What do you think of my blog’s layout? I recently received a comment about it, but won’t say whether it is positive or negative. I must admit, for better or for worse, that the skeleton for this site is basically the default offered by MovableType. I’ve added some chotchkies here and there, but it’s mostly unchanged. So there go my creativity points…But really, what is it that you pay attention to when you look at a website? Is it the layout, or the words?

I think the internet has changed greatly over the last few years. In the beginning it was all about content, simply publishing words. More recently a lot of emphasis has been put on creativity in how things look. This change has mainly taken place because before it was not possible to have a lot of control over how webpages looked. Since the advent of style sheets, the ability to control layout has improved by leaps and bounds. The web is now beautiful, but is it better than before?

This question is a prime topic for HCI study. Surely, the content that is on the internet is of lower quality than in the late 1990s, IMHO. Since most websites look so nice, there is a lot of pressure to only upload pages that uphold rules of creativity and usability, but not necessarily content. I know that I rarely (if ever) build informational websites, because I do not have the time or motivation to make the pages look good.

In the end users of the internet win and lose. We lose much valuable content in exchange for usability and beauty. As in all design related fields, we must deal with tradeoffs. I’m not going to make any statements about whether or not we’re better off now than we were in the past, but it is important to realize that these questions are arguable. Not all technology necessarily improves with time. Sometimes it just takes on new forms.