Five Retro Web Design Elements We're Glad To See Gone
However, as the web's grown up its designs have changed. While the occasional dark turn has happened – anyone remember the Flash-heavy days of the early 2000s? – the design changes the internet has made have largely been positive. These five page elements may not be common on the internet today, but they were once ultra-ugly web design staples.
The '<Blink>' Tag
Fortunately, the blink tag has fallen out of favor (and compatibility) with many of today's modern web browsers. Pioneered in the early 1990s by Lou Montulli – a programmer who later suggested his idea was one of the internet's worst developments – the blink tag was once popular on personal websites and low-rent photo galleries.
Other than its reputation for annoyance, the blink tag was renowned as being very difficult for users to read. While it no longer lives on, this horrendous page element was a major cause of headaches for early internet users.
Animated GIFs
Remember those old personal websites, designed in Dreamweaver and loaded to the brim with animated flags, welcome notices, and smileys? Personal websites have certainly evolved since 1996, and the animated GIF has done so with them. Rather than remaining a symbol of kitsch design and garish annoyance, it has become something more interesting – a type of low-value movie format popular on forums, chat applications, and image sharing websites.
Scrolling Marquee Messages
The cinema-style marquee message is one of the defining features of the early internet, and unlike its theater counterpart, this one has quite happily faded into obscurity as the platform's grown. Once popular with informational websites and online sales pages, the scrolling marquee text tag is blocked out in some development-focused web browsers, and even considered a 'malicious' page element by some online usability advocates.
Flash Animation
Flash was once the greatest development tool available to web designers. It made dull websites interesting, made navigation fun, and gave even the most sparse and grin website an option for making things exciting and different.
However, it eventually outstayed its welcome, becoming one of those once-popular online fads that simply start to hurt after too long. Thanks to backlash from developers and a locked-out treatment from technology companies, Flash is quickly falling out of favor online.
Floating Navigation Bars
Despite being designed for 'convenience,' most floating navigational systems end up being little more than an annoyance. From Flash-powered interactive bars to simple CSS 'float' elements, almost every web browser has has an annoying experience with these online roadmaps. While most webmasters are pulling their floating navigation systems as quickly as possible, a large number of unkempt aging websites still feature a user-unfriendly floating button bar.
If you think flash and gif
If you think flash and gif animations is gone, you are mistaken. They can be an art-form which should be revered.
Small Edit
Yep. I'm going to be that guy. Under the marquee tag section you have "this one has quite happily faded into security" I think you mean "faded into obscurity." good article though. I enjoyed it
Flash
To put flash as Retro and along with BLINK tags and marquee messages is just plain ignorant. I am as happy as the next guy for not having to resort to flash to do rollovers and simple navigation anymore, but to count it out simply means you have no idea about flash and its capabilities. Sure HTML5 and jQuery is great, they have caught up with flash. Flash v6 that is. So congratulations - we can finally achieve in HTML what we should have been able to do all along - great job on these technologies catching up with the 2000's considering we just left that decade. Flash, as you hopefully know, didn't even start out as a web tool, it morphed into that from the animation world and it has since then kept on adapting and adapting to fit its surroundings. What makes you think it wont adapt again? That is the same as thinking HTML or any other technology for that matter is intending to stay still without developing?
Floating Navigation Bars
So what are people using now instead of Floating Navigation Bars?
ahhh, I think flash is a ways
ahhh, I think flash is a ways from being considered "retro'...
What? Flash retro???
What? Flash retro??? Fortunately Flash will never die as the capabilities it offers are simple uncomparable and unmatched by JQuery or HTML5 and I'm pretty sure 6,7,8 won't do a much better job either. Also, can you please quote where you get your information? "Thanks to backlash from developers and a locked-out treatment from technology companies"... ermm, you mean developers at Apple?
HTML5, jQuery, SVG
Maybe flash animations aren't gone, but they are not as common as they used to be several years ago. When was the last time you saw entire website built in Flash? That was not so rare in the past. HTML5 and jQuery are taking more and more tasks that Flash was used for. And we should also mention that when IE9 comes out, SVG will be supported in all major browsers, so will probably be used for animations on the web more often than Flash. And SVG is more appropriate for web use.
Lame
blink and marquee tags have been gone for a long time. The rest of these are oversimplified, uninformed opinions.
First of all what is a floating navigation system? And second of all who are "most webmasters"?
Backlash from which developers? And by technology companies you mean Apple. Flash is certainly falling out of favor, but mostly by people who bought iPhones/iPads and now want everything to be HTML5 so they can access it.
This reads like a poor post
This reads like a poor post of your own mis-judged anger venting....
Bitter Truth
Dan, floating navigation is the one that floats while you scroll, it remains visible all the time. Very low number of sites are still using this. And it was never popular.
Well, scrolling marquee text, floating navigation and blink tag can be considered retro elements and are a perfect fit for the article like this. Does Flash belong here? NO. But putting Flash in the same basket as those is interesting and provocative way to rub the nose to Flash lovers with bitter truth: Flash is loosing the battle.
Google is using HTML5 on YouTube.
Microsoft will release this year Internet Explorer 9 with HTML5 and SVG support.
Apple.
More and more companies are pulling off Flash from their websites.
This is just the beginning. And honestly, Flash doesn't belong in web development. Web development technologies should focus on security, performance and openness. Where Flash isn't necessary, another technologies are more appropriate.
Useful article. that was not
Useful article. that was not the information I was looking for, I came here after seraching for retro design (not web), but it was still interesting to read it.
flash and animated gifs
I don't agree with to items from this post. flash and animated gifs. They are still used by many. And cannot be compared to scrolling text or blink tag.
Flash is here and will stay here
I don't agree that flash is gone, niether i would be glad to see it gone. flash is here and will stay for a long time.
Flash
I like this article but somehow I disagree with the flash as a thing of the past.
Las Vegas Web Design
Flash gone?
I will agree with blink tags and gifs.
Flash?I don't think so, there are tons of things that flash enabled sites(with good coding skills) can make almost anything.
Well, anyways, nice post.
Animated Gifs?!?
How can you not miss animated gifs? Just kidding of course but I do have fond memories of designing maxpages with those blinky wonders back in the day!
Great post!
Web Design Services
Exactly all this element of
Exactly all this element of web design create problem for user and by the way increase the bounce rate of the website. Every one should make sure to pass their website through w3c validator. so that it will become compatible in each type of web browser.
User Navigation should be considered
All this features were really annoying from the user end. Though they seems great from designer point of view but if they can't fulfill the purpose they were created than there is no use of them. A website should be always user friendly, though there can be some creative work but not at the cost of the user navigation.
Flash? A thing of the past?
Flash? A thing of the past? GIFs? A thing of the past? Floating menus? A thing of the past.
Perhaps some research should be done before writing an article like this. Advertising firms, gaming companies, web design companies still indulge in flash. Its here to stay for a very long time. Animated GIFs are still used for online advertising. GIFs are used as a fallback in adverts when flash cannot be displayed.
As for floating menus... Hahaha! Twitter utilizes a floating menu, that's not aging, nor is it outdated. Loads of plugins for Wordpress and Social bookmarking apps use floating menus.
This article is just a personal rant about how the author doesn't like certain things. Its poorly portrayed and pretty narrow minded.
Retro Web Design Elements
The last two decades have seen immense changes in web design. One of the design trends in the 1990's was to fill in every piece of a webpage not occupied by text with animated gifs. We don't see much of those anymore. After all, web design has much in common with other types of design, like product design, or fashion. Each of these trades either follows or creates trends in the design of their respective products. Web design elements of the recent past are exactly what appeals to retro design. In fact, retro is concerned more with the recent past than it is other periods.
Web design Orange County
software development India
Useful article but how can you not miss animated gifs? I do have fond memories of designing maxpages with those blinky wonders back in the day!
All this functionality has
All this functionality has been left the basic reason of annoyance to the end users. Though one instance they look good but at the second instance they start annoying the users in terms of low page loading and improper display and so on. Now with the launch of various technologies all we can do is present ourselves better ahead of our end users. Ajax is one such technology, which instead of loading the entire page loads only a section of page to retrieve data.
web application design
Post new comment