Is web design easier or harder than it was 10 years ago?

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Is it harder or easier to build a website now than it was 10 years ago? Does the bar have to go up or down? There's no single answer to that question, but I can give you my opinion on it.

#HTML

HTML5 was the only major change to HTML in the last decade, and it wasn't particularly dramatic. It's great that it's the looser variant (instead of getting XHTML3 or something). It's more compatible this way. Maybe it closes my <br /> and maybe <br> doesn't. Having better semantic tags (e.g., <article>) is great. The input types are wonderful. But none of this makes HTML significantly easier or harder.

Is the same.

#CSS

CSS has become easier. We use fewer "hacks" all the time. I can literally feel it. The CSS we write today feels so intentional and straightforward. Ten years ago , it felt like every element had some kind of strange hack, and today, almost none. If CSS feels harder, I'd bet it's because the sites we're building are bigger and more complex, so the styling systems for them need to be more robust, and mistakes can be more noticeable.

Easier.

#JavaScript

I'm sure there are strong arguments for doing both here. The language, perhaps, with all its recent syntactic innovation, is easier. But what's being asked of JavaScript, and what we're doing with it, is so astronomically large that it gets harder along the way. It's similar to CSS in that sense, but even more pronounced since we're not just doing what we used to do on a new scale; we're building entire interfaces with a language, in a way we didn't do before.

Stronger.

#Domains

I mention this because it is a crucial step for a person to go from zero to having a website.

I don't think buying a domain name is any easier. Domain names are a commodity market, so the companies that sell them to you do so for some other reason, which means the incentive is very high for them to offer you other products. For someone unfamiliar with the subject, you can imagine the confusion, because they don't know enough yet. Do I buy it through this website builder? Do I have to buy it through this website builder? Do I need WHOIS protection ? Oh God, what is DNS ? I guess I'm going to need an email address, right? Or is it like some weird, special hosted email? I'm going to call it a wash. Nothing has made this easier or harder in a decade.

The same.

#Hosting

There's so much money in web hosting that I'm surprised we don't see more profound innovation here. I could argue that it's a bit easier these days, but low-cost hosting isn't significantly different or more useful than it was a decade ago. We're still assembling our own custom build and deployment processes just like we did 10 years ago.

Large-scale things might have seen a lot of innovation, like AWS , but no one is going to argue that things are easier.

The biggest innovation we've seen is from companies like Netlify and Zeit , which are taking a holistic view of the developer experience, from helping manage things on the ground to testing builds on the front end, to immutable deployments. I'd love to see all hosting companies realize that each and every one of their customers needs to get their code onto their platforms, and they have a huge opportunity to help us do that directly.

A little easier.

#How can people do it?

I like to think in terms of HTML , CSS, and JavaScript . But of course, very few people start with that technology to build websites from scratch. In reality, they end up being treated as underlying technologies that get mixed up with a bunch of other sites.

You can build a website from an index.html file. I would argue that more people should. But people look for "quick fixes" and customize them from there. I know I did it. The first websites I built were WordPress because it was a complete website in a box (with its own struggles), and I customized it. People are still doing that today, probably more than 10 years ago, and I don't feel it's significantly easier or harder. Or they're looking for something familiar. I made a one-page index.html site not too long ago, only to have another developer pick it up and turn it into a create-react-app site, but otherwise, nothing changed. They just didn't know how to work on it without React.

They either use WordPress.com , or Squarespace , or Wix , or Shopify , or BigCommerce , or you know what I mean. This isn't about what people can do, it's about what people actually do. And for most people, these applications significantly lower the bar for creating a website.

So, for the average person, is it easier or harder to go from zero to having some kind of website?

Much easier.

#Can people really do it?

If we're talking about building from scratch, it's interesting to see who feels like they've lost their touch. The idea for this post came from a conversation I had with someone who's been a front-end developer and a friend who asked me to build a website. They refused because they didn't know how.

Chatted with someone who's been working at a company as a front-end developer for 3 years. Their friend asked them to help build a website, but they had to decline. They didn't know how.

— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) October 14, 2019

Some of that doesn't surprise me. As I write this, the world is terribly full of React-specific developers working on huge sites (partly due to bootcamps, and partly due to market demand). They understand that very specific ecosystem and are perfectly productive within it, but they lack a broader understanding of how everything comes together to make the complete site.

Specialists are specialists!

Them: What do they do?
Me: I'm a web designer
Them: Great! Can you help me build my website?
Me: Oh God no, I have no idea how to do it.

– Karen McGrane (@karenmcgrane) October 14, 2019

Another part of me is surprised. Did you know that an index.html file with "Hello, world!" in it can be a website? Even React developers are generally very aware of App-Build-React and how that develops a site ready to go. Tools like Stackbit assemble a JAMstack site for you that can go anywhere. For developers, it seems that going from scratch to a website is much easier these days.

Much easier.

This article was originally published on CSS – Tricks by Chris Coyier.

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