[office politics]

Most Used and Abused Web Design Trends of All Time | Web Design Ledger

By Jacqueline Thomas

Most Used and Abused Web Design Trends of All Time

The year is 1999. You’ve just watched the Matrix, and it’s blown your mind. You sit down in front of your computer to work on a web design and then create or download an animated Matrix background for your Geocities website. You’re so cool. Fast forward 10 years, and you say to yourself, yikes, what was I thinking?! We’ve all been there. As a matter of fact, I’m personally guilty of copying many of following trends.
Trend isn’t a bad word in web design. In fact, the items on this list inspired an entire generation of web designers. All of these ideas were so huge that they created a mass following. That’s a good thing. The problem comes when we’re happy to create a clone of a great design and let it rest at that. Great designers push themselves to be ahead of the trends, or they twist the trend into something uniquely their own. The problem isn’t that you were inspired by the Matrix, it is that you didn’t re-imagine your inspiration into something different. As you look through this list, remember the reasons why you may have once loved these web design trends. It will help you understand why they were so popular, and what you can learn from them.

i'll add the javascript clock.....in the status bar

[synergy]

True, true. I still see the aqua buttons everywhere. Most that stuff is just taboo now and pretty much avoided all together.

The biggest annoyance on that list is the auto-playing music. Noooooo.......

Some other additions:
mouse trails
fading pages
table layouts are getting there
banner ads (ads are going content related now)

[Hampton]

That was awesome, I still see black everywhere.. you can't avoid it..

flash is dead too.

animated Gif's are still top's on the over used list.