Prof. Dr. Style
Prof. Dr. Style

        
        
        
        Top 10 Web Design Styles of 1993 (Vernacular Web 3)
        
        


        Codeword

        Every term I give an introduction to Interface Design studies to new 
        students. 99% of them are under the delusion that the design of 
        everything in the world is made in Photoshop or other Adobe products. 
        
        In case the design is to be perceived on a computer, these Adobe files 
        will be thrown into a room full of programmers who are longing
        to make it all interactive according to noble ideas embedded in the graphics. 
        
        So the task is to show non-fictional challenges of new media 
        and to explain why to study Interface Design. (To make it short here: 
        interface designers develop projects that will be  handed over to
        photoshoppers to put gradients on buttons.)

        Most of the students will not be convinced and will choose to study 
        graphic design. Even those who want to be web designers. Though 17 years
        of the WWW show that you need quite a different skill set for that. 
        

        
        That's why the last 3 hours given 
        to me to influence people who will not study the web, but will design 
        it anyway, I spent on highlighting the real history of web 
        design styles. By real history I mean essential design trends rooted in 
        technologies, believes and needs of their time, from 1993 to today. 
        Imported visual trends1 are left outside 
        of this timeline.

        Big emphasis in my talk is put on the mid 1990's, an era when the 
        web was build and arranged and decorated by amateurs, when very web 
        specific genres and looks were brought to existence, making it an 
        incredible place to experience.2

        But what was earlier? How did the World Wide Web look before 
        this Internet boom, before it became a riot for star 
        backgrounds, bouncing envelopes and under construction signs?

        Well, in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee went live with the first web page 
        TheProject.html located inside the hypertext/WWW/ 
        folder on a computer called "nxoc01" at CERN. Neither him, nor 
        any of his colleagues made an effort to preserve this first version. 
        The only thing we know is the URL 
        http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html 
        and the way the first page ever looked in november 1992.
        That's early enough, still half a year before the Mosaic browser would 
        be released and people outside of CERN would start to make their 
        pages.

        It is difficult to estimate how many pages created in 1993-1994 made 
        it into the new millennium in their primordial way. If you manage to 
        find something that was put online that time, it would in the best case 
        display a 1995-1996 skin, like the Russian 
        Space Science Internet -- redesigns clearly shaped by the then-new 
        Netspace browser.

        But there is a way to find pages that live for ever in 1993. To 
        present them to the new students I look for "Prof. Dr." in Google. 
        Some semesters ago it was possible to make a life performance with 
        this search. Pages of academics in style were top results. As of June 
        2010, the magic seems to be gone. To collect enough examples for this 
        article I had to go till result page 110.

        
            
                
                    name
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Paul Embrechts
                
                
                    Univ.-Prof. Dr. sc. nat. Werner Römisch
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Heinz Siedentop
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Alexander Mirlin
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Jan Paredaens
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. S.J. Bas Edixhoven
                
                
                    M.Sc. Dr. Sujatha Ramdorai
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Wolfhard Janke
                
                
                    Prof. dr. P.M.E. De Bra
                
            
                
        

        
        "Prof.Dr" is a codeword, a tricky search request. I am aware 
        of the fact that there are users outside of academia as well who always 
        designed their sites in pure markup or redesigned according to 1993 
        standards recently. Still I suggest to use this name based on a 
        scientific title as a tribute to the history, and reminder that all 
        around the internet the very first pages were build at universities. 
        To cement this term, within this article I'll use only pages of senior 
        academics holding a doctoral title.

        

        URL

        It makes sense to check pages with a 
        tilde 
        in their address. But there is no direct connection today 
        in between URL and page appearances, a "~" is no guarantee that the 
        page will be made in real Prof. Dr. style. Anything from a corporate 
        university look to a generic corporate look can be encountered.
        
        
            
                
                    name
                    URL
                    URL style
                    design style
                
            
            
            	
                    Prof. Dr. Edward L. (Ned) Wright
                    http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/~wright/
                    tilde
                    Prof.Dr
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Marcus Grote
                    http://www.math.unibas.ch/~grote/
                    tilde
                    corporate university
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Christian Dustmann
                    http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctpb21/
                    tilde
                    generic corporate
                
            
        
        
        There are enough examples where the tilde is absent but the style of 
        early web is 100% there:
        
        
            
                
                    name
                    URL
                    URL style
                    design style
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Reinhard F. Werner
                    http://www.imaph.tu-bs.de/home/werner/
                    subdirectory
                    Prof. Dr.
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Horst Köppel
                    http://www.pci.uni-heidelberg.de/tc/usr/horst/
                    subdirectory
                    Prof. Dr.
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Rainer E. Burkard
                    http://www.opt.math.tugraz.at/burkard/
                    subdirectory
                    Prof. Dr.
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Robert Hyatt
                    http://www.cis.uab.edu/hyatt/
                    subdirectory
                    Prof. Dr.
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Ronald L. Rivest
                    http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/
                    subdirectory
                    Prof. Dr.
                
            
        

        It can even happen that Prof. Dr.s registered their own domain, 
        but kept the style of web pioneers:

        
            
                
                    name
                    URL
                    URL style
                    design style
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Bernard Moss
                    http://www.bernardmoss.org.uk/
                    own domain
                    Prof. Dr.
                
                
                    Rev. Prof. Dr. F.N. Lee
                    http://www.dr-fnlee.org/
                    own domain
                    Prof. Dr.
                
            
        

        Though more often a domain name would mean that designers, 
        photographers and project manager were consulted:

        
            
                
                    name
                    URL
                    URL style
                    design style
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. med. Markus Suckfüll
                    http://www.professor-suckfuell.de/
                    own domain
                    generic corporate
                
                
                    Dr. Prof. h.c. Hermann Scheer
                    http://www.hermannscheer.de/
                    own domain
                    generic corporate
                
                
                    Prof. Paul Goddard
                    http://www.professorpaulgoddard.com/
                    own domain
                    self-promotion
                
                
                    M.D. Oliver Sacks
                    http://www.oliversacks.com/
                    own domain
                    self-promotion
                
            
        

        A "~" in the URL continues to be part of the look and reminds of 
        early computer culture, when "user" was equal to 
        "developer".3
        That's why, where it is possible, I prefer to use the examples 
        with a tilde.

        Primitive and All the Same

        Prof. Dr. pages tell the story of the web.

        Not because they are retro. It is important to mention, that retro 
        is the wrong term and notion in this case. Prof. Dr. doesn't mean at all 
        that the site was made in 1993 and last time updated in 1995. 
        The opposite. They are usually updated with a list of courses for the 
        current semester or contain links to contemporary services like Google 
        Calendar, twitter or embed Google Maps.

        
            
                
                    name
                    last updated
                    connected service
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Alan FT Winfield
                    2010-06-08
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Michael Bieber
                    2009-02-02
                    Google Calendar
                
                
                    Prof. Steffen Staab
                    2010-06-01
                    Tag Cloud
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Rudolf Schmitt
                    2010-01-26
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Jörg Fliege
                    2009-09-26
                    Google Maps
                
            
        

        It makes them attractive for investigation -- they are actual and 
        timeless. I mean you can open them in Mosaic 1.0 and it will not crash.

        Still, if not retro, how to describe these pages?
        Prof. Dr. pages have their distinct appearance: 
        primitive and all the same.
        And that makes them historically significant.

        Primitivity tells us the story of the browser being 
        not only a browser, but also an editor. Every user of the early web was
        a producer of web content. Web pages were to be opened in the browser 
        to look at them, but also to edit them, using existing pages as 
        templates for new pages. The simple design of HTML made it possible 
        for the first users to create state of the art pages with only four to 
        five principal tags. The result was an extremely fast growing web. 
        There were not many options, this is why we got many 
        pages.

        

        Next, Prof. Dr. pages look terribly the same. As if 
        they were generated automatically by the browser, as one student said. 
        Though, ironically, they are among the last pages generated completely 
        by humans, not content management systems or services.

        They look according to the 
        viewer's browser settings. This reveals the belief of the early 1990es
        that any visual design should be left at the discretion of the user.

        Page authors wouldn't define colors, fonts margins and line-lengths.
        In turn end users set their preferences for colors, fonts, links, 
        graphics in their browsers, according to their needs or taste. Not a 
        big deal, one can say, to decide if to see all the pages of the internet
        on a white or a gray background. But don't think about colors, think 
        about the concept -- each user was defining the look of the whole 
        WWW for themselves.

        Wired journalist Gary Wolfer wrote in 1994:
        "The beauty of this approach is that it allows maximum 
        openness and flexibility. All World Wide Web documents are similar, 
        but every World Wide Web reader, or browser, can be 
        different."

        

        With the first version of Mosaic one could choose link colors. Later,
        NCSA Mosaic allowed to decorate links in many different ways and choose 
        colors from an RGB palette. It was the highest moment of "preferences 
        freedom" a user could have.

        

        The concept "End User = Designer" is long gone. It could only work 
        for the very small4 web at connected 
        universities.

        What was enough to make academic profiles and papers look good 
        online, became too less for the rest of us. Users didn't want to 
        customize preferences for the whole internet in their browser, 
        they wanted to make their pages individual and that this 
        individuality is not lost in the browsers of others.

        As soon as the WWW ventured outside of academia, the paradigm of the 
        browser changed. In 1995 Netscape reduced the browsers' preferences 
        palette to colors and fonts, while introducing new additions to HTML 
        for defining the visual appearance of pages.5

        

        The WWW, contrived in a Swiss Lab, became people's web.

        
        From Prof. Dr. to Web Vernacular

        It is very interesting to watch the transition from a primitive markup 
        style of 1993 to pure madness of 1996 staying by Prof. Dr. search 
        results. You can see all the small details that can make a particular 
        Prof. Dr. web site leave the borders of Prof. Dr. style.

        It would also important to stress that Prof. Dr. style is 
        only a style. It is not equal to pure markup. None of the 
        examples above would pass HTML1.0 validation. No wonder, Prof. Dr.s are
        not professional web developers. They are making their pages by 
        editing code of their academic peers, who are non-professionals as well. 
        Very often headings are replaced with a combination font style tags like bold
        and font size. Or the semantic <address> tag is 
        substituted with <pre>.

        
            
                
                    name
                    tags
                    used for
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Kurt Bauknecht
                    <pre>
                    address formatting
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Harry Buhrman
                    <pre>
                    address formatting
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Alex Shafarenko
                    <pre>
                    address formatting
                
            
        

        I still consider pages that misuse visual markup for structural 
        purposes as Prof. Dr. Style, as opposed to the pages where their 
        authors make a step to "bring life" to their online home.

        You don't have to be web design expert to see the difference in 
        between personal the home page of 
        Prof. Dr. Stephen Darwall
        and Prof. Dr. Harm Derksen.
        The first a typical representative of Prof. Dr. Style, the second a 
        striking example of vernacular web.

        There are also websites that look exactly like Prof. Dr. but aren't.
        Compare these two:

        
            
                
                    name
                    changed defaults
                    web editing software
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Wolfhard Janke
                    none
                    text editor / unknown
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Richard J. Boucherie
                    background color, link colors, fonts
                    Microsoft Word 2008
                
            
        

        Both seem like Prof. Dr. though only the first page is. Prof. Dr. 
        Janke's links are blue and underlined, and when you click one it becomes
        red for a short moment to give feedback to the user that the click was
        indeed registered by the browser and the requested page is about to appear
        any time. It is a reminder of the days when the internet connection was not 
        so swift 
        and you could stare at an active link for a while, waiting for 
        a server to connect and packages to arrive, feeling the effort the 
        best effort network makes. And then you are brought somewhere 
        far or close. You can go further following other blue underlined links, 
        or you can go back and see that the link you just clicked became purple,
        so that you can distinguish visited links from
        unvisited ones.

        Prof. Dr. Boucherie changed the default colors of his links 
        (they are blue even when active and visited) and by this crossed the 
        thin border that divides Prof. Dr. pages from amateur web and later 
        styles.This visually unremarkable modification can't be compared with 
        decorating a page with all sorts of animations and sounds and still it 
        is an act of users' voluntarism that paved the way to both amateur and 
        "professional" web.

        Modifying colors of links was the first, smallest thing one could do.
        Sometimes it is a sign of its authors' curiosity and the will to fiddle 
        with code:

        
            
                
                    name
                    changed defaults
                    web editing software
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Bernard Grofman
                    background color, link colors
                    WYSIWYG / unknown
                
            
        

        Quite often though the source code would reveal that the page was 
        created using a word processing software that is able to make links, 
        but fails to produce lively hypertext:

        
            
                
                    name
                    changed defaults
                    web editing software
                
            
            
                       
                    Prof. Dr. Gerhard Brewka
                    background color, link colors, fonts
                    Netscape 4.78, Microsoft Word 10
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Sarah Cook
                    background color, link colors, fonts, font sizes
                    Microsoft Word 10
                
            
        

        A curious example: Prof. 
        Dr. Kender made a Prof. Dr. page. His Ph.D. student, 
        Hassan H. Malik, opened
        the page of his mentor in Microsoft Word and made one for himself. 
        The links are there, blue and underlined, but they are numb.

        The next step is to play around with text in general. Formatting it,
        changing font size, bringing color, ...
        
        
            
                
                    name
                    text styles
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Cliff Burgess
                    colors, sizes
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Walter Kohn
                    headline color
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Carsten Timm
                    colors, sizes, removing underlines from links
                
                    Prof. Dr. Dines Bjørner
                    colors, sizes, small caps
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Günther Rüdiger
                    blink
                    
                    
            
        
                    

        ... arrogantly making it blink6,
        like Prof. Dr. Günther Rüdiger made for
        the "Current Issues" heading of his website. Blinking is the pimp among 
        HTML tags, you should be very self confident to have it on your page.

        The next logical step after bringing colors to the text is to 
        customize the background color:
        
        
            
                
                    name
                    background
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Martin L. Kersten
                    
                        
                        #FFFDDC
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Freddy Delbaen
                    
                        
                        #CCCCCC
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Markus Schneider
                    
                        
                        rgb(255, 255, 238)
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Jillian T. Weiss
                    
                        
                        #000000
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Aravind Srinivasan
                    
                        
                        #FFFFEE
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Madelaine Böhme
                    
                        
                        #e0d2ff
                    
                
            
        
        
        
        There are 216 web safe colors
        and more than 16 millions colors in general, but for somebody really passionate 
        about their webpage, it will never be enough -- and the background color 
        will be replaced with a background image:
        
        
            
                
                    name
                    background
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Eugene (Gene) F. Milone
                    
                        
                        greenwhite_paper.gif
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Adrian Bowyer
                    
                        
                        g_texture.gif
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Peter Hänggi
                    
                        
                        bkgrd023.gif
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Ernst Kausen
                    
                        
                        Image3.jpg
                    
                
            
        
        
        A Background image can be just a nice looking pattern, as in the 
        pages above, or can point out the research field the Prof. Dr. is 
        active in:
        
        
            
                
                    name
                    background
                    observation
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Huybrechts
                    
                        
                        wpaper.gif
                    
                    
                        "wpaper.gif" is  a quite neutral pattern, but knowing 
                        that  Prof. Dr. Huybrechts researchers large-scale 
                        three-dimensional time-dependent  thermomechanical 
                        continental ice-sheet models, it is easy to assume
                        that it was chosen because it looks a bit like a glacier.
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Paul 
            J. Crutzen
                    
                        
                        clouds.gif
                    
                    
                        Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 
                        Prof. Dr. Paul J. Crutzen, has clouds on his page, 
                        because he is an atmospheric chemist.
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Delp
                    
                        
                        ee2.jpg
                    
                    
                        Prof. Dr. Delp is professor for Electrical and 
                        Computer Engineering.
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Eric Carlson
                    
                        
                        deep.gif
                    
                    
                        Prof. Dr. Eric Carlson -- astrophysic. Needless to say 
                        that an astrophysic's homepage with a star 
                        background is a great finding. Unity of form 
                        and content is a rare guest in the world of 
                        starbackgrounded sites.
                    
                
            
        

        Another crucial modification leading away from the academic look is 
        replacing semantic mark up elements with graphics. Lists 
        <li> becoming bullets, bubbles annd icons:
 
        
            
                
                    name
                    bullet replacement
                
            
             
                
                    Prof. Dr. Ashraf Matrawy
                    
                        
                        image003.gif
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Ayodeji Demuren
                    
                        
                        4abul.gif
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Moritz Diehl
                    
                        
                        icon.jpg
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Henk Corporaal
                    
                        
                        MOVElogo.gif
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Andrew S. Tanenbaum
                    
                        
                        faq.gif
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Farzam Farahmand
                    
                        
                        acnvbul1.gif
                    
                
            
        

        Horizontal rules <hr> get transformed into more 
        spectacular lines:
        
        
            
                
                    name
                    horizontal line replacement
                
            
             
                
                    Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Banzhaf
                    
                        
                        bu.gif
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Ernst Eberlein
                    
                        
                        LINIE.GIF
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Steffen Staab
                    
                        
                        rainbow.gif
                    
                
            
        

        Then images get animated, making pages below looking less and less serious.

        
            
                
                    name
                    GIF animation
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Gerard 't Hooft
                    
                        
                        deeltje.gif
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Halina Kwaśnicka
                    
                        
                        em.gif
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Jeff Geensite
                    
                        
                        em.gif
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Dhabaleswar K. Panda
                    
                        
                        new.gif
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Bernard Moss
                    
                        
                        rotating.gif
                    
                
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Nguyen Ngoc
                    
                        
                        mailbox.GIF
                    
                
            
        
        
        "Less serious", but only in the eyes of "experts". An article about Prof. Dr.
        Style is not a proper place for statements about animated GIFs, but I 
        can't hold it: Animated GIFs on a web page are not a sign of low quality
        or light content. If an icon is animated it only means that the author
        of the page has better things to do than reading "10 worst web design 
        mistakes", "Top Ten web designs of the year" and the likes. This also 
        applies to musicians on Myspace and to an even greater degree to 
        neurosurgerist 
        Prof. Dr. Ismail 
        Hakki Aydin or the holder of the Nobel Price in Chemistry 2002,
        Prof. Dr.
        Kurt Wüthrich.
        
         Prof. Dr. Alan G. MacDiarmid, 
        discoverer of conducted polymers in the 1970's,
        put an under construction sign on his site in 1998 and got the Nobel 
        Prize in 2000. His site is also an example of a page with a grid
        layout.

        Making web layouts with tables, that is arranging content in columns 
        and cells, was a usual way to design web pages in the 1990's. You could 
        (and still can) achieve smooth looks with this technique if you keep 
        borders in between columns and cells invisible. But amateur web 
        designers preferred to show those borders, and experimented with 
        their size, color and amount. Academics were no exception:

        
            
                
                    name
                    table layout style
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Charles N. Haas 
                    info grid
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Eli Biham
                    blocks
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Leszek F. Demkowicz
                    horizontal navigation links
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Georgy Gimel'farb
                    year activity table
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Michael Anshel
                    subpage navigation blocks
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Gary L. Wells
                    columns
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Karl Kleinermanns
                    business card layout
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Ke Chen
                    decorative borders
                
            
        

        And as other users, who are making their pages looking at the pages 
        of others, they stepped in the traps of navigation menus ...

        
            
                
                    name
                    navigation style
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Josef Kallrath
                    left side column with decorative image
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. B. B. Chaudhuri
                    left side column with university logo
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Vincent Gaudet
                    left side column with decorative image
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Aurelian Isar
                    left side column with university logo
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Michael Bender
                    left side tabs
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Bernhard Nebel
                    left side global site hierarchy
                
            
                

        
        ... and navigation menus in framesets:
        
        
            
                
                    name
                    frameset layout
                
            
            
                
                    Prof. Dr. Joseph P.H. Fan
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Zongjin Li 
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Ewa B. Weinmüller
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Tayfun Akin
                    
                
                
                    Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa
                    
                
            
        
        
        To sum it up, through curiosity about the new medium, ignorance of 
        w3c recommendations and passion to their profession, web users 
        (irrespective of their scientific achievements) created an 
        environment where everything seemed possible:

        
            Prof. Dr. Winfried Kerkhoff 
            presents his life and work via a site Deleuze and Guattari 
            would give their limbs for;

            Prof Dr. Civelek
            writes her name in glitter and put her CV on a free hosting server;

            Ph.D. student Quan
            makes a home page for his mentor -- 
            Prof. Dr. Schneider.
            It is not really readable and doesn't mention the professor's name, 
            but still it's more meaningful than the official interactive business card
            Prof. Dr. Schneider got from his University.
        

        Amateur style7 was once the mainstream. Ridiculed 
        and almost erased in the very late 1990's, it came back to the public's 
        attention during the "web2.0" wave. Though the original amateur culture 
        was very different from web2.0, many of its elements survived and in 
        today's web carry the meaning of a close, true relationship in 
        between users and their medium. The Vernacular Web is a recognized 
        phenomenon.

        And what message is delivered by classic Prof. Dr. pages, looking 
        primitive and all the same? Independence. Inside 
        academic circles, a page made in Prof. Dr. Style shows off distance 
        from the institution's corporate identity and its Content or Knowledge 
        Management systems, which is not an easy status to achieve. Outside of 
        academia, such pages are made by 
        people who 
        know everything about the internet, but are too cool to mess with 
        web design.

        Furthermore, Prof. Dr. pages offer an experience that soon will be 
        unique.

        Cyber National Parks

        In its 17 years history the WWW was announced to die soon many many 
        times. Not only it survived, it became all-embracing and is close to
        immortality. What is doing really bad is hypertext.

        Web browsers developing in the direction of operating systems are 
        leaving the idea of interlinked documents behind. Though hypertext is 
        technically still there, it is not important any more, neither is 
        surfing or linking. The web consists mainly of application interfaces 
        where users activate functions.

        Though the dismissal of the page metaphor is no explanation why those
        web pages that are still pages are made without any respect to hypertext.
        For example, there is hardly any page left that doesn't contain links
        that lead to the same page that is already displayed. Let's say you 
        clicked the "about" link, and you came to the "about" page; the link 
        "about" will still be there, you can click it forever and it will 
        reload the same page forever. That's what 
        we8 call Zombie Links.

        Some Internet Giants like Google or Flickr avoid Zombie Links on 
        their facades, if you go deeper you'll step in the mud. Most others 
        don't care at all, because their links are not important for navigation.
        Users don't surf, they search in Google.

        Another reason is the extensive use of Content Management Systems 
        (CMS). They make it easy to create navigation for complex projects and 
        establish links within them, but they are not monitoring where the links
        are pointing to; if they do, most don't make anything useful from this
        information.

        Users don't protest against Zombie Links and clumsy hypertext because
        in the times of fast Internet connections two or three needless clicks 
        are not a big deal. Pages reload almost seamlessly, you can't even call 
        it reloading, just flickering. Designers don't care because they are 
        mostly graphic designers, who are interested in the look of the link 
        and gladly delegate its behavior to a CMS.

        Constant reload-flickering is the pitiful state of hypertext today.
        Even Wikipedia, a project that has hypertext at its core, is
        plastered with self-reloading pseudo-navigation links.

        One might think that there is actually more than enough classic 
        hypertext around. For example, Google's links are all blue, flash in 
        red when clicked and change to purple after they are visited. But 
        these colors are fake! They are fixed by the site's design, not by 
        my browser preferences. Mosaic's classic default link color is the 
        only element from the Prof. Dr. web era that survived to the present 
        day -- however only in the form of superficial styling.


        The last places to experience real online hypertext, hand made links,
        that look and behave like links, are the pages of the early web adopters
        and those who still follows their spirit. Visit them with your kids:
        
        
        
        Olia Lialina, July 2010 
        
        

    