Evolution of web design

In 1996, Microsoft released its first competitive browser, which was complete with its own features and tags. It was also the first browser to support style sheets, which at the time was seen as an obscure authoring technique. CSS was introduced in December 1996 by the W3C to improve web accessibility and to make HTML code semantic rather than presentational. Table-based layouts became very popular as they gave web designers more options for creating websites. The HTML markup for tables was originally for displaying tabular data. However designers quickly realised the potential of what structural elements they could add to their designs. They soon created more complicated, multi-column layouts than HTML was originally capable of. However this time did see little attention been shown towards to the semantics and web accessibility. As design and good aesthetics seemed to take precedence over good mark-up structure. This period also saw spacer .GIFs become very popular for controlling the dimensions of web layouts. HTML sites were limited in their design options, even more so with earlier versions of HTML. To create complex designs, many web designers had to use complicated table structures or even use blank images for spacing. However in 1996 Flash (originally known as FutureSplash) was developed. At the time it was of a very simple layout basic tools and a timeline but it enabled web designers to go beyond the point of HTML at the time. It has now progressed to be very powerful, enabling it to develop entire sites.