Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

In the areas that interest you about the web, what has changed the most in the last couple of years, and what do you see changing most in the next couple?

There’s a lot that’s changed over the past few years: more people have broadband, more people are using the mobile web, and more people are becoming publishers themselves, putting photos, videos, and blog posts online.

For web developers, the biggest change has been in the browser landscape. Okay, so Internet Explorer has been stagnant, but it wasn’t that long ago that we had to support Netscape 4. Compared to those days, cross-browser development today is a lot easier. It’s because of this relatively stable browser market that we’re starting so see such rich web applications. CSS, JavaScript and DOM support have reached levels that are good enough to allow us to make the most of these technologies.

Over the next few years, I expect this trend to continue. IE7 and Firefox 2 will bring even better support for web standards. The browsers we consider top-notch today will become the legacy browsers of tomorrow. I think we’ll see more maturity in web applications. Today, we’re pushing the boundaries and making great discoveries but also lots of mistakes. Those mistakes are as valuable as any technological breakthrough; we need to learn from them if we’re to move forward.