One of the greatest things about being a web developer is that it’s a field that is constantly changing with new technology and techniques emerging on a seemingly daily basis. But which are destined to be the next-big-thing or to end up the next Beta-Max? Unfortunately, try I don’t have a crystal ball but here are my thoughts on what’s big in web development for 2014.
3D
When the HTML5 specifications were announced the canvas had the potential to be something of a game changer as far as web graphics were concerned. With the experimental 3D context and WebGL we can expect to see even more amazing games and applications (https://www.chromeexperiments.com/webgl).
CSS3 3D transforms offer an easy to implement and mobile-friendly option when it comes to rendering 3D graphics. Already widely supported across modern browsers we will continue to see a rise in use.
Javascript
Attitudes to Javascript have changed, no longer an unwieldy, quirky, scripting language with several frameworks (jQuery, MooTools etc) turning it into a powerful ubiquitous tool (not that it doesn’t still have it’s idiosyncrasies).
(https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)
Now with the supercharged javascript engines that modern browsers have under the hood it is being used more and more to move application logic from the server-side onto the client side. We’ve seen this in the rise of the Single Page App, a trend that will only continue over the coming year. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_page_application)
HTML 5 Video
Services such as YouTube and Vimeo are the standard when it comes to hosting videos and embedding them on a website because most users don’t want to worry about converting videos and hosting them. But some situations call for fine control over the presentation of a video or to create special effects in combination with the canvas (http://www.craftymind.com/factory/html5video/CanvasVideo.html).
Front-end Frameworks
Front-end development evolved considerably over the last year and we saw a surge in the popularity of front-end frameworks with Bootstrap going from strength to strength and Foundation bringing some great functionality to the table.
This year we will see further improvements in the front-end workflow with the latest releases of awesome tools such as Yeoman that take care of front end scaffolding, automating tasks and dependency management.
Beyond the screen
Everybody knows that mobile is huge and it’s only going to get bigger, but as MWC2014 has just come to a close I think most people were surprised by the number of wearable devices on show. (https://www.mobileworldcongress.com/)
I think 2014 will be the year we see the release of all kinds of weird and wonderful devices for example Google’s own wearable, Glass as well as a host of Smart Watches.
This will present both designers and developers with some interesting challenges when it comes to creating interfaces and push responsive design to the limit.
Responsive design will become the norm
With mobile internet usage becoming more and more common and with the growing range of devices that can view web pages there really isn’t a good reason not to have a responsive website. (http://mashable.com/2013/08/20/mobile-web-traffic/)
As a result we will see a decline in the “mobile-web” giving users a more consistent experience across multiple devices, which can only be good for users (and with a single codebase to maintain, good for developers too!).
What are your predictions for 2014? Let us know your predictions for web development this year and tweet us @ReflectDigital
