Exploring the reasons why we no longer have web designers.
This is interesting, but the take also seems to miss in several points, for me. The main thing that has happened since the author entered the idustry is the shiftover from web pages to web applications. This has had knock on effects across the industry.
Whats the difference, you ask? A web page is a mostly static and mostly stateless program. It is made of html, enhanced through javascript. A web app is a regular application, delivered to the platform of the web. It is written in javastcript and produces html. It is often very stateful. It is very dynamic.
Jquery, probably the most powerful tool for enhancing websites, was released in 2006. This was the height of website design, as the webdesigner could create the structure in html and then modify it with jquery. It was a blend of design and technical application. Its no surprise that the big social media all dates from around this time. Social media is a mostly static experience that jquery made very delightful.
React was released in 2013. This was the first major framework to be javascript-first. The layout and structure of the page took place entirely in javascript. It was no longer a blend of skills, creating the page was a fully programing job. This brought web more into the traditional software industry, with all that that entails. It also enabled web design applications, such as Squarespace, which further deminished web design as a practice.
I started in the industry in 2008. In my experiance, there was never a strong representation of women in web design. This got worse asthings shifted, but its a mischaracterization, I think, to say that women were pushed out. Its also a mischaracerization to talk about the creation ofthe front end developer role or the ux role. These roles have always existed (or, at least, existed since before the time period we are talking about). These are application development roles. Windows and Mac apps had ux designers and front end developers already. When those same companies decided to usethe browser as their platform rather than the desktop, it was natural to transfer those same roles.
If anything, it seems, the period of web design was the oddity as industry norms just weren’t available in the less powerful browsers of the time.
Yes and its especially noticable with things like bank sites that lost a ton of functionality in the name of appification. Its even worse because it tries to be like an app but can’t do the camera stuff that the app device can.
Sure, web applications have different requirements and might warrant the use of more JavaScript than a website does. But one of the biggest problems nowadays IMO is that many developers choose these fancy technologies also for websites, just because they like them, without thinking too much about how that affects the user, and it does so in a mostly negative way. If you are building a website for the local bakery HTML and CSS backed by any CMS probably suffice, and there is no need to add the complexity of client-side JavaScript and SSR (or whatever) to it.
Because everyone got a website by 2005, they still work, so why would I pay good money to replace something that works??
- every small business owner ever, it seems
I think the point of the article (and I agree to that) is that “modern” websites (i.e. use heavy javascript frameworks) are having real issues that websites being built without loads of client-side javascript do not have. I guess some websites built in 2005 are performing better and are more accessible than websites being built today.
I’d have to agree. Old websites, while dated, are readable and in some cases more easily navigated. Some of the new trends (like scrolling but not going anywhere but stuff happens) is a neat trick, but entirely not conducive to information exchange. It’s just dick wagging, and now that everyone has it it’s not even that anymore.
WTF? This is not at all what my experience is or was. In any way. People just moved away from that title because every idiot with frontpage used to call themselves web designer.
Who’s “we”? I work with a team of web designers for almost every project.
