mola.org :-)
  • DesireCampbell, on 03/24/2008, -3/+1http://www.duggmirror.com
  • DesireCampbell, on 03/24/2008, -3/+1http://www.duggmirror.com
  • jjustice, on 03/24/2008, -1/+4The Digg effect will never change ;-)
  • phatedesigns, on 03/24/2008, -3/+9wow... that 404 page has come a long way in ten years!
  • kuppoppo, on 03/24/2008, -6/+4MrBabyMan, stop posting ***** links that crash after 25 diggs.
  • twrife, on 03/24/2008, -3/+6Was I the only one who was really looking forward to seeing Google?
  • smacksaw, on 03/24/2008, -1/+5If either of the Yahoo examples in the middle (#2 and #3) were still Yahoo today, Google would not be my homepage.

    Yahoo - this is why you're being bought out. We told you not to change and you did anyway. If you're not going to listen to anyone, you'd better be pretty smart. And you aren't. Glad I sold your stock 10 years ago.
    • edwartica, on 03/24/2008, -0/+2Agreed. Yahoo's categories were a sure fire way for me to find anything I needed. Once they took those away, I stopped using yahoo for anything more than a spam email account.
    • ThaDRD, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1When Yahoo kept asking for feedback on their current site design, I told them it sucked and not to change. They changed anyway. Digg is now my homepage.
  • mt4055, on 03/24/2008, -1/+1Yawn!
  • jordanleegauci, on 03/24/2008, -0/+8goatse hasn't changed as well
    • moletimer, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1Wait, goatse? I'm googling it...

      Oh, *****. MY EYES
  • BrendanSheehan, on 03/24/2008, -1/+2http://www.google.com/
    http://www.google.com/
    http://www.google.com/

    Why mess with simple perfection?
    • spyrochaete, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1http://www.purple.com/ is even better.

      Incidentally, it's the website I use to test network connectivity.
    • patho, on 03/25/2008, -0/+1Google has the luxury of having one main task and having all other options be secondary.
  • mrhaines, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1Nike seems to always be ahead of its time. Yahoo on the other hand seems to get worse and worse.
  • ZiggyILM, on 03/24/2008, -0/+0Far more interesting than all of those sites is IBM's... http://www.ibm.com is probably one of the best looking, most advanced sites you'll find in a corporation, especially one as big as Big Blue
    (Here's an article of what the site looked like in 2001 when they decided to make some changes http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr ... )
  • theodenking, on 03/24/2008, -0/+4Funnily enough Amazon UK looks exactly the same as Amazon US eight years ago -_-
  • pingudownunder, on 03/24/2008, -1/+3Another great example is the beeb:
    1996: http://web.archive.org/web/19970428002851/http://w ...
    1997: http://web.archive.org/web/19970428002851/http://w ...
    1998: http://web.archive.org/web/19990128045212/www.bbc. ...
    2002: (dunno which muppet came up with BBCi): http://web.archive.org/web/20020124121058/http://w ...
    2008: http://www.bbc.co.uk/
    • SSUK, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1The same stupid bugger who thought up the "BBC iPlayer"... Who incidentally is also probably the guy who thinks selling box sets for shows which we, the British public have already paid for them to make with our TV licensing fee, at an unreasonable price point. (£50 for a Doctor Who box set? ***** off, it wasn't even THAT great to begin with.), also probably the same guy who thought DRM was a good idea in the iPlayer as well.
  • CSharpSauce, on 03/24/2008, -1/+1it'll be fun to see how Yahoo will manage to fit even more bloat into their website in the next 5 years.
  • TheSabre, on 03/24/2008, -0/+4Haha...from the last MTV screenshot:
    "If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or Netscape Navigator 3.0, then you'll never look at the web the same way again."

    Classic. I'm going to go put that on my website immediately.
    • SSUK, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1Funny, 'cause that's what I said when I used IE8 beta. And not in a good way.
  • hinmanj, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1I think I liked the Nike page from 8 years ago better than any of the other revisions...
  • LeRenard, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1I really preferred some of the older sites which were a bit more simplistic, but I have to say, Microsoft's old website was an utter and total disaster. Searching for even the most rudimentary items was next to impossible. What struck me as even worse is that after struggling to find anything, it would ask on every page "Was this page helpful?"
  • sagat, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1Eventually there will come a day when art school designers will finally understand that sites should not be designed to satisfy their design philosophy but to appeal to the average Joe who can barely use a mouse. Everything else is irrelevant.
  • Jergens, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1Does anybody here think that Amazon.com is ridiculously crowded and a pain to use?
    I'm not talking about the front page, but whenever you're on a product's page. Wayyy too much information, and not enough of it about the product itself.
    • jabela, on 03/24/2008, -0/+1I think that's one site that has gone downhill... It used to be about buying your books in the easiest way possible...
  • passingnotes, on 03/24/2008, -0/+0http://blackpeopleloveus.com/ - identical since about 98 i believe
  • MissionWanted, on 03/24/2008, -0/+0My hopes were up, I thought the title was "Evolution Websites"
  • medledan, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1MtV's is the best one. Im interested to see how the web will look in another 8 years....hmmmmm
  •  

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