The Progression of Web Design Through Time

            We are situated in a time where the Internet plays a massive role in our everyday lives. Being aware of the time we live in is crucial in the analysis of Web texts within Carolyn Handa’s The Multimediated Rhetoric of the Internet: Digital Fusion. With the advancement of technology, the Internet has not only become an “information superhighway,” but also a “digital super mall” (Handa 83). The advancement of internet technologies has caused the designers of Web pages to be more conscious of how they create new sites for their consumers. The construction of Web pages must now provide more than a simple offering of information, they must be easy to navigate, work flawlessly, and bypass irrelevant content. “Web site design today must therefore involve gathering data through Web analytics programs, mining the data properly, understanding the data, and then translating that understanding into Web pages that are highly effective in the rhetorically fused presentation” (Handa 85). Living in this time where the Internet is a crucial part of so many people’s lives, web designers are forced to understand and translate date so that users can, in turn, understand the translated data they receive. Focusing on time becomes crucial in trying to create effective Web pages and in trying to sell products or services effectively on those Web pages. In M. Jimmie Killingsworth’s book, Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary Language Approach, he includes a chapter about the appeals to time. In this chapter he communicates that time is more than awareness of temporal context as he focuses on term modern. He says that “’Modern’ implies that time has a special value. It’s up to date and better than old-fashioned, outmoded, things” (Killingsworth 39). This view of time as being modern allows us to focus on the concept of progression.

            In both Handa and Killingsworth’s chapters, they focus on the concepts of progression. In Handa’s chapter on rhetoric, context, and culture on the World Wide Web, she talks about Bolter and Grusin’s concept of remediation. “No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces…” (Handa 86). This concept of remediating preexisting content is a direct reflection of progression by refashioning the old into the new. Directly tying into Killingsworth, this progressive concept of remediation leads into the value of time. Consumers want things that are better, faster, newer, and that allow them to use as little effort as possible. By remediating certain aspects of different products, new and modern products are created. “Products that save time are particularly valuable… time is money” (Killingsworth 40). Viewing time as something with value, that can be invested, allows for it to be seen as a substance rather than an abstract measure for our lives slipping by (Killingsworth 40). In the concept of modern, time’s material value combines with the new being more valuable than the old. With this concept in mind, modern Web sites work towards a social impact and this impact is reached through the use of remediating the old into the new, making context more valuable to the user. “The most eloquent Web sites are the ones that understand the fusion possible between various media and use all…” (Handa 118). Through this fusion of various media, a larger audience is able to be reached. However, this “fusion” surpasses the concept of remediation and digs into the concept of multimodality. The way Handa explains multimodality is through a comparison between the two-dimensional flat pages bounded in a book and a three-dimensional collection of items in a room (Handa 155). Through the use of multimodality in Web site designs, users are able to access a variety of different media on one page. This concept of multimodality adds to the progression of time and how users favor new, better, and faster over old and outdated methods.

            After focusing on the advancement of technology, it becomes clear that time plays a crucial role in the progression of these advancements. While time plays a heavy role in allowing these progressions to occur, it also plays an important role in deciding the value of products. As Killingsworth discusses in his chapter on the appeals of time, consumers want products that are better, newer, faster, and that save time. Viewing time as something of value gives it a sort of concrete structure. This modern concept of time being a substance can be used effectively in the construction of Web pages. By focusing on newer and better concepts of modernity, Web designers are able to reach a larger, more popular audience. Through the use of remediation and multimodality, the content and navigational aspects of Web pages should become more valuable in the eyes of its users. With remediation, older content is able to progress through time and become new and thus, more valuable to today’s internet users. On the other hand, aspects of multimodality should already exist naturally: “Thinking of Web site navigation as moving through space should draw on already existing skills” (Killingsworth 155). Ultimately, in designing Web pages in this day and age, it is crucial to think about the concept of modernity, the progression of time, and the concept of time as an actual substance. We already live in a time of advanced technologies, the time to construct effective Web pages is now!