ast eb age esigns
Take a trip down memory lane to see what the UMD home page looked like in its various incarnations. Like any other web site, ours has grown quite a bit. Both content organization and appearance has changed to better meet the needs of visitors from on and off campus. UMD's home page started when the web was a new and fascinating way of providing a graphical user interface to information thanks to new tools such as Mosaic.
Not all pages have been preserved for posterity sake but all category pages should be viewable.
1996 - 1997
UMD's first home page, typical of many web sites of this vintage, was simple and colorful dividers and bullets were prevalent. This was a big step from the previous text-based method for information dispersal/retrieval known as Gopher. Back in this day, many a site proudly proclaimed "Made with Netscape 1.1N in mind" after Mosaic was overshadowed by this new and fancy browser. This version is an updated rendition of the very first UMD home page which unfortunately is not available here. A list of links was abandoned for icons and a table to "enhance" our page for Netscape 2.0!
1998 - 1999
UMD's home page made a step toward a more elegant and refined appearance (in the world of web pages). Opting for a more organized approach to information, categories were introduced to help make sense of the ever-growing collection of pages on the site. The toolbar of commonly needed links made its appearance on the left.
2000 - 2001
This UMD home page moved most links to second level pages and added user oriented categories to aide visitors in the navigation of the site. Mouse-overs were implemented to help visitors get an idea what content and links would be found on each second level page. A posting board theme was adopted for the user oriented second level pages to make the pages more fun looking and distinguish them from the other category pages. The pictures on the home page and each second level page were randomly cycled each time the page was loaded.
2002-2003
An artistic approach was taken for this UMD home page with a flexible layout and more pronounced category separation. The "News Flash" section was added to let visitors see significant news items or stories of interest that they might not hear about otherwise. Second level pages brought the main navigation links from the home page as a column on the right and toolbar at the top of the page.