What Will Web Development Look Like in 5 Years
Developing applications for the web has changed significantly over the last 5 years. Since 2005 the term AJAX has been coined, Ruby on Rails is now an open source web application framework, jQuery was created and has subsequently revolutionized JavaScript development, and now HTML5 is the top buzzword of the day. I believe the next 5 years will hold just as many improvements for web developers.
I foresee a new framework will be created to make developing fully interactive AJAX applications as easy as it is to write current MVC applications. Current frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Symfony provide everything you need to develop a modern application without having to build plumbing infrastructure; however, they do not provide nice components for interactive applications. In addition to a robust server core, this new framework will have a client side JavaScript component that simplifies the process of building interactive web 2.0 applications. Some critical components would be:
- Form Validation. Libraries do exist to validate forms in JavaScript, but they don’t integrate with the server side form validation. In this new framework you won’t have to write form validation code twice.
- Paginated Lists. Almost all web applications have at least one page where data needs to be searched and listed with pagination. We need to have this same functionality in JavaScript to skip a full page reload and provide local caching of the results.
- Animation Library. While script.aculo.us and jQuery have made simple animations and visual effects much easier to do, I believe we can go even farther. Web applications also need to gain that fluidity and soft animations that desktop applications such as Exposé have had for a couple of years.
I also see huge resources being directed towards mobile development because ALL current generation smart phones are built for an incredible web browsing experience. As home users have switched from desktop computers to laptop computers in the last few years, people will slowly start switching to hand-held devices for their primary communication and Internet needs. Most likely this will have one primary effect: web frameworks will have a mobile optimized version of the site done automatically. Little to none developer intervention will be required as only resolution, text sizes, and layouts will be modified for the mobile version.
Lastly I see tools and libraries around 2D and 3D drawing elements. Most likely these libraries would be rendering to a Canvas or a WebGL element but something better could be created. Both of these are young standards right now that show a lot of promise on delivering the ability to draw pixels directly in a native HTML web page. While they will be used first in simple computer games, I am very interested to see what libraries are created to facilitate these elements being used appropriately inside next generation web applications.
What do you think the next 5 years will bring?