2011 Web Development Predictions

2011 Web Development Predictions

Robert Beerworth | 4/01/2011

I am occasionally asked about the future of website and web development.

Not only am I too shy to possibly answer such an audacious question, I’m not the right person to answer it.

When you’re in the trenches of web development, you hardly have a lot of time to squint into the future and predict where it is all going. Web development firms are quite reactionary, and we follow where the web (and to some extent, clients) is going.

No doubt 3D, smell-a-vision and faster websites will be all the rage in the future, as will mobile, Web 3.0 and the Symantec web. But who am I to know?!

There is a pretty good post at Mashable on the next 12 months of web development. The article takes a high and broad look at the trends likely to emerge and grow in 2011.

I agree with most of it:

1. Integration with 3rd party applications will wane, if the likes of Twitter and Facebook don’t come to the party. They change the rules and code too often, and without warning or support.

This breaks websites and code, and leads to pretty pissed-off developers and clients. I know it’s great for users, though not so for the owners of websites.

2. I agree that open-source development will continue to rage, though the standard among corporates – Microsoft’s .NET – is also growing at an amazing pace. Just try to hire a .NET developer in Sydney and you’ll see.

3. WYSIWYG tools will get better and better. (I don’t often use WYSIWYG tools, though they have come so, so far since 2000 when they were rubbish, and more harm than good).

2010 was an amazing year for web development. 2011 is going to be nuts.

tags: Web Development ,  Web Strategy