Forecast for Web Development

Latest News and Trends • 8th Jul, 15

 
 

Design guys and gals have a great deal to look forward to and to enjoy concerning web development trends this year. Some have already began implementing these, while most forward-thinkers and developers with their fingers on the pulse have already heard of most of these. Irrespective, let’s have a brief look at them and see what’s to get excited about this year.

Motion UI

A fast emerging trend is the strong visual feedback from animation as seen from Foundation for Apps who have already implemented these in their design.  In addition to Motion UI, Google’s Material Design will pop up regularly this year, helped along by frameworks like the Polymer Project which will ensure that we come face-to-face with this trend and some point or another.

Responsive Design Challenges

Wearable technology (read smart watches, Google Glass, Oculus Rift, etc.) presents a new challenge as they grow in popularity. Designers may look forward to (read, dread) creating responsive design which will have to support every screen regardless of size or shape. ZURB’s Foundation is thus evolving into “Foundation for Sites” and continues to grow. Semantic UI is also a new design framework that looks really promising, especially for designing for apps.

Foundation for Apps

Foundation is has its first foray into the app scene with the new framework which introduces app templates, an integrated JavaScript development environment, AngularJS and Gulp. While it’s still early days for the framework, it already incorporates design components like Motion UI and flexbox grid. Even though it’s still in starting phase, there’s a great deal to expect here.

 Node.js on the Rise

Web application development will surely see a shift to Node.js and other JavaScript server-side frameworks. Teams will therefore shift toward using a single language on web projects. Node will obviously help to push this transition along, with both front and back end developers being generally competent in JavaScript.

Web UI Components 

There is an expected growth in popularity of Polymer and ReactJS as website development will tend to move toward more reusable dynamic components. Facebook’s ReactJS library is a framework-agnostic and uses fancy new techniques to quickly build user interfaces. The Polymer project, however, is a much larger framework which allows you to create client-side applications and incorporates mobile-ready design.

New JavaScript Features

 
  • WebGL 3D will see an increase in popularity with browsers continuing to increase in speed and capability.  Powered by framework like three.js, we hope to see more applications of this awesome technology in-browser.
  • HTML5 JavaScript APIs will also have increased support in iOS and Android browsers.
  • ServiceWorker magic will be available for offline web-app use
  • Object.observe will revolutionize two-way data binding in JavaScript MV* frameworks.

All in all, some really exciting features are to be expected for JavaScript.

Web API

App developers will build web APIs which will be utilized by their web apps as well as their native apps.  This move is already starting to happen and will probably increase in popularity as a single codebase is a great deal easier to maintain.

Single Page Applications

With the growth of all the above-mentioned tech, there will most probably be more single page applications produced, with hopefully some more solutions to some of the challenges building these apps seem to present.

Instagram 

With Instagram recently surpassing Twitter in users and members, it seems as if there might be a movement away from micro-blogging and an increase in the popularity of image sharing applications. Developers and designers should keep an eye out for developments and trends within Instagram as well as other image-based sharing apps like Pinterest and SnapChat, as well as some new technology becomes available for more creative ways to share images and videos.

The Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things is a network of physical objects that contain embedded technology so that they may communicate and interact with their environments as well as each other. Examples of these would be devices that help users communicate with their cars, heat pumps, ovens, toaster and even plants. See the developments within Apple and Samsung to witness the synergy which is leading the way to more companies and brands developing products and devices with this in mind.

The challenge facing web developers is coming up with new and innovatinve solutions to help users control and interact with these devices that are becoming more network-accessible. Companies such as Smart Things and LittleBits already have kits that make your house appliance smart, so in 2015, IoT software platforms will continue to grow and replace their hardware counterparts. The buzz about wearable tech, which carries over from last year and focuses on wireless technologies, will see an increase in the software and especially cloud services which make all these sensors connect, upload data, drive analytics, etc. IoT is indeed so huge that Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt has recently predicted that the internet will “simply disappear in the future”, as it becomes “part of your presence all the time”.

With all these advantages updates, trends and tools at our disposal, 2015 looks like a year of really cool and dramatic changes in the tech world, with web developers on the forefront of tweaking, implementing and introducing some really mind-blowing technology. 

 

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