The era of beautiful software.

I am sure by now you have seen website footers that say "proudly made with <insert technology here>". It is a reminder that the developer care mostly about the tools he used then the solution he provides. But the new buzzword I am starting to hear even more often is Beautiful. I think this word is taking us back to the dot-com bubble, where the visual experience is the only thing we care about.

The word on the street is beautiful and everyone is going for it. A quick search on hackernews or reddit or any technology website will show you what I mean.

The recipe for creating beautiful is not very hard. Here is the list:

• Bootstrap

And that is all. I am not complaining about bootstrap, it is an amazing tool. At least when I use it, people see my content instead of being distracted by my bad designer's skills. But developers can get carried away easily, and make amazing designs with it that serves no real purpose. It is beautiful for the sake of being beautiful.

I was recently fascinated by Justin Jackson. He posted a simple web page where all the clutter have been removed. Only the words were left (and 2 lines of css ). Reading it reminded me of how much I put my self down when it comes to design while it doesn't really matter.

I was struggling with my latest project because I couldn't come up with a beautiful design. I now I put that thought aside and am trying to make sure the tool works instead. I can add glitter and animated gifs later. Maybe we should all do that and create things that are useful and think of aesthetics later.