> "Standing out" has been by far the biggest factor in web design ever since there was a web,
I don't think that's true or at least as strongly as you suggest. When Bootstrap first came along, all websites that used it clearly looked the same, with minor differences. We see the same today but instead of Bootstrap, people use Tailwind or other libraries/frameworks but the effect is the same, most landing pages look the same, even if the images have different colors.
Most websites today look like each other one way or another, as they're all mostly using the same libraries and frameworks that kind of pushes people into specific approaches. Very different from the web in the 90s/early 00s, where every website worked and looked very different from each other.
> When Bootstrap first came along, all websites that used it clearly looked the same, with minor differences. We see the same today but instead of Bootstrap, people use Tailwind or other libraries/frameworks but the effect is the same, most landing pages look the same, even if the images have different colors.
There's a logic to this phenomena, and it involves few people/companies trying something new to stand out (sometimes by being flashy, sometimes by being more ergonomic or less assaulting on the senses), some others following suit, and then if that "sticks", you'll see everyone else adopting the same design too. In particular, when some design reaches enough adoption, people who don't use it start to stand out, negatively - visitors start to see them as quaint, or worse, weird and therefore untrustworthy.
(It's not a bad heuristic, either. You can avoid a lot of Internet scams if you pay attention to how the website comes across to you at a visceral level. It's kind of a "spidey sense" many of us Internet dwellers have :).)
This is not Internet-specific either, it's also a thing in branding and product design spaces in general.
> Most websites today look like each other one way or another, as they're all mostly using the same libraries and frameworks that kind of pushes people into specific approaches.
That applies to products/services. Those tend to stand out subtler, but usually there's still a marketing department having strong influence (if not final say) on the design, and they make sure the branding is clear and the site is still easy to distinguish from any other site built with the same libraries and frameworks.
(The other category of websites is just glorified posters and magazines, and those are much weirder and unique, though even there you'll find fashion trends.)
EDIT:
The more general point is, presentation is always a core concern in commercial software, because branding is a core concern for companies. This has been true even before the Web; I recall some old UI Design Guidelines from Microsoft, IIRC for Windows 95, where this is acknowledged explicitly - the OS is pressured to provide ways to customize look&feel of UI elements, because software vendors demand it for branding, and so we can forget about having uniform UIs between applications. This is the unfortunate reality that drives UI standards.
I don't think that's true or at least as strongly as you suggest. When Bootstrap first came along, all websites that used it clearly looked the same, with minor differences. We see the same today but instead of Bootstrap, people use Tailwind or other libraries/frameworks but the effect is the same, most landing pages look the same, even if the images have different colors.
Most websites today look like each other one way or another, as they're all mostly using the same libraries and frameworks that kind of pushes people into specific approaches. Very different from the web in the 90s/early 00s, where every website worked and looked very different from each other.