Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Evolution of AOL.com 12-2-09

Recently, I have searched through archive.org to find old versions of websites in order to trace their evolutions. Today's blog entry will focus on AOL.com. AOL.com is the eponymous home website for the internet provider America Online.

This is America Online's logo. It is mainly blue. This is another element to consider when look at the evolution of the site.

AOL.com 1996

This website design was from the holiday season of 1996, which implies holidays such as Christmas. The red in the site represents one of the main colors of Christmas. It also represents poinsettias, the flowers that are usually present during Christmas. There is blue in the links on the left hand side of the site, which match the colors in the logo shown above. This is also very simple compared to later versions of the site.

Aol.com 2008

Note: the CSS in this design is messed up because of the archiving process.

Aol.com 2009

The current design of the site has a modified logo, but it maintains a bluish color, just like its old logo. It, like MSN.com and Yahoo!, forewent simplicity in favor of the "wealth of information; poverty of attention" theory referred to in the MSN.com blog entry. It also features a search engine at the top of the page, like Yahoo.

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