Designing a web page
Not only do fashions change, but the capabilities of browers are continually changing too. A web page uses a markup language called HTML (or XHTML) for the basic coding and some styling, but much of the formatting is now applied using linked cascade style sheets (CSS). A third language - javascript is used to increase functionality.
The thing these languages have in common is that they use the common alphabet and can be typed with a simple text processor, and don't require to be put through a compiler to work. With a bit of knowledge you can follow the instructions and work out what they do.
Current trends
In the past, HTML was used to provide content, style and complex layout. This involved using elements in ways they were not intended; using invisible tables to lay out content, for example. The current trend is to use HTML semantically, (e.g. list elements purely for lists, table elements purely for displaying tabular data) and to move styling and complex layout over to CSS. This way the HTML can be read in a wide variety of devices rather than just by the Internet browser originally intended.
As a result of the Disabilities Act, more attention is now paid to catering for those with visual impairment, making the code more intelligible to audio readers and enabling users to increase font sizes.
Other technologies
There are other technologies - flash, active server pages (asp) PERL
and so on to extend functionality much further, but they are beyond
the scope of this web site. 