12 years ago if you had a 3-frame flashing flame .gif on your site it was awesome! Add to that a scrolling 16 pt. headline at the top of your angelfire domain and you were off to the races.
3 to 5 years ago it seemed like the more content and graphic elements you could cram into an 800 pixel width the better your site was. The “good” sites (the ones that seemed to mesmerize people) almost looked like robots and/or machinery with metallic rendered interfaces. Designers were building small audio players into their interfaces and text scrolled by – all “adding” to the experience. Blips and metallic noises accompanied every interaction, and of course you heard a “swoosh” like the doors on Star Trek as text rolled into frame.
These days, in the age of Web 2.0 and 3.0, the trend has reversed. Good designers are minimizing content, letting key messages stand out, and keeping the interfaces clean and easy to navigate. My question is: will the old flash “robot” sites ever be cool again? (ignoring of course the immense limitations of flash).
Other trends in life are totally cyclical. Styles of music, fashion and art are all coming back and fading away and coming back again. Will that be the same for web sites? The web is too new to have seen a trend come back around (forgive me, here is a recent site (2007) for Borat http://www.borat.tv/ that dictates maybe the old 3-frame gifs are coming back!)
I guess if it is true, and they do come back, the great thing is we are the first generation getting to see the history of the web unfold.