The web has become more and more ingrained in our daily lives with each passing year. We use it for everything, from banking to reading the news to having groceries delivered to our door in minutes. With the pandemic forcing even more of our lives online, the demand for web development trends is as high as it has ever been, and the breadth of what programmers can do is enormous.
As the year comes to a close, I can’t help but wonder what the coming year will bring. Will the web get into even more parts of our lives, filling them with even more confusing buzzwords that we have to pretend to understand?
List of the top web development trends that will reshape the tech landscape in the coming years:
1. Artificial intelligence
When discussing the future of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) is always at the top of the list. But, for the time being, I believe it is justified. In the last few years, there has been significant progress in the field of AI.
AlphaGo, a Google DeepMind programme, became the first to defeat a professional Go player.
Some of the world’s largest technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Meta (formerly Facebook), have made their AI technology available for public use. Artificial intelligence is already being used by big companies like Google to improve search engines and Wikipedia to find inaccurate or damaged articles. It is the basis of all of Meta’s plans for the metaverse, no matter what you think about that.
We can expect developers to start using AI in new and different ways in the new year as access to the necessary tools for AI development improves. Also, AI is already used a lot in data analysis, so you can expect the rest to do the same.
AI-powered website creation is one such example. For example, if you sign up for The Grid, your AI web designer Molly will ask you questions about branding, colors, layout, and content before automatically creating an aesthetic website for you based on pre-programmed algorithms. You can ask Molly to update the website as many times as you want until it’s perfect.
2. Low-code and no-code tools
To be honest, I debated at first whether to include this as one of the web development trends. Isn’t it true that the success of low-code and no-code tools will encourage fewer people to learn to code?
Not quite.
While the continued rise of these tools is due in part to the same coding skills gap that makes web development services financially lucrative, computers are not coming to take your jobs. In fact, we would still need to train the developers on how to use the LC: NC tools.
These tools will help smaller businesses complete development (and design) work more quickly, but they are not yet scalable. However, the low-code market is expected to reach 148.5 billion dollars by 2030, so keep an eye on this space.
3. Internet of Things (IoT)
The internet of things, long heralded as the future, is a movement in which typically non-internet-connected objects are given network connectivity in order to send and receive data.
These objects can range from your toaster or kettle to sensors embedded in the concrete or on motors to detect cracks and weaknesses. Anyone who owns an Amazon Alexa, a Phillips Hue light, or a Google Nest understands what I mean.
Web developers might not be directly involved in making these kinds of devices. Instead, UI designers might focus on voice user interfaces. However, it is likely that we will be involved in the development of applications that use, analyze, and display data from the devices. Already, companies like Xively and BugLabs have started making APIs that developers can use to talk to IoT devices.
4. AI chatbots
While these may have existed in some form or another in recent years, expect this field of work to explode in 2022.
The reason for this is that the accuracy and usability of these chatbots have gotten much better and more advanced, giving businesses a lot more ways to use them. In fact, SEMRush forecasts a 33.2% year-on-year growth rate from 2020 to 2027.
Backend developers have a lot of tech-related job opportunities because they need complex systems for getting information, processing language, and learning on their own. Web developers who know how to use machine learning languages like Java, R, and Python will be able to work on a wide range of interesting projects.
It’s easy to see that this is one of them in terms of whether or not this trend will last. Companies will save money on more than just hiring customer service representatives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it became harder and harder to fill these jobs, which means companies will spend less on recruiting.
5. Angular 15 and beyond
In 2016, a new version of Angular came out with a lot of changes, including a complete redesign of Google’s JavaScript framework for the front end.
It now makes use of the features of JavaScript ES6, applications are written in TypeScript, and they have moved toward a more component-driven architecture.
6. Yarn package manager
Package managers are extremely popular tools, particularly among front-end JavaScript communities.
They facilitate the installation, updating, configuring, and uninstalling of code modules within applications. They do this by talking to a registry of code modules and taking care of the different dependencies that most code modules have.
NPM and Bower are the most popular JavaScript package managers. Meta, in collaboration with Exponent, Google, and Tilde, has created a new package manager. We anticipate that its popularity will grow.
Yarn tries to fix the problems Meta had with NPM, especially when it came to speed, security, and consistency. The NPM and Bower registries are still accessible through this new package manager.
When using NPM, for example, depending on the order in which modules are installed, developers may end up with two different versions of the same module in their local development environment. This can lead to situations in which everything works fine on one developer’s machine but not on another’s. To solve this problem, Yarn uses lock files to link modules to a certain version within a project. This makes sure that all developer machines have the same version installed.
7. Static website generators
Static website generators use plain text, which is usually stored in files instead of databases, to make websites. Websites generated by generators such as Jekyll offer some advantages in certain situations.
These advantages include increased speed, security, ease of deployment, and handling of traffic surges.
They lack real-time content and user content (such as comments), both of which have become “musts” on the web today. As content delivery networks and APIs become more common on the web, making it easier to deploy content and templates, many developers believe static site generators will be an interesting area to watch in the upcoming year.
8. Web design evolution
If you’re into design, here are a few trends to look out for in the coming year:
Movement-based interfaces are likely to become commonplace on the web. Interfaces that respond to hand movements may be closer than we think when combined with libraries like tracking.js.
CSS container queries will become extremely popular in responsive web design (RWD).
Bolder and larger typography is likely to gain popularity.
People frequently want engaging and compelling ways to quickly obtain information. This is likely to increase the use of videos and other visual storytelling tools.
Last thoughts
Nothing on the web, in general, stands still for too long, and the world of web development is no exception. The methods we use to deal with information are always evolving, just like the information itself.
