Remember when Yahoo! lookied like this? Remember when the web was basic? Lots of text, little use of CGI and Perl?
Web 2.0 has introduced a whole raft of concepts, technologies and design elements in websites that have moved on the whole experience ten fold.
However, Scobleizer is of the view that VERY basic web design and indeed ‘ugly’ websites drive more traffic. MySpace is indeed not a very attractive site but 65 Million users speaks for itself. So is there all ready a mounting backlash from the public who speak with their clicks rather than their eyes? (not sure what kind of metaphor that is, but it sounded good in my brain). Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 have been built on the premise of reducing clutter in the UI (I like the way the start panel works in Vista much more than in XP) and as the web and the desktop blur into each other what will be the fate of the user interface. Simple and ugly? Or beautiful and elegant. As a fan of Mac OSX I’m with the simple and beautiful camp.
And talking of beautiful.. did I mention Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? Oh, yes..