Mid 90s sites have a nice look to them. Honestly in some ways they're easier to read then a lot of websites of today.
Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look?
Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look?
A lot of it is monkey-see-monkey-do. And realted, the widespread use of common frameworks instead of people actually understanding how web sites work and doing their own programming.
I build a web site for a hospital that was fast and responsive and accessible. A manager complained that it didn't look like a "real" web site because the pages loaded instantly. She wanted me to put in a mechanism so that every time someone clicked on a link a loading spinner would appear for a few seconds before the next page loaded. Because that's what "real" web sites do.
Maybe she was responding to how jarring page transitions can be. I’ve gotten some good use out of the View Transitions API in a product I’m building. (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/view-transiti...) It’s a server-side rendered multi-page app, and throwing in just a bit of view transition CSS to get a nice fade effect when you go to a different page does feel nice.
Oh my god, that is awful and ridiculous.
A lot of the designs were also somewhat flexible via Flash/Flex and not HTML alone.
When a non-trivial number of users have widescreen displays a layout designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio ends up either crowded on one side of the screen or floating in the center with large margins on either side. A layout filling a 16:9 aspect screen will end up being different than the 4:3 layout. This feeds into mobile as well, your 4:3 or 16:9 landscape layout for desktops either looks terrible or is broken on a mobile device in a portrait layout. The graphics that look good at 96dpi start to look shitty on HiDPI screens.
It's entirely possible to make responsive layouts that handle all those cases. CSS and HTML have lots of options for responsive layouts. The main limitation is time/money. It's a lot of work to build a "magazine" layout that is responsive and displays properly on all devices. It's possible just difficult. It's much easier to make a layout that looks equally bland and lifeless across all devices.