A Note Concerning Web Page Aesthetics

I find that I respond better to new-mode "Web 2.0" pages, and this note is about their aesthetics.

During the evolution of Windows I was very disturbed by the way in which buttons and other controls evolved to a "three-dimensional" image, with a bevel. The construction of this metaphor seemed to be innately deceptive, because the Web page is FLAT. It also seemed a massive waste of CPU and developer time.

This put me in mind of the Impressionist, post-Impressionist, and Cubist critique of fading "classicism" and photographic "realism": the aesthetic of the Impressionists, post-Impressionists, and Cubists evolved towards a canvas with a PAINTERLY, and therefore more HUMAN, relation to reality.

Starting with Monet you are conscious while viewing the art work that "this is a painting, based on a scene" and this keeps you at the level of art appreciation, and avoids wasting your time in thoughts about the thing represented...which in late 19th century French art, such as Bouguereau, was a nude in a physically illogical and uncomfortable (and therefore pornographic, exploiting) situation.

David Hockney, in his recent book SECRET KNOWLEDGE about the use of the "camera obscura" by Old Masters to make an accurate drawing of a scene, points out that if you lay an "old master" flat on the floor and view it obliquely, it looks distorted. If you lay a Cezanne on the floor (or, realistically for us ordinary slobs, a reproduction), the painting does NOT fall into oblique perspective but the image "follows you around the room", since the Impressionists did not strive for exact mathematical perspective with a single eyepoint, but SHIFTED the eyepoint in the same way we instinctively, at the movies, move our eyes around to catch the nice bits.

Working with the traditional Web page (with yahoo.com being exhibit one) the soul is clouded by ads which pretend to be "windows of opportunity". The eye falls into these windows, which are usually come-ons; for example, at my ISP range I get a lot of invitations to get a green card and live in the USA.

Studies of web behavior have shown that when the ordinary person worldwide logs on to the Web, he or she wants to get a job DONE. She wants to sign up for classes. He wants to learn about Islam. She wants to find out when the Israelis plan to stop bombing the crap out of her neighborhood.

It is a disservice to this user to make them, in T. S. Eliot's phrasing, "distracted from distraction by distraction" at n>1 levels, to beguile them with false promises while they are soured by true miseries, and to let them believe that they "own" special purpose machines like the typical hyperdeveloped Windows form when (in the words of the old Industrial Workers of the World IWW activist) 99.9% of us "don't own the smoke".

Therefore I am refreshed in cutting edge blogsites and other Web 2.0 sites to see a post-Impressionism: the use of simple (often pastel) color schemes which calm the soul, and strictly two-dimensional geometry which shows a basic respect for the user by not treating her like a child, to be beguiled with fancy lights and chimeras.

My own Windows forms design is in fact pre-Impressionist but I am thinking about ways I could change this. It's probably not worth the trouble on such a mature platform.