Category: Website Design

Website DesignWebsite Development 17 yrs of apple.com website design history

Matraex is a Website Design and Development company in Boise, Idaho.   As leaders in our field,   we study and document web design from many angles,  building tools which record and help evaluate the design of websites.

Announcing – The Website Design  – History Browsing Tool

Matraex recently created the Website Design  History Browsing tool which allows a visitor to browse through several years of designs from a particular website. Take a look  we have posted the history of apple.com website design from 2000 to 2016.

The first page shows a list of 17 thumbnail shots of the apple.com home page over the 17 years between 2000 and 2016.  The visitor can click on any one of the thumbnails and view the full screenshot from the beginning of that year.   While the apple.com website did change during the year,  we generally pulled the screen shot from the earliest day of the year that a change was recorded on the web archive.

Each page that shows the detail of the year,  also show a thumbnail of the previous and after years with the ability to browse to those years.

A quick evaluation of the website design of apple.com:

• apple.com’s website design layout has been very consistent layout over the years.
• their navigation bar,  has had an identical layout from 2000 to 2006,  with only a couple of button changing.
• each year we see that the devices they are highlighting change, but within a similar layout.
• in 2006 apple.com highlighted their introduction of the intel chip into the mac.  This was the first time that  we saw a departure from the white background,   and they gave a blue background to the concept
• in 2007 the iphone was introduced on apple.com and the entire background was changed to black.   This year sticks out the most in the overview of the apple.com website design over the years
• in 2008 the apple.com site didn’t introduce any products,  but they alluded to something coming by advertising Steve Job’s keynote speech.  This was the first year they introduced a design change to the navigation bar.
• from 2009 to 2013,  they continued to use the 2008 navigation bar,  however they returned to a plain white background and a site that introduced their hardware products.
• In 2014,  apple.com’s website design used a call to action for the first time,   asking ‘What will your verse be’ with a button to watch a video.   This seems to be their website design switch to be to nurturing users instead of selling hardware
• in 2015 and 2016,  they continued the call to action method of marketing and nurturing visitors instead of only selling hardware by encouraging users to view a gallery of photos.

Matraex will be adding this same type of history for other popular websites. If you have a suggestion,  please let us know via our contact us form.

Website DesignWebsite Development Web Design Vocabulary Guy

Summary: Matraex has launched a Matraex Web Design and Development Vocabulary List centrally define terms for our industry and improve communication internally and with our clients.  We are adding to the list frequently and appreciate suggestions

Web Design Communication Need

Matraex has worked with clients during the last 15 years,  developing and supporting marketing websites and custom web applications.
Each project is different and brings together a unique combination of client understanding and needs.

Preferences, capabilities and web development technologies and are constant evolving and each unique situation has presented us with opportunities to improve our products and our process. Across the hundreds of the projects we have implemented (I should count them),  one thing that would have helped each of them is improved communication.

We find it useful to educate our clients on the terms we use when discussing projects.   An important part of starting a project is to take time to define the vocabulary we use and agree on what certain terms mean.   This allows us to have more meaningful conversations with better understanding and less confusions.

Design Vocabulary List

These thoughts have led us to create the “Matraex Web Design and Development Vocabulary List“.   This list has many of the terms that define what our industry does,   and it defines many of the terms we use in the web design industry.

Many of the terms have a simple description or definition of the Term,  however with some of the terms we have spent more time defining them.   Where we reference other websites such as Wikipedia,  or blogs where other individuals write about the terms.

In some cases there is some ambiguity between some of the terms,  and we write about the differences between the two terms.

And of course,  since the terms often apply directly to what we do here at Matraex, we often included details about how the word applies to the work we do at Matraex.

Changes to the Vocabulary List

Depending on when you happened upon this blog,  you may find that the list is sparse (such as when we first launch this list in February of 2016) or that it is very well filled out,   we are adding words as we can,  and we will enhance the definitions of words as we find better ways do describe them.

I invite any one that reads any of these articles,  to send me suggestions for words that should be added to or changed on the list.  I welcome suggestions:

• of update or enhance or extend the definition of a term
• for new words that you think should be added
• of article links which lend to the definitions of new (or existing) words on our list
• for articles that could be written to disambiguate two terms