Now that we are in a new year again it is time to take a look at the new scheme of things. The field of the Web is continually developing and new tools are becoming available all the time. In today's market place it is not enough to construct a good-looking design that just looks great, it also needs to function great. It needs to be adaptable and take into consideration new media such as mobile phones and pads. your ambition as a web designer in 2011 is to engage your visitors and make them want to stay on your website more than ever before. There is a thin line between web design and web development, and web designers need to increasingly be aware of the new tools available.
Here is a list of the new tools and trends that we can expect to be big this year.
HTML5 and CSS3
HTML5 and CSS3 have actually been around for some years now and this year we hope will finally be ready to be used in a way that benefits web design. HTML5 allows us to use the new video tag which will play video without the need for Adobe Flash. Flash has had a compatibility problem especially confounded by Adobes fight with Apple which has culminated in Apple not allowing Flash on its new technologies including the iPhone and the iPad. This year we will all gradually move away from Flash and embrace the the new tags afforded us by HTML5. There will still be plenty of room for Flash as it is still a powerful tool, but now there is a new contender on the block.
Another exciting development is CSS3. CSS3 allows us to create text shadow, border radius and image transparency all within the CSS code rather than have to rely on image tools to do the work for us.
Touch technology
Touch screens are taking over in 2011 as we can see in our phones and the number of pads and tablets that are becoming popular. Using your fingers for navigation rather than a mice can introduce some absorbing new forms of web design and is another element to think about. A new web design needs to consider as part of its design that a number of it's visitors maybe using a touch screen. Drop down menus and link hover aren't possible with a touch screen and so if we are to move forward we need to think of a new way that embraces the touch screen visitor.
Mobile Phones
With mobile phones getting smarter and web browsing on a mobile phone getting more common, we need to take this in to consideration with our web designs. Our designs need to look great and function well on a mobile phone in order for us to compete this year. Forecasters predict that smart phones will outsell personal computers this year, so it is vital that our websites conform to these standards.
Social Media
We've all seen the rise of Facebook and Twitter in the last year. Social mediums like these are here to stay and they are integrating themselves into our entire experience on the web. The Internet is becoming more personal in the way we share our lives via social media activity. The web will become even more intimate this year and we can expect to this this reflected in the websites we visit right the way across the web.
Thumbnail Browsing
Finally, any avid watcher of Google will have noticed the new option for thumbnail browsing. Now searchers of websites can look through thumbnails for the website they fancy visiting rather than just reading the text. Regrettably this thumbnail technology doesn't display Flash so websites that rely heavily on Flash will be at a clear disadvantage to a thumbnail browser. As people are in essence lured to things visually, then i'm sure viewing search results via thumbnails will be more appealing than lines of text. If this is a trend that takes off then we need to consider how our thumbnail is going to stand out among our peers.
2011 is promising to be an exciting year for technology and the web and we as web designers need to keep with the times. By taking into consideration the five tips above then we may be on our way to edging away from our competition and truly be on the cutting edge of web design.
This article was written by Steve Moore, web design expert and Internet marketing consulatant for a leading SEO company in the UK.
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