The Wax and the Wane of the Web

Published on March 27, 2026

I offer a single bit of advice to friends and family when they become new parents: When you start to think that you’ve got everything figured out, everything will change. Just as you start to get the hang of feedings, diapers, and regular naps, it’s time for solid food, potty training, and overnight sleeping. When you figure those out, it’s time for preschool and rare naps. The cycle goes on and on.

The same applies for those of us working in design and development these days. Having worked on the web for almost three decades at this point, I’ve seen the regular wax and wane of ideas, techniques, and technologies. Each time we, as developers and designers, get into a regular rhythm, some new idea or technology comes along to shake things up and remake our world.

How we got here

I built my first website in the mid-’90s. Design and development on the web back then was a free-for-all, with few established norms. For any layout aside from a single column, we used `

` elements, often with empty cells containing a single pixel spacer GIF to add space. We styled text with numerous `` tags, nesting the tags every time we wanted to vary the font style. We had only three or four typefaces to choose from: Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman. When Verdana and Georgia came out in 1996, we rejoiced because our options had nearly doubled. The only safe colors were the 216 “web safe” colors known to work across platforms. The few interactive elements like contact forms, guest books, and counters were mostly powered , predominantly written in Perl at the time. Achieving any kind of unique look involved a pile of hacks all the way down. Interaction was often limited to specific pages in a site.

The birth of web standards

At the turn of the century, a new cycle started. Crufty code littered with `

` layouts and `` tags waned, and a push for web standards waxed. Newer technologies like CSS gained more widespread adoption , developers, and designers. This shift toward standards didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It took active engagement between the W3C and browser vendors and heavy evangelism from the Web Standards Project to build standards. A List Apart and books like *Designing with Web Standards* played key roles in teaching developers and designers why standards are important, how to implement them, and how to sell them to their organizations. Approaches like progressive enhancement introduced the idea that content should be available for all browsers, with additional enhancements for more advanced browsers. Meanwhile, sites like the CSS Zen Garden showcased just how powerful and versatile CSS could be when combined with a solid semantic HTML structure.

Server-side languages like PHP, Java, and .NET overtook Perl as the predominant back-end processors, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the trash bin. With these better server-side tools came the first era of web applications, starting with content-management systems, particularly in the blogging space with tools like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress. In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened doors for asynchronous interaction between the front end and back end. Suddenly, pages could update their content without needing to reload. A crop of JavaScript frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and jQuery arose to help developers build more reliable client-side interaction across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like image replacement let crafty designers and developers display fonts of their choosing. Technologies like Flash made it possible to add animations, games, and increased interactivity.

These new technologies, standards, and techniques reinvigorated the industry in many ways. Web design flourished as designers and developers explored more diverse styles and layouts. However, we still relied on numerous hacks. Early CSS was a significant improvement over table-based layouts regarding basic layout and text styling, but its limitations meant that designers and developers still depended heavily on images for complex shapes and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns. Complicated layouts required all manner of nested floats or absolute positioning (or both). Flash and image replacement for custom fonts were great starts toward varying the typefaces from the big five, but both hacks introduced accessibility and performance problems. JavaScript libraries made it easy for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, although at the cost of doubling or even quadrupling the download size of simple websites.

The web as a software platform

The symbiosis between the front end and back end continued to improve, leading to the current era of modern web applications. With expanded server-side programming languages like Ruby, Python, Go, and others, and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Alongside these tools, collaborative version control, build automation, and shared package libraries emerged. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

At the same time, mobile devices became more capable, giving us internet access in our pockets. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and anytime.

This combination of capable mobile devices and powerful development tools contributed to the waxing of social media and centralized tools for connecting and consuming content. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites began to wane. Social media offered connections on a global scale, with both the good and bad that entails.

Want a much more extensive history of how we got here? Jeremy Keith wrote “*Of Time and the Web*.” Or check out the “*Web Design History Timeline*” at the Web Design Museum. Neal Agarwal also has a fun tour through “*Internet Artifacts*.”

Where we are now

In the last couple of years, it

The Wax and the Wane of the Web

Related News

Related Articles