A 2008 article called by Smashing Magazine called "10 Principles Of Good Website Design" was the top result when I searched for "good web design" whilst writing this essay. There are many others, some more recent, but they all pretty much say the same thing. The author of this one even clearly begins by stating that "[...] user-centric design has established as a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design".

But the web is not always "profit-oriented" and it certainly does not need to be "user-centric" (and I say this as a UX consultant). If it were, there would be very little creativity and self-expression left. The rich diversity of the web would be reduced to the online equivalent of a massive, orderly, clinical shopping mall meant to drive sales. No, the web can just as well be "author-centered", hobby-centered or even be dog-centered!

The design of the modern commercial web is also "sanitized": it is polished, follows conventions and is optimized for efficiency. This is one of the reasons so many websites you go to today look and feel the same. The codes of the commercial web have become so dominant that we have forgotten that the small web still exists and has a completely different priorities.

[...] Modern websites are designed to direct user behavior towards certain goals: a purchase, a click, a share or a sign-up. The words, the colours, the message are tailored to these goals, much like packaging on products in the super market.

A painter wouldn’t add more red to her painting or change the composition because market data showed that people liked it better. It’s her creative vision; some people might like it, others might not. But it is her creation, with her own rules. The question of "performance" is simply irrelevant. It's the same thing with the small web.

If the commercial web is "industrial", you could say that the small web is "artisanal". One is not better than the other. They serve different needs and both can co-exist in an open web. It would nevertheless be a shame if we only spent time on the commercial web and never got the opportunity to experience the creativity, passion and quirkiness of the small web.

Today's web browsers want to be invisible, merging with the visual environment of the desktop in an effort to convince users to treat "the cloud" as just an extension of their hard drive. In the 1990s, browser design took nearly the opposite approach, using iconography associated with travel to convey the feeling of going on a journey. Netscape Navigator, which used a ship's helm as its logo, made a very direct link with the nautical origins of the prefix cyber-, while Internet Explorer’s logo promised to take the user around the whole globe. This imagery reinforced the idea that the web was a very different kind of space from the "real world," one where the usual laws and taxes shouldn't apply.

It has been estimated that, over the past decade, hundreds of security guards have been arrested for manslaughter or murder. In 2019, California saw two incidents in which Allied-employed guards allegedly knelt on the necks of restrained citizens and killed them. The year before, Allied-employed guards harassed and threatened to fight an unarmed black man at Denver’s Union Station. One guard then led the man into a station bathroom, where he was beaten unconscious and suffered permanent brain damage. Last May, the San Francisco district attorney’s office declined to file charges against an Allied-employed guard who shot and killed an unarmed black man suspected of shoplifting from a Walgreens.

Navigation. Exploration. Browsing. Surfing. The web was akin to a virtual manifestation of physical space. We even had a word for it: webspace.