Web Development: What Has Changed And Where Is It Headed?
Think back to 10 years ago. At that time, the web was totally different. Smartphones did not exist (the way we know them now). The browser market was dominated by Internet Explorer. Development methods were much different than they are now.
Since then, we have seen the emergence of tablets and smartphones. The use of mobile browsers has already overtaken desktop use. Development methods have also dramatically changed to keep up with all of the trends.
The main questions: Why is all of this important for your business?
There are two main reasons why it is important to keep up with constantly changing development trends.
First of all, you don’t want your company to get stuck in a rut doing everything the old way. That will make your business appear to be “behind the times,” and prospective customers might get a negative impression of your company. I recently came across a company website that required Internet Explorer to be used. What type of message does that requirement send to prospects and customers? Today, apps and websites need to work across all devices and browsers.
Second, you might miss out on the new advantages provided by these changes. Changes that have been introduced over the last couple of years have significantly improved security, capabilities, application speed, and much more. New changes in the future will provide even more advantages. These are things that should really not be ignored.
You could always engage the service of a web design agency, rather than do this work yourself.
In this article, we will be exploring the changes and how they can affect your web development. The following are a couple of ways that web development has changed along with ways that it will be evolving soon.
Shifting to Javascript frameworks
As mobile has become such a dominant force, it has transformed numerous web development aspects. One major change is that user expectations have changed. Developers have been forced to design web applications that act similarly to native applications.
This has resulted in a trend emerging over the past couple of years, which is a shift to client-side development. The client-server model in the past depended on the heavy lifting being done by the server, and then the results being sent to the client.
However, this is changing now. Users are demanding more responsive and stronger web applications rivaling desktop software and native mobile apps. This has resulted in more applications needing to be placed inside the browser. As we detail below, more Javascript frameworks are emerging as replacements to traditional development techniques.
According to NewMedia Create’s Managing Partner, Alan N. Canton, over the past couple of years, the main change has been moving away from the familiar and tried and true LAMP stack and in the direction of binding dual data Javascript frameworks such as Meteor and React. Although easy development is claimed by these frameworks, truthfully developers who are coming from LAMP will have a steep learning curve. However, once the developer has ramped up, he or she will be able to deal with client-side things in a much more efficient manner.
Cyberattacks are continuing to increase. Attacks are increasingly sophisticated. The trend is continuing to grow. 2014 was a record year when it comes to cyber attacks and 2015 didn’t look any better.
As previously mentioned, the problem is that developers are continuing to make the same security mistakes that they were making ten years ago. A study showed that 96% of web applications have one or more serious vulnerabilities.
In 2014, HTML5 became standard. However, it evolves constantly. New APIs and features are added on a regular basis. Although there is still a lot of confusion surrounding HTML5, there is a really important way that it is changing web development: HTML5 provides features that help web applications to behave similarly to native apps.
Allow me to quickly discuss why this is so important. A website or web application in the past was comprised of multiple pages linked together. This approach has a problem: on mobile devices, pages load slower. On mobile devices, it can be frustrating to navigate a complex website, since uses need to wait for a page to load. This has resulted in applications starting to switch over to a single-page approach.
So what does using the web really mean? It was a simple answer in the past. On a computer, you opened up a web browser and then browsed the internet.
However, it is not always that simple these days.
There are now both browsers and mobile apps. Smart devices are able to access the web. In the future, lines will be blurred even more by the Internet of Things. Web development is becoming more about the experience and data that is delivered to your customers and less about web pages.