Since the launch of the first website made by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, the website development practice have come a long way and every year new web design and development trends are coming.
Developers are becoming more agile in learning about these new trends.
In 2018, we’ll look at the new trends which are hot this year and will be the future of website development in the coming years…
Developers take a note,
Lets see what the future website will incorporate with them:
1. Single Page Applications(SPA)
Single Page Applications are the web applications which interact with the end user by dynamically rewriting the current page rather than loading entirely new pages from a server.
The SPA’s have reduced the amount of time users refresh the page which has increased the use of AJAX-a way to communicate with the back-end server without refreshing the page. Check more advantages here.
Though still SPA’s have to deal with Performance issues and SEO’s.
The popular languages used to built Single Page Web Applications are Angular and React.
2. Progressive Web Apps(PWA)
Progressive Web Applications have been in the news lately with many claiming it to be future of web development, especially if you consider mobile devices.
PWA uses only the latest web technologies. They are mostly considered hybrid apps.
“Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are reliable, fast, and engaging. A Progressive Web App uses modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like user experience.” – Progressive Web Apps
For example, Flipkart from India uses PWA for its popular e-commerce platform.
To know more about PWAs visit here
3. Accelarated Mobile Pages(AMP)
Accelarated Mobile Pages project is built on top of existing web technologies to enable blazing-fast page rendering and content delivery on mobile devices.
AMP consists of three basic parts:
AMP HTML: A subset of HTML, this markup language has some custom tags and properties and many restrictions.
AMP JS: A JavaScript framework for mobile pages. For the most part, it manages resource handling and asynchronous loading.
AMP CDN: An optional Content Delivery Network, it will take your AMP-enabled pages, cache them and automatically make some performance optimizations.
A goal of the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is to ensure effective ad monetization on the mobile web while embracing a user-centric approach.
4. Static Site Generators(SSG)
Everybody thought that static websites were a thing of past but wait, they are back.
A static site is a collection of pages contained in basic HTML files.
A static site generator (SSG) is a compromise between using a hand-coded static site and a full Content Management System(CMS).
You generate an HTML-only website using raw data and templates. The resulting build files are transferred to your live server.
Speed, Security, Version control for content are some pro’s but con’s like no adminUI, no user Input, no dynamic content makes it boring.
Top Static site generator in the field are currently Hugo and StaticGEN.
5. Chat Bots and Conversational User Interface
Conversational UI lets you unlock the power of spoken languages.
Conversational UI covers a broad range of capabilities, from simple voice-prompted searching, such as that in OK Google, to fully functioning customer service chat bots.
With big tech giants like Google(DialogFlow), Amazon(Lex), Microsoft(LUIS and QnAMaker) and IBM(Watson) now offering AI and Machine learning based Cognitive services via there cloud platform. It is now easier for web developers to develop Chat bots easily and integrate them into their web apps.
6. Use of Artificial Intelligence to build a Website
Giving web sites the power to design themselves. You just have to provide data and requirements, AI will do the rest.
TheGrid was the first AI based website designer, but Firedrop is now emerging.
Firedrop lets you talk to an AI assistant, gather the requirements and starts to build your web app. Here is the video link.
7. VR Optimized Websites
The web’s ability to handle Virtual Reality content allows one to easily share a VR experience in a URL and view it in the browser without the complicated app stores and long downloading times associated with native VR.
WebVR is a set of cross-browser JavaScript APIs that provide a variety of VR-related utilities to place the user in an immersive environment generated using WebGL.
The WebVR standards are worked on in the open, and they represent a collaboration between Mozilla, Google, Samsung, Oculus, Microsoft and, recently, Apple.
8. Yarn Package Manager
Similar to npm, yarn is another package manager for web libraries.
Offered by Facebook in collaboration with Exponent, Google, and Tilde, Yarn is fast, reliable and secure alternative npm client.
Due to consistency, security, and performance issues with npm, yarn was brought and the main focus of yarn is not replace npm but to improve it.
You can install yarn in npm itself by npm install -g yarn It uses the same package.json file, and saves dependencies to the node_modules/ folder.
9. Materialized CSS Framework
Ever since Google introduced Material Design for Android it has been a highlight for developing next generation designs.
Material Design is a design language that combines the classic principles of successful design along with innovation and technology.
Materializecss offers a modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design.
10. Motion UI
Motion UI is Sass(syntactically awesome stylesheets) library for creating flexible CSS transitions and animations.
Motion UI includes a bundle of pre-made effects as CSS classes. This includes transition effects to slide, fade, hinge, scale, and spin, as well as a few built-in animations. The same effects used for transitions can also be used to build CSS animations.
11. Use of GIFs in Websites
Developed in 1987, the GIF format is the oldest file format still commonly used today.
GIFs when embedded in websites are needed to be taken care of so as to not create an overhead, that is why images were preferred over them for years.
Use of GIFs are now getting common day by day in websites as the optimization techniques for them are there.
12. WPCLI
WP-CLI is the command-line interface for WordPress. You can update plugins, configure multisite installs and much more, without using a web browser.
For some kinds of tasks, the command line is still both significantly faster to use and more powerful than any GUI tool that exists.
WP-CLI has made easy to manage websites and updating them on regular basis without using a web browser.
The WP-CLI project, which hugely simplifies all kinds of WordPress tasks—everything from “delete the 100 oldest comments” to “update all plugins” to “export the entire database.”
13. User Behavior Tracking
It is now becoming common among web developer to attach analytics to their web apps as to track the behavior of end users.
Which links were clicked? How much average time was spent by the user on website? etc…
It analyzes below behavior of users through:
Heatmaps – Know where users are tapping on each screen. Understand their browsing habits and improve conversion.
Screen flows – See the actions users perform on each screen, where they tap and how they navigate within your app.
Users list – Browse through all the sessions performed by a particular user and see what they did in your app from day one.
Visual funnels – See the percentage of users who complete a set of actions in your app. Discover which navigation paths they take instead of reaching the goal.
Crash replays – Reproduce any crash with just one click and solve even the tiniest bugs that are causing your users to leave your app.
Google Analytics, Wootric, Satismeter , Inapptics are some known tools.
14. Evolution of JavaScript
Initially in website development, client side only consisted of HTML, CSS and AJAX, Javascript or Jquery.
But now it has evolved quickly with introduction of Angular and React for client Side and Node JS on the Server side, It’s all JavaScript.
Angular JS is the Open-source web application framework. It aims to simplify both the development and the testing of such applications by providing a framework for client-side model–view–controller (MVC) and model–view–viewmodel (MVVM) architectures, along with components commonly used in rich Internet applications.
NodeJS frequently used to create lightweight HTTP server applications, such as Web services that support client-side code.
At the moment JavaScript the unchallenged king of the client – but current developments it looks like there is little that will stop JavaScript becoming one of the main server side technologies as well.
KnockoutJS, JavaScriptMVC, Backbone.js: These (and others) are part of a new breed of framework that does Model-View-Controller, or templating and databinding on the client side.
The Web Spark 
Amazing Blog! Everything about web development services are explained in such an easy and broad way. This blog is really very informative and written in a very well manner. Keep writing, spread knowledge.
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