So after my last entry on Technology Trends I’m here to explain what web design trends are composed of. I will highlight some of the latest sites and resources that I’ve used over the past few months to get a grasp on what is hot on the web. If you want a rock solid foundation for your future web site then step inside and see what technology is dictating to move to a brave new world.
So web sites are composed of html, xhtml, javascript, xml, java, php, coldfusion, asp, .net, aspx, flash, jpgs, gifs, pngs and many other extensions to deliver a functional (or hideous) site. Why are there so many options? I can say for the same reason we have various ingredients to make different recipes and in turn create a unique meal. Please don’t be misguided I won’t cover each and every web coding / design out there. I’m just covering the technologies that are still relevant as of today and how some might evolve.
To begin let me address some of the key component that we have today. We have the following:
- Operating Systems
- Web Browsers
- Web Applications and Sites
- Video
- Interactive Multimedia
- Mobile devices (cell phones, notebooks, netbooks, PDAs)
- Tablet computing
1 Operating system – There have been 2 leaders in operating systems and those are Windows and Unix. From there a long list of variants have emerged and are quite powerful amongst those there are Mac OS X, Linux, Google Chrome OS, Ubuntu to name a few. The reason I state operating systems is that when one hosts a web site a good system that will allow you to cross develop and test in various web browsers is key. For instance Mac OS X allows one to host an Apache server out of the box. Windows allows one to test IIS. So why are OS’s important? Well there are 2 components one is your personal workstation where you will build a site. The other is the service provider you choose to host your web files. This is a delicate differentiator since in most cases a (Unix)Linux box or a Microsoft server will be offered.
Linux is the more popular hosting option since it has allowed for hosting services to have a cluster of servers that run linux at no additional licensing costs. Microsoft on the other hand has a strong presence in corporate organizations. Microsoft has various tools that if implemented correctly can both host and manage email, calendars, shopping carts and many other features that it counterpart Linux can handle.
2 Web Browsers – This is a key ingredient that allows end users to see what your site will render like on their display. You have mobile browsers, desktop browsers and in tablets the OS is the browser itself. Amongst the top ranking are Internet Explorer (Microsoft PCs), Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Opera to name some of the key players. These browsers either on mobile or desktop will be crucial to determine what technology each of these support. What support? Well it’s true that they all can parse / render most of the different file types I mentioned earlier the key is which one will you focus on? Each browser for the most part render a bit different from OS to OS. Different browsers may have different viewable areas. In mobile devices they rely on one specific html language to enhance the experience ie. iPads.
3 Web Applications and Sites – There is much discussion between websites and and web applications this happens to be a very tedious discussion. all these issues because usually you have a website that is considered, usually by designers, as static pages. Any modern dynamic information that comes in or out like if you have information in a Twitter account or your Facebook account. Anything that can be tied and inserted into your website is considered dynamic content. In the same token a content management system can aggregate data to your website. CMS web applications that you enter the back end and has a text editor like word where you copy and paste or type in the information and or typing it right into the website this web applications but in that situation you have a dynamic website has a lot of functionality.
A static website on the other hand is a website where you pay a designer or developer to code the entire website and look up your site and in turn you get a page that you cannot modify down the road. This is a static pages that you plan with a designer or team or by yourself code and upload to a server.
4 Video – Hopefully by now you’re familiar with YouTube. This web tool provides a series of videos that are encoded in different formats that can display flash video, HTML 5 and pretty soon Google is supplementing an open Google format that allows you to view the video on any browser.
Many sites use YouTube as a multiple encoder to publish their personal videos through this service.
5 interactive multimedia – Interactive multimedia can be considered one of many elements to make up a site consider flash. a form of multimedia that produces very immersive websites. Some other elements like Ajax and a whole bunch of other nice code that uses the web browser as a platform to produce animation using CSS, JavaScript and a times XML. Video and audio are an extension of elements in multimedia.
6 mobile devices – HTML 5 is the latest technology being used to implement in mobile devices and smart phones. Many of these technologies use hand gestures, touch screens and voice recognition are changing how developers and designers code websites for the better user experience.
These devices started the trends we are seeing today.
7 tablets – Tablet devices and iPad from Apple have introduced a brand-new set of playing rules on how we interact with the web and all items that we touch within an application. This new technology is now being propagated through different devices like the Samsung galaxy tab, Motorola xoom, the Blackberry playbook and the HP touch pad.
These devices are not only setting the trends, they are reinventing the way we approach design.
