With the internet being a place of constant change, growth, and improvement, this assignment is especially interesting as it puts those characteristics in the spotlight. I picked the three websites that came off of the top of my head that I though would best demonstrate improvement to a website. They are displayed below.
The Weather Channel
This shows the comparison between the look of The Weather Channel's website from 1996 to 2014, as you can see there is drastic improvement. It began with a very simple page with menus and a pleasant cloud background. There are links to important pages and graphics are limited. The current page is very different in its way of navigation and the immense increase in graphics. The page is interactive, responsive and is jam-packed with much more information than the previous. There are also features on the current page that were not included before such as larger ads, a search bar, and an interactive navigation bar.
This is the comparison between the html code behind the 1996 and 2014 pages of The Weather Channel. At first it may seem similar due to the approximate amount of text being the same in both, but the differences are simple. As you can see the page from 1996 is structured using tables, with borders and alignment inside those tags. But the current page is structured from a tool that is much more common now, divs. The use of divs opens up many more doors for the potential of the website and an increase the ability of use.
Myspace
I think out of the three websites I chose, Myspace had the most drastic change from the same age gap as The Weather Channel of 1996-2014. This site started out with a very basic page with a generic banner, three button menu, and minimal graphics including the patterned background. The site looks so minimal that it is confusing where you are supposed to be lead to. The current site is very complex and busting with graphics almost covering every inch of the page. It's vibrant in color and gives you several options on which direction you want to go as soon as you open the page.
This site also has the most drastic change out of my three in the structure of the html code. As you can see above, Myspace started out with almost no code at all, only containing the background, banner and links that are visible. Compared to the complex code of the current page that uses divs like The Weather Channel, it almost makes you wonder if the first page is even a page at all.
StumbleUpon
This is another site, also one of my favorites, that made a considerable jump in the web design world from the years of 2002-2014. As the early page is definitely better than the other two, it is still rather simplistic with minimal color scheme and graphics. It is also very focused in the middle of the page, rather than filling the entire screen how most websites do now. We can see that StumbleUpon also jumped on the bandwagon of the amount of graphics increasing, buttons are more appealing and overall the page is easier to look at and use.
The amount of HTML code increased immensely as the years went on. In the early page there was barely even a structure there. Like the other current webpages, it is structured by divs which overall seemed to open many more possibilities for the company to create a very sophisticated website that is both more appealing and user-friendly.
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