[nine_k]

It's the same reason why most modern books are bland streams of text set in brushed-up typefaces, while medieval manuscripts were written in whimsical hands and richly adorned with full-color illustrations and drop caps decorated over the top.

Back in 1995, a web page was an experimental medium, with very few experts in the field, and few businesses seeing it as a key asset. It could took long to develop, it could look fancy and whimsical, and there were few other sites to compare to, with the same properties. The chance for a web user to encounter something unusual was higher, because there was very little properly usual yet.

Today the web is the main medium, with a lot of standardization which comes from the need to be readable, accessible, look clean, and take as short to develop as possible. The consumer expects the same: simple, familiar packaging, easy access to the content which is usually a piece of text or a picture. This leaves especially little room for fancy on small-screen mobile devices. The web is not more of a place for artistic expression than newspapers were in 1970. Whimsical and fancy designs exist, but they are relatively rare and special-purpose, promo or art pages.