In the internet’s short history, design of web pages has made significant progress. While websites still make use of the HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol), little else remains the same.

In its infancy, web pages were plain text written in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and nothing else. Designers only had access to the most basic layout options, usually just line breaks for new paragraphs and font modifications. Initially, it was impossible to even integrate images into a site.

As the internet matured, so did the art of web design. Designers were given powerful layout tools like the table which allowed a webmaster to create an arbitrary grid of “cells” to separate and locate information in any part of the page. It was around this time that the concept of frames also became popular, allowing the designer to section off parts of a page for use as a main menu.

Frames and tables quickly fell out of favor with the advent of CSS, or cascading style sheets. With this method, a designer assumed complete per-pixel control of the display of his content by writing various “styles” into a “style sheet.” The designer can then apply whichever style he chooses to any element of the site, which enabled significantly more dynamic content and presentation. Entire websites could be redesigned with only basic modifications to the style sheet.

As CSS matured, the tools of the trade did so as well. Designers largely created by writing text into an editor, and due to differences between web browsers would not know how their site would look until loaded into each one. The advent of Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia’s Dreamweaver allowed aspiring designers to edit their pages in a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) format that greatly simplified the process for those unfamiliar with writing HTML or CSS.

Modern day websites make use of a variety of technologies to achieve their desired design, including scripting languages like Python and Ruby, but many classic elements of design remain in play to this day.