Web designing has evolved since the beginning of Internet technology when the first page was uploaded on a web server as a simple black text document. Since then, web designing has progressed into more complicated and complex phenomena, and the process is still going on. The subsequent internet boom and the opportunity to do business online changed the ways and means of web designing entirely. Web designers created visually compelling sites to attract visitors for high sales. The web pages were crammed full of information accompanying lot of colors. Those websites managed to fare well for sometime although they were a nuisance for most of the people because of their overlapping colors, large bustling text and eye popping and distracting text effects.

Then came the so called internet recession, which as a paradox proved a golden period for website design.  People learned from past experiments and started to make some engaging sites that allowed the viewer to focus on the main product/service being offered. But there was one drawback; the internet populace was going through a learning shift and they used to think that simple websites are designed cheaply. In efforts to solve this problem, most major designers adopted flash based interactive websites to impress visitors through the flexibility and uniqueness of flash based design.

It was the time when HTML, DHTML and Flash tools were used for designing websites. The table based design was good but it had some limitations like lots of codes to write and implement style on each and every object on the web pages. To address this problem, Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) was brought up and designers welcomed it as a savior against long codes. CSS is still very much in the vogue though the search for the best never stops. CSS relieves the web designers from the need to draw the tables. Just the div tag is to be used to assign styles to an object on the web page.

The hottest trend in the website design is the result of a 15 year evolution that occurred step wise. Today’s website designs are more mature and they are content specific not the other way round. In this scenario, web layouts are as important as never before. Smart web designers now employ web design layouts for the purpose of attracting the user’s focus to matter and not the manner. The websites are aesthetically developed to soothe the visitor eyes and keep them engaged. No more liquid layouts for sure.

A related recent trend is web designers’ inclination to create nice layouts but let the background remain sober. The web pages are purposefully left white outside the peripheries to attain focus and hinder distraction. The icons and images are made to project particular points. Furthermore, the web designers embed the videos in the sites to render them dynamic to engage the viewers at once. Light and sophisticated colors are the web designers’ best bet now a days to boost the design effect. Two more things that can be quoted in this regard are reflection effects and 3D gradients.

If one has to tell what is the very basis of web design, creativity can be the simple answer. Web designers are very sensitive to the way users react to their web design. The fickle web designer is always ready to go for web design that is basically odd but stand a strong chance of going mainstream approach. This is the way new web designing approaches come to the surface.When various web design patterns are analyzed, it is observed that divergent emerging trends exist in the web development field. 

The beginning of the World Wide Web (www) has introduced oodles of fresh and unique trends in the web designing technology. Initially an academic focus emerged which focused purely on sharing of information. Another shift experienced was to the particular web design phase which can be termed the more graphics era. This trend further generated the techno-hype trend in which clients and web designers groped for new means to stand apart of the rest and use the latest web design tricks to draw attention. At this juncture, applets, flash, and videos were brandished with great zeal as opposed to textual content.

The recent phase of evolving web designing trends confirm the notion that a sound web experience is the outcome of a juxtaposed presentation of visual design, interaction with users, and website structure. This era is mostly called the functionality era and justifiably so. The standards of being a “cool” site has shifted miles from the earlier one. Usability is now the premium web designing buzz word. 

Lately, the web development field has witnessed two extreme trends of modern web designing. These are text only web design and graphics only web design. The text only designs typically have least graphics, a blank vacant background, and sober text. On the other hand, Graphics only sites generally have information nudged into a corner or tiny box. 

To conclude, we can say that website designs are certainly improving with the passage of time. Though this is a sweeping remark, and this evolution has also witnessed many awkward web design trends also. Something that can be safely said is that the mature professional look is more crucial than abundance of images and other web design components. Less design and more content is the rule today.The future prospects for website design are very bright as the horizon is as wide as one can imagine. As the internet has evolved into the sole business platform for many businesses worldwide, the website design may be considered less important as compared to the content.

A Good Website design is an important step to register strong online presence. Although there are many factors contributing towards a classy website design, here are some common myths of web design we must take care of:

Role and choice of colors:

A nice and pleasant web design is imperative to attract web traffic. Most web designers believe that using lot of colors will add value to the website, where as in reality plenty of colors may destroy the appearance of a website. The website visitors may get irritated with too many colors and hence may never return. Website designers should focus using colors and affects that go well with the theme and purpose of the website. As a principal, maximum of 2 or 3 colors should be enough during a web design making sure that use of these colors doesn’t obstruct the visibility of the website.

Use of Graphics:

It is an absolute fact that graphics make things look nicer and communication easier, but it’s over dose may make these difficult. Few website Designers believe using too many graphics will add pleasant affects and credibility to their website. Yes Graphics can be utilized to lend it to a webpage but excess of it may prove intrusive and hinder usability of website. The web page carrying heavy graphics will take a lot of time to load thus affects accessibility. Web design which is a result of simple elegant graphics and loads easily is always appreciated by the web visitors.

Flash Affects: Are those attractive?

Flash is extensively used to create advertisement banners and liveliness in a website design. Flash banners, although deliver your marketing message with powerful eye-catching visual graphics, can serve their desired purpose only if they are used proficiently and carefully. Flash banners may add energy to a particular website design, but they can have many drawbacks as well.  As Web designers use too many frames to illustrate an animation, flash banners are not downloaded easily in a web page unless you are connected to high speed internet.

Main drawback of Flash website designs is the fact that content of the web page is not yet indexed by any search engine. So the websites developed fully on Flash technology makes them a risky business option for companies seeking to enhance their online presence through search engine optimization.

All Flash websites need a plugin to view flash components in a web browser. Just think if just 15% of your prospective web customers don’t bother to download the plugin and install it to view your website; you have a good opportunity to lose a significant share of web business. And believe it that many wont simply bother. If used reprehensively, Flash website designs have an amazing capacity to be a serious frustration to your website users. Hence web designers should offer the choice of non flash versions along with the flash versions, which permits the visitors to browse through the information with ease.

Your Website looks same in all browsers?

After building some successful websites many Web developers love to pretend that the website will look all the same in different browsers as it appears on their machine. In reality there is a good probability that the website may not look same in all web browsers. Even worse is the fact that sometimes Website can look perfect in every Web browser on one machine, but other machine will render it other way in those same browsers.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a body that sets standards for how all Web browsers, like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google’s chrome, should render HTML. However all these standards are merely guidelines and problem is that the programmers who develop Web browsers interpret these guidelines as they assume it is best to display HTML on your machine.

Therefore Website designers should test the website in all browsers and make sure that website is optimized with web standards adopted by different browsers. Also the resolution varies from pc to pc. Some users prefer to view the websites in 1024 X 768 resolution while others may view the website in 800 X 600 resolution. The web designer should ensure that the website looks good and same in all resolutions. The table width should be set in percentage instead of pixels while assigning properties to the table because it will help the viewer to view the website properly in any resolution.