2012 has been a momentous year for GIFs, or in plainer English, the animations that adorn many websites. Not only have they now been with us for 25 years, the very term has now been named as the Oxford Dictionaries USA Word of the Year:

GIF verb to create a GIF file of (an image or video sequence, especially relating to an event): he GIFed the highlights of the debate

In the stampede of the mid to late 1990s to be a part of the then relatively new world wide web, or information superhighway to use the parlance of the time, people were putting together all sorts of weird and wonderful websites, solely in the name of having a piece of the cyber action.

Rather than calling a lot of what was on offer at the time useless though, I prefer to think of it as experimental, part of a learning curve, and an attempt to understand what was then a largely unexplored, and unknown, domain.

Whether you were around or not though, The Useless Web offers a pretty good indication of just what was out there at the time.

The work of New York based artist, technologist, and influential web designer (anyone remember PrayStation from the late 1990s?) Joshua Davis is now on Pinterest.

While the web of the late 1990s may seem like the wild west now, you only have to look at the work of designers such as Davis to realise that it also very much had its merits.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) images arrived 25 years ago and to mark the occasion nineteen GIF artists have created commemorative edition GIF animations, surely the format’s best known variation, including the above image by John McGregor, that in my opinion exemplifies the format’s essence.

Well known New York based web designer Jeffrey Zeldman, whose recently redesigned personal website played some part in my decision to drop the side bar from disassociated, speaks about the flak he subsequently encountered, and changes in web design practice, both positive and not so positive, since the late 1990s:

Finally, the web is no longer ‘underground’, no longer ‘the wild west’. It isn’t the province of a few crazy rebels. It’s filled with professionally professional professionals who follow widely endorsed best practices and standards. That’s very good in a lot of ways, but it tends to create an environment where there is less experimentation.

Lorem ipsum is a tool long used by web and graphic designers, and allows them to populate in-development layouts with text (there’s load of it in use on the development version of disassociated) without the need for completed copy, which may be yet to be drafted anyway, and also permits the tweaking of font sizes, colours, and what have you.

But what do all these commonly used passages of Latin actually translate to and mean? As US software developer Jeff Atwood discovered, translating Lorem ipsum is one thing, but making meaning of the result is something else.

Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

The above text returns the following English translation when run through Google Translate:

To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault, who are in the wish to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or else he endures pains to avoid certain things, which produces no resultant pleasure?

Quite… lyrical I must admit. If Lorem ipsum were an author I’d probably read his/her books.

I hope you’re all liking the new look to disassociated that I rolled out over the weekend. If you’re yet to see it, come on through.

There’s been a few significant changes. First, in Zeldman like style, I’ve ditched the sidebar (again) that sat to the right. While sidebars certainly serve a useful function, there was simply no need for one here, and I’d been thinking for a while the space it occupied could be put to better use.

I’ve also been concerned for sometime about the way disassociated renders on mobile devices, especially smartphones, and now, thanks to some incredibly basic responsive design geekery, have hopefully improved the site’s display, if only slightly, on smaller devices.

I’m also dabbling with web fonts for the first time. The main advantage here is that everyone sees exactly the same font, or typeface, regardless of whether they have it installed on their system or not. Previously visitors were either seeing Helvetica or Arial, depending on what fonts they had available.

Right now you are looking at Agenda Medium, by Font Bureau, whose design is inspired by a font that was in use on the London Underground almost one hundred years ago.

I’ve also added in social media sharing buttons that will make it easier to put anything you see here out on Twitter or Facebook if you want to. I’m hoping to add a Pinterest button, once they devise some WordPress/blog friendly format dynamic type code.

So still a work in progress, with a few things to iron out and finalise, and more time to be spent on the development site, but having been working on the redesign for some weeks, I wanted to get it launched. If you do stumble upon any glaring bugs or problems though please send through a message.

As for the “logo”, you should be able to see – if you look between the lines – the letter d, disassociated’s official shorthand brand.

Actually this has been bothering me for a while now, just how small can you possibly make a web page that still validates?

Needless to say, strictly for the geeks.

Readers of web design/development magazine A List Apart discuss trends that have been driving the industry in the last twelve months. In summary much decision making is based on sentiment, which really isn’t that unexpected, all things considered.

In 2011 I learned that emotion is at the heart of every decision we make. From fashion to web forms, and spouses to site sign ups, emotion shapes our behavior by casting the tie-breaking vote when logic determines appropriate options for our consideration. We do what feels right, we go with our gut. By understanding emotion we can gain insight into user behavior, and design better user interfaces.

The very first version of disassociated.com was launched – with the com.au domain – in 1997 (August, if I’m not mistaken), and with 2012 just around the corner, will soon be marking 15 years online.

While I’ve posted a couple of vintage web design type links recently, I couldn’t go passed Once Upon, which recreates Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube using the technology, and design practices, that were in popular use in 1997.