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Alternative Web Design 101: What the Heck Is It Anyway?

© Tony Sprinkle

The World Wide Web. Over the past five years, it has transformed from a small, nerdy computer hacker's toy to a sprawling community containing literally billions of pages. It can almost be likened to the birth and growth of a city. (You can tell someone played SimCity too much when he was younger...)

First, a medical research company puts up a lab in the middle of nowhere. And this is an awesome lab. Discoveries are made in leaps and bounds, and it grows and grows and grows. Then, the makings of a small town begin to move in. Restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, small residential communities. All this hubbub starts to attract the adventurous and the curious to the area, and they begin to settle. Now we've got a fair-sized city going. Eventually, the city will get to a point where it needs a little something more than malls and department stores. It needs a little culture. Maybe a nice art gallery featuring paintings by Dalí and Picasso. Maybe a few night clubs, a rave or two. Maybe even a tattoo parlour. Now there's something to break the monotony of white picket fences and prefab houses. Something to catch the eye and give the city a little colour.

So now we have a working analogy of web design. It's something that adds a little culture and colour to the drab, black-and-white, text-only Internet of years past. Now for question number two: Who gets to decide what's conventional and what's alternative?

Well, yeah, there's a lot of grey area. Some sites don't fit neatly into either category, and their conventional or alternative status depends mainly on personal preference (beauty is in the eyes of the beholder). But, going back to our analogy, I think everyone would agree that Wal-Mart is pretty plain, while New York City's Guggenheim Museum is rather odd. Their web sites also reflect this stark difference.

So, say you're a seasoned web surfer. You've been all over, seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, and know what you like. How do you go about making an avant-garde web site of your own?

Well, first you need the know-how. At the very least, you need a full understanding of HTML, or hypertext markup language. One of the better ways to learn it is to buy a reference book on HTML from your local bookstore. Or, if you're "frugal", you can take an online tutorial. Webmonkey, HotWired's online web developer's resource site, has a plethora of tutorials and reference material concerning HTML.

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