The Web was conceived as a way for researchers and scientists to share documents, not as a medium for visual expression.

The aesthetics of Web pages, such as they were, derived from computer screens and typewritten documents. Early Web users no more felt the graphical limitations of the hypertext markup language (HTML) than they had resented having only one golf-ball font on their old IBM Selectrics. They were so delighted with the Net that the look was irrelevant.

First functionality, then bandwidth, and finally search were the key characteristics of good websites. Because people used a variety of browsers and operating systems to explore the Web, pages had to be flexible. The width of the window, the type size, the fonts themselves--all could vary and often did. The Web was so new and interesting, no one cared if it was ugly.