When the web first started, all websites were just about presenting content. Or to be more precise – information. It was a simple, high contrast design, with white background, black text and blue, underlined links. It’s been many years since then, although I remember using a lot of these principles when building websites back in 1998. They were easy to read, and the lack of multimedia due to slower connections at the time, was in fact a blessing that let us fully appreciate content.
Now all of that has shifted towards shocking the user with jQuery animations, smooth scrolling, effects and gimmicks. I’ve been browsing through a lot of award winning websites – mostly portfolios for online companies – and I noticed that the amount of content they communicate now can be summarized in a few bullet-points. Surely if it’s purely about the design, it’s not a bad thing, but sometimes we really want to read more and don’t want to be treaded like idiots who can only comprehend ordered lists.
What do you think? Should we simplify the websites, relying more on bullets and eye-candy, or should we balance it better with longer pieces of text, that actually say something?