Here is a my look back on web development trends from 2014. 2014 was quite a year, and things did not in all details turn out as predicted on some predictions. I did not make my own predicions specifically on web development, but my computer trends 2014 posting had some web related predictions.
Web is still doing very well. People used web pages a lot and used web search a lot. A Year in Search: the moments that defined 2014 article tells what people were searching in 2014.
State of web development 2014 was quite good. A traditional website still consists of HTML, CSS and sometimes a little javascript. While we had the server side technologies that we needed to generate our websites, we needed new innovations on the client side as well. Especially because we entered the era of mobile devices, we needed new browser capabilities, like location services, browser storage and touch events. Therefore, new HTML and CSS standards were being developed that contain many features that make the web browsers much more powerful and richer, which allows us developers to build richer web applications for both mobile and desktop. To make this a lot easier for everyone there are many toolsets at libraries developed to use those new features – there maybe too many JavaScript frameworks already and more is coming all the time.
The era of Web 2.0 term is over. We can get rid of that old term. Adaptive Path and the Death Rattle of the Web 2.0 Era article tells that aside from web apps, Web 2.0’s most notable feature was probably hype. Web 2.0 was a hothouse of self-promotion—and knives-out backstabbing. Any company that wasn’t blogging to reach out directly to its community (not customers: community) was bound for destruction. Those days are over. Despite the Web 2.0’s tendency towards self-promotional hype, the actual experience principles it championed were mostly spot on. Increasingly, we interact with Banks and many other businesses solely on screens. What was once hyped Web 2.0 is noadays considered everyday web usage, nothing very special.
It seems that time to market has become important in the web development. New approaches and ready made tools make it possible to iterate faster and faster on the web. Advanced teams are using tools that help them outsource and automate, launching projects in weeks instead of months.To stay competive you need to get the tools to collaborate, iterate, and speed up development. Modern IT teams move fast and they limit their surface area. This requires smartly leveraging external cloud providers that are equipped to handle security events at internet speed. To speed up the development, other tools that direct web development tools are also needed. 10 technologies that made me more productive in 2014 article points out tecnologies related to web development: Twitter timeline is a good news source, phablets affect mobile web development, Office 365, cloud storage and voice command (Siri and Cortana).
What really happened in 214 was the smartphone revolution is changed how consumers use the Internet – even more than I expected. The last five years there has been an explosion of innovation in web and native technologies. Mobile devices are becoming important gateways to business data and applications. Cloud back-ends – often implemented as rich API service points – are fast becoming the back-end complement to this new wave of applications.This will influenced web design. Things now need to be optimized for tiny mobile screen in addition to normal PC screen size. And because mobile connections are typically slower than fixed broadband, you need to look that the size of the web page does not make it too slow to load for typical mobile user. Users don’t only want web sites to work and look good on every device, they also want web sites to be more interactive. They want the web site to respond to their actions. For example, zoom into an image or drag an item into a shopping basket. jQuery made such things a lot easier. jQuery is a JavaScript library that makes Dom manipulation easier, especially for multiple browsers. There are also other libraries to do similar things.
HTML5 is Everywhere - finally. HTML5′s “Dirty Little Secret”: It’s Already Everywhere, Even In Mobile – Just look under the hood, says EmberJS co-founder Tom Dale. Web technologies are already everywhere, even in native mobile apps. Just look under the hood. Take that, Web-is-dead doomsayers.
Content management systems competion seems to have settled: Drupal and WordPress are finally being recognized as winners: WordPress and Drupal, the industry’s current open source front runners, power more than half of all websites that use a CMS. I prefer myself WordPress on those options. According to Usage of content management systems for website page WordPress is used by 23.5% of all the websites, that is a content management system market share of 60.7%. The widespread adoption of open source content management systems as been the dominant story for the past five years, and Gartner is now betting that more than half of all corporate sites will run on open source content management systems by 2017.
Here has been Battle For Developer Mind Share: PHP vs. Node.js vs. something else. Simplicity vs. closures, speed of coding vs. raw speed — InfoWorld’s Peter Wayner takes a look at how PHP and Node.js stack up against each other in PHP vs. Node.js: An epic battle for developer mind share article. PHP and JavaScript, two partners who once ruled the Internet together but now duke it out for the mind share of developers. In the old days, the partnership was simple: JavaScript handled little details on the browser, while PHP managed all the server-side tasks that existed between port 80 and MySQL. Now there are more options. One language was all it took to build Node.js and the frameworks running on the client. “JavaScript everywhere” became the mantra for some. Node-inspired development environments and cloud platforms are rapidly remaking the Web application stack.There is a good selection of node.js tools. I thinsk that there is still place for both appraches – you need to decide what is right for you. On many traditions web systems it still makes sense to use some widely used PHP based CMS on the server side. If you want to develop some more custom server side, then check if node.js could be right for you.
As in the web development has happened earlier. web pages get bigger and bigger over time. The latest figures indicate that average page weight has increased by 15% in one year to reach 1,953Kb — a little under 2Mb — and comprises 95 individual HTTP requests. A 15% increase is less extravagant than the 32% rise in 2013 and the 30% rise in 2012, but it’s still too much.
Remember that a third of web users now use mobile devices — will they appreciate the additional weight? Bloated pages adversely affect your profitability as users have a slower experience and your hosting costs will increase (disk space and bandwidth). Keep in mind that 2 MB page is painfuly slow to load on mobile devices unless the user has blazing fast 4G connection! Responsive Web Design != a responsive website. The more code you use, the more likely it will break. Overweight pages are unnecessary – avoid bloated CMS templates and frameworks. They offer a cheaper and quicker development route at the expense of quality, efficiency and performance. We can summarize the problem in one simple word: laziness.
8 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Two of the three Web pages run on Unix
Of Windows share their websites for currently 32.4 percent.
Unix servers run by 67.6 per cent.
W3Techsin statistics show that 52.5 percent of Unix servers run Linux. BSD, HP-UX, and Solaris share classes per cent or less, so is likely to rotate the majority of linux Of those sites, which W3Techs is unable to list.
Windows desktops position remains steadfast. Net Applications According to different versions of Windows are used for more than 90 per cent of personal computers. Mac OS has accounted for 6-7 per cent for a long time. Linux is still only one and a half per cent of computers.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2829:kaksi-kolmesta-nettisivusta-ajaa-unixia&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jack Marshall / Wall Street Journal:
Mobile web traffic adds to desktop, which is not in decline as some reports might suggest
Mobile Isn’t Killing the Desktop Internet
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/05/26/mobile-isnt-killing-the-desktop-internet/
People are increasingly accessing online content on mobile devices, but that doesn’t mean the desktop is in decline.
A theory sometimes bandied about the media industry says audiences are deserting desktops and “going mobile” instead. But actually, data from online measurement firms doesn’t seem to support that view, at least at the aggregate market level.
The share of overall consumption coming from mobile devices is growing, but desktop web usage isn’t dropping. In fact, it might be increasing.
“The key thing to remember is that percentages are not zero-sum,” said Tony Haile, CEO of online analytics firm Chartbeat. “You can have mobile growing to 50% of your traffic and desktop traffic remaining healthy.”
That understanding has important implications for media owners and marketers, who often say they’re altering their sites and strategies to cater for their growing mobile audiences. It makes sense to optimize for mobile if that’s a large and growing audience, but mobile isn’t the only game in town. In fact, it seems desktop Internet use is here to stay, for the time being at least.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2015 Internet Trends
http://www.kpcb.com/blog/2015-internet-trends
KPCB’s Mary Meeker presents the 2015 Internet Trends report, 20 years after the inaugural “The Internet Report” was first published in 1995. Since then, the number of Internet users has risen from 35 million in 1995 to more than 2.8 billion today.
Millennials are now the largest generation in the workforce and their work / life expectations differ from previous generations. As connectivity and commerce continue to rise, we have witnessed broad impacts on consumer expectations, which in turn can alter work for many, to a form of work that can be flexible and supplemental. Looking internationally, Chinese Internet leaders continue to innovate, while India is on-track to become the second-largest Internet market in the world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 reasons you should know your website visitors
http://www.zoho.com/general/blog/4-reasons-to-know-your-website-visitors.html
There is price. And then there is value. No one will pay the price for your product or service unless they see value in it. So, how do you stand out among competitors and add value to your business?
The first step would be to listen to your prospects and understand their needs.
But what if the store is online? How do you study your prospects and customers then? How do you add value to their experience? This is where a website-visitor insights platform comes in. It’s not the same as website analysis, albeit a subset of it. While website analysis gives you data on where the traffic is coming from and which page has the most hits, visitor insights will give you information on the individuals who come to your site.
Here’s how you can use that data:
1. Find out what they’re interested in: Like in a shop, when a person visits your website for the first time, they can be looking for a particular product or just browsing. A real-time visitor insights platform will tell you which page visitors are viewing, what page they move on to and how long they stay on each page.
2. Identify issues: If a person is a repeat visitor—the software will tell you when and how many times they have visited before. You can see the history of their movements and identify possible reasons for not making a purchase.
3. Make them feel special: Everyone likes personalized service. One way of making your visitors feel special is to customize content based on their browsing history.
4. Targeted marketing: Know where your visitors are coming from. You can find out not just their geographical location, but also how they came to be on your page—were they directed here by a blog, or a Tweet, or a Facebook post? Or did they Google something that led them to your page? Is a significant percentage coming from a particular country or region?
How do you use this insight? Say, a lot of your visitors are from a region where the first language is not English. You could invest in hiring a salesperson fluent in that language. If a person comes to your website from Twitter, you can ask them to tweet about you and spread the word among their followers, or if Twitter is sending a lot of traffic your way, you may add a Twitter widget to your website—one that encourages visitors to tweet about your product. Targeted marketing will help you improve sales conversions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The latest trend has mobile web moving away from unique, scaled-down m-dot websites and towards responsive design.
Simply put, responsive design is the practice of creating a website that uses one code-base which automatically adjusts its interface to whichever device, operation system, screen orientation and resolution a user is on.
Responsive web design has emerged as an easier way for companies to present a unified front on all devices while limiting the amount of effort involved and the number of properties that need maintaining
Tomi Engdahl says:
Today’s top stories
Tested: How Flash destroys your browser’s performance
http://www.itworld.com/article/2967202/applications/tested-how-flash-destroys-your-browsers-performance.html
We tested the effects of browsing with and without Flash on several major browsers. Enabling Flash is, in a word, catastrophic.
n case you needed another reason to uninstall Adobe Flash, we’ve got one: It can drag down your PC by as much as 80 percent. Yes, 80 percent. So not only is Adobe Flash incredibly unsafe, it’s a memory hog. And we’ve got the numbers to prove it.
As part of an upcoming roundup of the major browsers, we tested their abilities to handle Flash. Two browsers, Mozilla Firefox and Opera, do not include Flash, although you can download a plugin from Adobe to enable it. A third, Microsoft’s new Edge browser, enables Flash by default, although you can manually turn it off. Both Internet Explorer 11 and Google’s Chrome also include Flash, which you can disable or adjust within the Settings menu.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Agonizingly Slow Decline Of Adobe Flash Player
http://www.fastcompany.com/3049920/tech-forecast/the-agonizingly-slow-decline-of-adobe-flash-player
Despite industry-wide calls for Flash’s demise, lots of major websites still use the aging browser plugin. And they won’t explain why.
By Jared Newman
This story on Adobe Flash was supposed to turn out a bit differently.
The idea was to talk with some of the biggest websites still using Adobe’s browser plugin, which has fallen out of favor within tech circles for its constant security issues and thirst for system resources. Maybe they could explain why Flash is still necessary, offering a counterpoint to the resounding calls to end its existence.
Instead, most of the proprietors of Flash-reliant websites I contacted didn’t want to talk at all. HBO, NBC, CBS, Zynga, King, Showtime, Pandora, and Spotify—all of which require Flash on their desktop sites—declined to comment. Major League Baseball, Slacker Radio, Hulu, and the BBC didn’t respond to inquiries.
Security, for instance, remains a major concern, with new exploits popping up on a regular basis. In one recent example, hackers were even able to break through the sandboxing that’s meant to minimize vulnerabilities in Google Chrome. Flash is also a notorious resource hog, which is a problem as laptops become thinner, lighter, and more reliant on power efficiency for long battery life.
All of this has brought calls to kill Flash to a fever pitch, not just on mobile devices, but everywhere.
These days, it is easier to browse the web Flash-free. Many sites have moved away from Flash for animations and graphics, and web browsers’ widespread adoption of digital-rights management for HTML5 has allowed major video and music sites to leave Flash Player behind. Netflix and YouTube both work without Flash, as do Google Play Music and Rdio. Amazon also started rolling out an HTML5 player last month.
Still, a mass exodus or firm cutoff for Flash would be easier said than done.
Despite the pressure from tech circles, the sites I spoke with said they simply weren’t able to start moving away from Flash until recently, when better technology become available. And even now, it’s going to take time for them to finish building the necessary tools.
While Denenberg says there’s not much reason to deploy a new Flash-based streaming solution at this point, iHeartRadio still needs time to make the transition from its existing platform
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google makes it official: Chrome will freeze Flash ads on sight from Sept 1
If your ads aren’t on web giant’s network, they better be HTML5 – or they’re dead to Chrome
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/28/google_says_flash_ads_out_september/
Google is making good on its promise to strangle Adobe Flash’s ability to auto-play in Chrome.
The web giant has set September 1, 2015 as the date from which non-important Flash files will be click-to-play in the browser by default – effectively freezing out “many” Flash ads in the process.
Netizens can right-click over the security-challenged plugin and select “Run this” if they want to unfreeze an ad. Otherwise, the Flash files will remain suspended in a grey box, unable to cause any harm nor any annoyance.
Click-to-play … Run if you wish
Back in June, Google warned that, in cooperation with Adobe, it would change the way Flash material is shown on websites.
Basically, “essential” Flash content (such as embedded video players) are allowed to automatically run, while non-essential Flash content, much of that being advertisements, will be automatically paused.