Web Design Revolution - Evolution - RebellionBy Jeff RouyerJeff Rouyer, based in Portland, Ore., is a web developer for an Internet communications company by day and an advanced HTML instructor for Portland State University at night. He is recognized as an innovator in web site development and has earned several industry awards and publishing requests for his web projects. Jeff has contributed to the book "Dynamic HTML Unleashed" and is the author of "Dynamic HTML Web Magic." He is currently working on his next book project on advanced web site design. You can visit Jeff's work at http://www.htmlguru.com. Download the PDF file for this article.In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, planted a seed that revolutionized the way humans communicated with each other through a web of networked machines. Like a living thing, the web has since evolved and mutated with ideas and technology that took root and grew rapidly, such as HTML, as well as leaving other ideas to their quick death. For me, I viewed much of the web as an endless series of static pages that flashed before my eyes, but what made the web really come alive was my introduction to Dynamic HTML in 1997. With DHTML, I saw through the static world of web page construction into a new world filed with art and interactivity that previously roamed the planet in the form of multimedia applications and games. For the first time, I was able to design a web page the way I envisioned it, with total freedom of image placement, text control, animation and heightened levels of interactivity. Ha, ha. How naive of me to think of this new evolution of web design as a place free of tyranny… From its origin, the web has been envisioned as a place where information can be shared freely with few barriers to both humans and machines and with an overwhelming desire to keep its control out of the proprietary grips of competing corporations. Paradoxically, these same competing corporations have provided innovations to display web pages as well as exert their control on how that information will be formatted. Web developers know this unusual circumstance as the “Browser Wars.” Web developers caught between the crossfire during this war were forced to pick sides or remain neutral. Neutrality largely meant building web pages that worked in both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer browsers. Neutrality meant dealing with each browser's proprietary HTML extensions for document display and having to code HTML, Style Sheets and Scripting to cope and work around several layers of browser incompatibilities. In short, neutrality meant one big headache that stroked the death bell for promising technologies like Dynamic HTML. At the onset of the browser wars, web developers seemed to be a passive group that only voiced their concerns and frustrations in hotly debated newsgroups and email lists, but that lacked any cohesive body sharing a single voice. Yes, there has been the W3 standards body in place to present and test new ideas for evolving web browsing, but implementing these accepted standards was still largely the prerogative of the browser manufacturers. Web developers soon found themselves in the dilemma of ignoring the full multimedia potential that modern web browsers offered for sake of compatibility. On the flip side, browser manufacturers weren't getting a strong following for proprietary technologies introduced in their latest browsers. Here we have the ingredients for a bad tasting stew containing frustrated web developers, over-engineered browsers and ground-breaking standardized web technologies such as Style Sheets, JavaScript and the Document Object Model. Something had to give. What was that? It sounded like thousands of web developers screaming. Yes, finally frustration changed into action, and action resulted in web developer groups, associations and guilds poised to fight the good fight. Not just with words either, but with tools for proof of concept that conforming to standards-based technologies can work and benefit web developers, corporations, individuals, browsers makers and ultimately all web visitors. Great tools such as the Opera browser and recently the open source Mozilla browser boasted unequaled levels of compatibility and standards support. Again, the state of web development finds itself back in the spirit of providing efficient communication between human and machine with as few barriers as possible including a handy set of standards to follow. Now there is a bright future for web developers with the aid of groups like the Web Standards Project and Mozilla.org pushing for a day when it is good to be a web developer in the neutral zone. The following list includes resources for revolutionary web technology trends that will probably soon become mainstream. As a web developer, getting on the learning curve for these technologies now is key.
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