The Internet is continuing in its development phrase and expands its feathers in many directions, and this brings some exciting things for web designers and developers.
Web designers and developers also have to move fast with the latest trends as we have seen blurred line between web designing and web development.
There are many trends that we have seen last year are still around today and will surely continue into 2015. Apart from, there are some newish trends that knock web designing and development door in this New Year. Let’s check out what they are:
Responsive Web Design
According to the recent article written in Forbes, it is predicted that Black Friday will be beaten by Cyber Monday in the physical sales. About 55% of users would like to purchase online rather than fighting the crowds after Thanksgiving.
We have seen the rise in online sales and most of retailers with weak online presence is lacking behind. Now, you are thinking that how it is connected with responsive web design.
Well, most of the online customers are using smart devices for online purchases and here, the importance of responsive web design come into existence.
This year 2015 will see the growth of responsive web design and development across all the leading platforms. We all know that responsive web development service is in the trend and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) plays an important role in developing responsive website.
With Scalable Vector Graphics, one can easily get designs with typography, web-fonts, icon fonts and lots of other things. The hottest trends like clear layouts, simplicity, app-style interfaces, flat style, colors, etc. also will rise in 2015.
CSS3
With CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), one can simply define the looks and formatting of the website. In 2015, we have seen trend of using CSS3 that integrated with a number of some marvelous features like rounded corners, box shadows, border radius, multi-column layout and opacity.
Extended Form Elements
There are many frontend developers, who are well-versed with jQuery purpose. It is best for writing smoother JavaScript code with some lines and clutter. Right now, free open source jQuery plugins are in the high demand and also have taken their own market.
We also have seen interest about jQuery form plugins as it is helpful for improving the user experience. Such effects include input validation, guided tooltips, floating labels, and so on.
Videos Instead Of Text
Reading is a bit boring task when we have option of watching. Instead of reading text, it would be great to add Videos in your hero areas. Videos can be created with an ease and can be shared to the website along with social media sites as well.
There are many people arguing that video at Home page load more due to large amount of data. But, some also believes that it is one of the best and shortest ways to explain people about your business and its products/services.
Moreover, with video service like YouTube, you can simply track views that enable to plan your content for your site.
Develop Mobile Web Apps That Behave & Perform like Native Apps
This year’s predictions lead to the mobile web application that behave and perform like native apps. Businesses have to develop websites and application that comes with below given qualities like:
Amazing Design and functionality that responds all devices and input methods
Support for gestures and touch
Low Battery Power Usage
Excellent Loading Speed
Low processor demand
Offline capabilities
Scrolling and Parallax Scrolling
There are some websites developed in 2013-2014 with long web pages. Such trend may be the fact that people are used-to with some social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. In the middle of 2014, we have seen more single-page sites with attractive graphics and informative contents.
The trend of single-page site will increase in 2015 as users want to access website without clicking and navigating into the pages. With Parallax scrolling technique, one can give 2D graphics an illusion of depth with an ease.
Moreover, it is expected that story-telling sites like blogs and newspaper will adopt such techniques in 2015 for better user engagement.
3D Transition Effects
We have seen many creative 3D animations in 2014 and it is sure, businesses are going to adopt such animations in 2015 for building navigation menus, animated image galleries, and elements.
Using jQuery, developers can easily create 3D effects even if CSS3 has been catching up. Animations aren’t fully supported with all browsers, so designers should be suspicious to use too many animations on single page.
On-scroll Animation
Developing an excellent interactive web experience with third-party plug-ins doesn’t have meant bogging down. Using the modern techniques, you can create your website more entertaining and surprisingly, it would be of light weight.
Users scroll through a page if site is created with on-scroll animation. The animation progresses, if the cursor/mouse is operating the rate.
Lifestreaming
Currently, the way people interact online is dominated by the notion of “constant connection”. There are many website using “lifestreaming” instead of including a link to a Facebook or Twitter page. Usually, it includes a social network aggregator that used for consolidating multiple social networking profiles into one profile, and integrating a live feed into a website/blog.
This simply means users can easily follow business owner’s movements through social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. directly to their website.
Drag and Drop Functionality
The drag and drop functionality of HTML5 has been revolutionized user interfaces when it lands on the scene. Now, it becomes more mature and we will surely see some more interactive web that leverages this technology creatively. In 2015, we will see
Interactive info-graphics with drag-and-drop capabilities
Sites and Apps that allows users to customize the layout with drag-and-drop
Excellent Touch device Support for drag-and-drop interfaces
Customized Image Galleries
Web developers have been allowed by the growing integration of JavaScript and CSS to create marvelous new projects.
The best trends are image galleries that have been around for decades and it will remain in 2015 as well. Additionally, we are also expecting to see more solution to image lightboxes and dynamic carousels.
Webgraphics
We all know that information presenting in a graphical form is more interesting than in the text. So, most of the businesses now prefer to go for infographics. Through infographics, one can simple yet attractively send message to its audience with a high degree of retention.
After infographics, a trend of Webgraphics has been emerged. Webgraphics includes huge information along with adding elements that allows users to interact physically with the information. Compare to infographics, it is more appealing and increase retention with the user significantly.
It is expected that more clients will demand interactive Webgraphics from the web designers as the part of personalized design. It will be established as the major part of modern web design.
Simple Color Schemes
Website design plays an important role and so as to color. Recently, we see many websites with simple color schemes, i.e. with one or two colors. Adding more colors are available with flat design, but it didn’t always seems to be best.
There are some websites launching with simple color scheme and have only another color like red to grab user’s attention.
Application Architecture
We know that mobile-first strategy in the enterprises play an important role in the web development architecture. While any businesses are building web applications and services, they are connecting this with their mobile strategy.
At present, Web APIs are the important point of mobile and web applications, where professional developers are creating RESTful services on the server-side and also developing the front-end apps for mobile and web on the basis of the RESTful services.
Getting Creative with Cookies
It would be really challenging to deliver message to the audience with creative and unique method.
This year, you have to face challenge of keeping users on your website by providing informative things on cookies. It would be great to offer a, advanced, if they don’t want to use site that uses cookies.
You can also add step to give the user the power of sorting via cookies and inform them about what cookies is doing. You can also permit them to enable/disable any of the ones on your site.
HTML5
We have seen decrease in the popularity of Flash-based content and thus, many designers and developers are learning HTML5 programming language to develop site in 2015. It is also said that Flash doesn’t work properly with many latest technologies.
Additionally, it also has negative effect on the usability and accessibility of a site and its capability of high ranking in search engines like Google.
It is agreed by many developers that no website should be developed entirely of Flash while HTML5 has ability to do many things without any adverse effects.
Game frameworks
Previously, adopting game development process means to hire game developers, who have experienced of writing in C from scratch. No doubt, it looks excellent but costs bazillion dollars.
Now, developers can use libraries like Corona, Unity or LibGDX for building their systems. Now, they don’t write C code as much as instructions for the libraries. At present, they are focusing on the narrative, game play, character, and art and surely, this will be trend for 2015.
Content Approach
Few years back, we have seen designers are developing sample designs and wireframes first and after that, copywriters are adding content to dress-up the design/wireframe. This trend of first designing will change as many companies are following content approach first.
Right now, businesses are giving importance to content more with simple design and flat colors. As many designers will experiment with various typography and simple designs, it is expected that content will play an important role in 2015.
Unique Web Copy
One of the coolest new features in web development is the @font-face declaration. You can import font files hosted locally or externally on another server. These fonts are defined within CSS and you can write them into font-family properties to style your webpage text.
This includes font-based icons, where you render flexible icons on the page in the text format. Such icons aren’t as well-designed compare to real graphics that can be integrated various colors.
One of the powerful techniques is to have the ability to customize any font on the page for helping website that stands unique from the crowd.
Personal Portraits
We all like to have simply portfolio site that provides highlights of your work samples. However, in order to engage people, you have to create interesting site by including a sample of portfolio of yourself on the page.
In many websites, we have seen personal portraits that summarize much of the homepage. Using large background portraits look excellent, however, if you don’t want to use large image then you can use small pictures in your homepage or About US page to give highlight to visitors about who you are.
Wrapping Thoughts
Many changes and trends will be seen in web design and development in 2015. Above mentioned are some highlights, if you know some more trends then let us know through comment sections or contact us for any development query.
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