The history of web design rans parallel to mine…
… So, instead of telling you anything “official” about the history of web design I will tell you my version of it, in one loooong sentence.
I started designed websites in ’94 and i felt: “i’m not quite sure what i am doing”, from there, I moved into “grey backgrounds and large fonts”, proceeded to “tables don’t exists in the official html specs”, right into “you must use tables to design webpages”, from there it was “test it on every possible version of IE”, which moved me to adapt to the proper trend of “tables are bad for web design”, to then ran wild with the rule “you must use multiple nested div’s for everything”, which was good but crazy, in fact it evolved into make it simple which sort of coincided with “make it mobile first”, which coincided with trend of “it doesn’t matter if you test it on IE” that happened at about the same time as “make it look faster, display the page before the content”, which brings me to today in 2020 and i feel … “i’m not quite sure what i am doing”!
I probably missed some milestones, which i’ll make sure to add as they come to my mind.
Have fun.