Ok, not so much ‘through the ages’, as ‘since 1995’, but you get the idea. This online museum is the brainchild of Petr Kovář, a user experience designer from the Czech Republic.
Web Design Museum
At present, Internet Archive keeps the visual form of over 327 billion websites, the oldest of which date back to 1996. This service is undoubtedly a great aid to anyone who would like to look at the internet past. Unfortunately, it does not enable to follow past trends in web design or to go through websites originating only in a certain period. The thing is that Internet Archive is not a museum with carefully sorted exhibits that would give visitors a comprehensive picture of the web design past with the use of selected examples. It is more like a full archive of the internet.
Therefore, Web Design Museum sets the main objective to trace the past web design trends, and to give general public the full picture of the web design past with the use of selected exhibits. At the same time, it seeks to use selected websites to outline the development of websites from the most distant past until present.
Take a look at how our tastes have shifted over the years. It’s strange to think that, however old-fashioned they appear now, all of these designs would have been thought of as bang up-to-date, cutting-edge even, at the time.
It’s nice to see the wonderful k10k again, though. That still looks great.
Whilst we’re on the subject, here’s a post about the Internet Archive and one about Geocities. Ah, those were the days.
Miscellaneous Details 