Even commercial design was interesting and eye-catching back then.

Print designers were adapting to the web and there was a tremendous amount of technique, experience and hard work in that first batch.

Then the dictatorship of the sameness started, and we somehow ended in a world where everything kinda looks the same but is slightly different in slightly broken ways. Creativity be damned, but also other things like performance, accessibility and user-centricity are now secondary to following fashions.