Chronicles of Web Layouts - After 2005
Just one year after the 150th Anniversary website, Polytechnic Institution's website transitioned to a completely new website in 2005. This new version, interestingly, already demonstrated some characteristics of modern websites for the first time in the institution's online history.
The redesigned website featured a clean background adorned with rich, high-quality images. A vibrant palette of colors and a variety of shapes were strategically integrated throughout the site, creating a visually appealing and well-designed interface that captivated users.
This is the main page of NYU before its merger with Polytechnic. Here, we can observe shared characteristics in website layout, including a grid-like image arrangement and a column of rich text serving as the navigation menu—these elements already reflected some modern design principles.
This version of the website remained unchanged for four years, possibly because it was exceptionally well-received and met students' needs effectively.
The next major update occurred in 2009, although the Wayback Machine unfortunately failed to capture the website's styling during this period. However, despite the lack of visual representation, one notable feature of this updated version was the prominent NYU-POLY icon displayed at the top of the webpage. This icon represented a significant event in Polytechnic's history—the merger with NYU (New York University).
Two years after this update, the Wayback Machine finally successfully captured the styled version of the website, revealing an impressive and modern layout of this version of the website. The webpage showcased much more contemporary elements, including a sleek header with a menu for easy navigation to main pages, and a well-structured body section containing links to recent news and events.
At the beginning of 2014, a very interesting change occurred with Polytechnic Institution's website. When students accessed poly.edu, they were actually redirected to a completely new domain: engineering.nyu.edu.
This redirection was a result of Polytechnic Institution officially merging with NYU (New York University), thereby becoming NYU's engineering school. As part of this merger, Polytechnic's domain transitioned to be under the nyu.edu domain, aligning with its new identity as the engineering division of NYU.
Together with the change of domain name to engineer.nyu.edu is a completely new website. Interestingly, even before the official merger in early 2014, a work-in-progress (WIP) version of the engineering.nyu.edu webpage was already made accessible to students on November 18, 2013, for viewing and feedback. This initial version was very plain in appearance, lacking styling, but it featured comprehensive text content introducing Polytechnic and detailing the upcoming merger event.
On January 1, 2014, the official launch day of engineering.nyu.edu, the webpage debuted with a layout that incorporated NYU's signature Violet color scheme. Although the initial snapshot captured by the Wayback Machine was incomplete, subsequent images of the main page show a standard NYU header adorned in Violet, featuring navigation links to various subpages. The main page prominently showcased a large poster occupying half the screen, alongside a list of news and events below.
Following a period of slower update activity, the next significant website innovation occurred on May 11, 2018. This update represents the most recent major transformation of the website to date.
Upon entering the webpage after this update, visitors were greeted with a full-screen video providing an engaging introduction to the school, replacing the static poster used in the previous version. Additionally, the layout of news and events sections underwent a notable change: text-based links were replaced with visually appealing blocks featuring images, titles, and subtitles. This revamped presentation allowed students to quickly grasp the essence of each news item or event, enhancing the accessibility and user experience of the website significantly.