Week 8

I thought “A Handmade Web” was an interesting piece. It is clear that we view the so-called handmade web pages from the late 1990s through a historical frame. I think however, its important to consider how the frame may change over time as technology and trends continue to progress. For instance if browsers progress to a point that they no longer have backward compatibility for the old web pages, then there is a danger that people will no longer be able to view the old web pages. One thing that was mentioned in the piece was that old web pages that were optimized for low resolution displays now take up only a small fraction of the screen when loaded on modern computers and displays. When a person loads up one these pages and they see that the content only takes up a third of the screen, they can recognize and appreciate that this is a side effect of the the age of the web page and the advancement in browsers since that time. However, if browsers in the future have a feature that perhaps automatically resizes pages and displays them in correct proportion then a viewer of one of those pages in the future may no longer be able to recognize the age and ‘handmade-ness’ of them.