I'm still a newbie with website design and I sometimes try things that veterans say are "out of style" or "make my website look a generation old". Recently it has gotten me wondering, what are the modern standards. Obviously, CSS would be one of those standards, but what about the others?

What about things like buttons and images? Do you think it is better to use rounded buttons with drop shadows and gradients? Or is it better to use webcolors for faster uploads?

Is the trend today to keep your website design simple, making it easier for search engines to read?

I would appreciate all feedback on this because I would love to hear a variety of responses. Just hearing peoples' personal opinions and preferences would be great too.

There will always be trends in web design. There is no definitive answer, but if you are desgning your own personal site then do it however you want to. If you want to do what everyone else does that's fine also.

On the other hand if you are designing for a customer then you should always try to design for what they actually want, and not necessarily what the current trend is. Of course you can advise them of current trends/ideas if you want but it should be the customer who decides at the end of the day.

Check this thread out for some good links on what others are currently doing in the industry.

Design Inspiration

To me, the trend is what it always has been: keep it simple, stupid.

Try not to get overly fancy. Make sure your code is minimal. Design for search engines, but not at the expense of your users. And understand who you're building the site for. That's the big one.

I guess that one of the things that started this topic for me was that a friend commented on yahoo's new design as not looking professional. Basically, they said that yahoo was a site for information and now they are using background images and gradients trying to make up for their other shortcomings. What do you think?

Another friend commented to me that rounded buttons with highly sharpened edges were out of style. Is this true?

There is kinda a trend going around which most refer to as the "Web 2.0" look, which tends to have soft gradients, rounded corners, fluid layouts, etc...

Yahoo is definitley borrowing from these design styles.

I would like to think that I try and design in a way that suites the site rather than by trend, but sometimes being trendy is the best design possible. If people start associating a style of site with a style of design, it can help identify your site from the get-go.

The only way I would see "designing a site for a decade ago" being bad is if you are borrowing from the bad design elements. There have always been well designed pages, but there were times where bad design practices ran rampid. (flashing text, animated gifs, etc)

Recently it has gotten me wondering, what are the modern standards. Obviously, CSS would be one of those standards, but what about the others?

I think that you should distinguish between *design standards* and *design implementation standards*. In general case, these things are not related to each other -- e.g., the same graphical idea can be implemented using either plain HTML or DIV/CSS approach.

Regarding design implementation standards, I suppose that a web site should be implemented in a *cheapest* way ("cheap"=="fast and effective"). There's no sense in writing server-side engine for a ten-page web site. Of course, the site must be implemented in search-engine-friendly way. Unfortunately, some customers are really confused by their marketing consultants ("we MUST use .NET for our site", "Ruby is the MOST powerful and OBJECT-ORIENTED language", "DIV/CSS is the ONLY considerable approach" etc, etc, etc).

Regarding design standards, there's no standards. Let me repeat once again -- there's no standards. Each web site should be developed basing on its idea, contents, aims and other individual characteristics. The only requirement common for all sites is usability. The site should look attractive and comfortable to use. Nothing more.

What about things like buttons and images? Do you think it is better to use rounded buttons with drop shadows and gradients? Or is it better to use webcolors for faster uploads?

Can you imagine such a button on Google? At the same time, can you imagine opaque gray buttons on Download.com?

Download speed was critical in the past. Today most of the Internet users connect via high-speed ADSL or modem connections, so do not afraid to put some extra pictures on your page. However, do not exceed the limit

With best wishes,
Alyssa Rabe
Espherie Design Team -- http://www.espherie.com

Ok so there might not might not be any standards when it comes to design but we all must admit that there are some sites that have been branded as coming straight out of 1997 so there are design aspects to stay away from right?

Download speed was critical in the past. Today most of the Internet users connect via high-speed ADSL or modem connections, so do not afraid to put some extra pictures on your page. However, do not exceed the limit

Typically I try to keep my pages below 100 KB in size. This is good enough don't you think?

For the speed issue I'd say 100KB is still too big. I disagree that download speed isn't that critical anymore. A lot of people still use dial up. Webmasters like us probably aren't, but there are still people who do use it. My stats still show they do. I also think that as things get faster we all want them to be even faster. The issue with download speed will always continue. Ultimately we'll all be looking for a page that loads completely before we finish clicking the link to that page.

I use 30KB as a goal, though that may have to change as I learn AJAX and want to beging adding it to sites. The real goal I have will still be the same, which is to make the file size of every page as small as I possibly can.

With the design question I'm with Adam in that I prefer simple. Simple won't ever go out of style. And you can still achieve some really nice aesthics with something simple.

I also was going to point out the thread Daniel listed since there are some really nice sites in some of the links in that thread. I've been going back to them a lot for inspiration lately.

Everybody here really has some good advice.

I think much of design, at least the aesthetics part of design, is in the eye of the beholder. I don't know if there are specific design aspects to stay away from or any you absolutely must include. There aren't really formal rules to what makes a good design. More rules of thumb and the best sites are usually the ones that end up finding a way to break those rules in a way that still works.

When I think of my own design style I don't really think in terms of what's in vogue I usually just look for what I like. I try to take the time though when I see something I like to think why I like it. What made that design work for me? Then I try to incorporate those things I liked into my own designs.

The trends of today will be the tired looks of tomorrow as soon as someone comes up with something new.