But to answer where it came from? It came from the limitations of the web at the time - table based layout, low graphic resolutions, browser running under 16 megs (not gigs) of ram.
---
† "Better" in this case means something akin to "what most people today would consider more professional." I don't want to judge.
And to do the pixel graphic style you need a pixel font which was impossible because you can only reference fonts people have on their computer, Fixedsys font was the best you could reference and some did do that.