Web development: Trends that are dominating 2018

Web development is definitely a changing universe, especially from “graphic design”.

 

As every year IT experts take stock and summarize the latest news from the web world. The goal of many developers is to provide their customers with more and more streamlined and immediate tools of interaction, but above all that they know how to hit the end user for ease of use. The minimalist style is certainly the main one, but we are witnessing the introduction of small new trends. Surely in 2018 the most important thing for the creation of a website is the simplification in the management of the project for the user, increasing the quality from the point of view of the result on mobile devices. An important aspect in this regard is certainly the farewell to old plugins and obsolete systems. 2018 seems to be the best year to make disappear permanently all those plugins that are not mobile-friendly and that are able to weigh down the navigation and even the CPU of the devices.

The main case is that of Flash, a plugin that is struggling to disappear, perhaps because there have been several difficulties in translating old animations into new formats, but the case wants Adobe to have released its convenient conversion tool HTML 5 in Animate CC. Let’s say that it was an almost mandatory choice for the web, not only because Flash is not compatible with mobile devices, but especially disadvantageous at the level SEO. The 2018 is also the year in which finally the video formats are merged, thus eliminating the possibility of using heavy proprietary players and bind the user to the installation of appropriate codecs. This step allows Google’s VP9 and all standard definitions of MP4 H.264 and its successor HEVC to make their way into the web. The one-page design, i.e. the presentation of content on a single navigable page through single scrolling, is now ubiquitous. It confirms itself as the best choice for the web, because it is simple to use, elegant to observe and absolutely mobile-friendly.

One of the emerging trends is that of modular production, especially in the development phase. The “page-builders” are creeping more and more, they are software or online services that give the opportunity, starting from a common base such as CMS WordPress, to develop from scratch their design using modules that can be moved to any position of the page. This mode allows you to modify your site over time, adding new functions without having to start from scratch with the development. It is now well known that mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, produce more traffic than normal navigation on desktop browsers. And while native apps continue to be popular, the web also adapts.

The developers decide to embrace the mobile-first approach, that is the main design of an interface that is first of all compatible and comfortable to use with the schemes of tablets and smartphones, optimizing navigation with touchscreen controls and following the specifications of the responsive design. Once the mobile project is realized, we move on to the desktop: it is a workflow exactly opposite to that of a few years ago, when the mobile was not yet in vogue. At the same time, in 2018 all the mobile versions of the sites are slowly disappearing, that is the editions of a reduced desktop page and magazine for the mobile. The visual and user experience must be the same, whether you use a 27-inch screen or a smartphone with a ratio of 18:9.

The web is therefore moving more and more to mobile and it is necessary to consider the weight and speed of the pages. The current devices are able to handle very elaborate sites, also rich in animations and movies, yet we find the limit of traffic. Telephone operators still do not guarantee a sufficient amount of GB for a full-featured experience and in the absence of a WiFi network, the user could waste valuable MB for uploading an image not always useful. So SVG formats come into play, thus replacing rasterized graphic elements, but the most popular alternative at the moment is to replace images and so on with fonts. With fonts you can get really amazing results, taking care in detail of the appearance of words, alternating sizes, families, while retaining the elegance.

Pubblicato il 12 June 2018