why design from scratch

… when copy/​paste will suffice.

That “making a profes­sional web­site has never been easier”, is unques­tion­able as we write latter half of 2020. That is as expected after about 25 years with web designs, and deve­lop­ment of tools and standards for same.
Readymade templates and “design inspi­ra­tions” are found all over the internet, and rec­og­niz­able bits and pieces bought and/​or borrowed from these are found on most com­mer­cial and private web sites.

Millions of individual and (to some degree) uniquely designed web­sites, make up the “tradi­tional” segment of the world wide web.

When I read articles con­tain­ing latest web design trend evalua­tions, they too tend to come through as copy/​paste works from years past, with minor rewrites.
That is of course not the least surprising, as there are only so many ways to reach the same goals as was aimed for in years past. And, web designers/​developers have not changed much in what we want and how we want it, since back when we could not make any of it work with­out applying some serious hacking and work­arounds across browser­land just to get some­what close…

One reason for the reduced focus on unique appear­ance and more on what to copy/​paste from a limited number of tem­plates and sources of inspiration, may be the wide range of screens web­sites have to be tailored for. What has worked for others for the last few years, may be the safest options today also – better safe than sorry.
Besides; “same­ness” have to a large degree overtaken “uni­que­ness” as sales pitch, as “standing out” may easily lead to “being left out” among sites trying to cater for the same audi­ence. Again; what has worked for others…

Increasingly higher resolution on screens allow for enough “freedom to design” to satisfy most artists' need for canvases to create visual illu­sions on as covers for the func­tion­ality needed to run busi­nesses.

more of a good thing cannot be bad?

I am not hired by anyone to be a judge of web design solu­tions. I am just old enough in the game – from way back when IE6's reign peaked across browser­land – to have ob­ser­ved it all before, and am also stupid enough to write what's on my mind – border­line haz­ard­ous in today's climate regard­less of area.

Maybe I am also too stupid, or behind, to notice all the minute details and unique touches that make one web­site so much more attrac­tive and user-friendly than those other sites, apart from the fact that those same “details and unique touches” (if any­one in the biz thinks they are any good) can be found every­where in no time.
No big deal really, as I mostly con­sume sites as end-user these days, and am no longer occu­pied with making other than my own sites work as intended.

Superlatives to describe individual sites' super­ior­ity may still have some effect. But, end-users have been exposed to the same type of inflated writings about every­thing every­where for so long that they quit noticing – same as we develop a form for blind­ness to adver­tise­ment.
On the other hand; those sites, adver­tisers, and cri­tics, that try to remedy the situa­tion, risk being ignored and lose out because they do not follow the trends. Thus, few will go those routes and deviate from the main streams.

The above isn't meant in a negative way, but nearly 20 years in the busi­ness have told me that few outside the trade itself, or involved in projects one way or another, pay much atten­tion to details unless some­thing in a given design becomes too irri­tating to ignore … like I always leave sites with unrequested popups that cover stuff I'm focusing on at the moment.

Before anybody notice the entire world wide web may have gone the way of com­mer­cial TV. That is: most chan­nels present the same as most others most of the time, and repeat most of it n⁽ⁿ⁾ times before starting all over again.
And, despite hardly any of it being worth our time – not even the first time, most will surf through again and again in (futile) hope of finding some­thing worth­while.

from a to z, and back again

Back in time many turned the release of a new site-design into a big happening of sort. These days that is more rare, and such events can now often best be likened with showing off what one had for break­fast on social media – not such big a deal.

The natural up-and-down-and-around cycles that affects web design as well as pretty much all else in our socie­ties, where all new gets clas­si­fied as “old” pretty quickly, and what was old and out­dated a while ago comes back in fasion again, seem to speed up.
If I am to predict anything, it may be that visual trends will come and go so fast that the waves of change become blury and all will be “in” and “out” of fashion simul­ta­neously, depending more or less on what time of day it is and who one is asking.
Every­thing is relative, and our digital experi­ence seems to go into over­drive and cause addic­tion and loss of atten­tion. Whether or not that is a good thing for the human race, is not for me to answer.

In time use of entire toolsets and standards, including HTML/​CSS as we know it, will die off and some­thing new will take over. Nothing lasts for­ever on the internet.

homegrown…

I do of course use tem­pla­tes to populate this and other sites I'm in control of, but only the “home­made” variants: made from scratch by myself and later adorned with inspi­ra­tions from every­where on and off the net. Now that I offi­ci­ally have quit working as trouble­shooter for others and have entered ret­ire­ment, it is all for fun and recre­a­tion and may evolve in any direction.

As hobby philately could have been an alter­na­tive, but HTML/​CSS works fine in that respect, for now.
Whatever the future brings, hacking IE6 was great fun while it lasted.

sincerely 

Hageland 08.sep.2020
last rev: 10.sep.2020