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Originally published at: http://www.sitepoint.com/10-web-predictions-2015/
Happy New Year! 2015 is 11111011111 in binary so itā€™s got to be a great year for technology! My 2014 predictions were half right so letā€™s see if I can do better. The mists are clearing and thereā€™s ectoplasm seeping from my keyboardā€¦

1. Responsive Images Will be Usable!

Itā€™s taken too long but weā€™ll finally have good responsive image support across several mainstream desktop and mobile browsers (other than just Chrome/Opera):
  • the img srcset attribute allows you to specify the same image at different resolutions according to the deviceā€™s screen capabilities
  • the picture element permits art direction. Different images can be presented based on the deviceā€™s size and orientation. For example, you might offer a photograph of a forest on a desktop but a couple of trees on mobile.

Use cases will differ but the important point is the browser decides which asset to use ā€” you just provide the choices.

2. The Rise of Web Components

If Google are to be believed, Web Components is the future of the web platform. Continue reading this article on SitePoint
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Good one, Craig! Iā€™ll support most of your predictions, but I donā€™t think it will be a tough year for Google. No year has ever been absolutely tough for Google.

I would also add one factor to your IE prediction. IE 8 will be OFFICIALLY deprecated. With new technologies popping up and upgrading each day, there will be no more space for supporting IE 8. Bootstrap and jQueryā€™s newest versions donā€™t support it anymore. So this may be another point for Firefox advancing over Internet Explorer.

Well letā€™s see, the world has a little less than 365 days to do all that. Letā€™s sit, work and wait.

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great post! I find it very useful because all i had seen from last two months on internet blogs is just about web trends prediction for 2015. This one is unique in idea and itā€™s good to know as @mateus says IE 8 will be deprecated. Thanks for this.

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[A]t the very least, itā€™ll help me understand those Australians at SitePoint HQ!

Listen, mate.

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I donā€™t know bout Polymer because i feel the framework was to allow google easily share their services, whichever the case I still prefer to stick to frameworks with stability e.g The Dojotoolkit I still work with Knockout, and Angular (which I donā€™t like one bit). As long as thereā€™s browser incompatibility frameworks will always be here to stay.

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Thanks Mateus. Googleā€™s share price has been affected recently and there are calls from the EU for the company to be broken up. Theyā€™ll still end the year with more money than they started but I suspect the glory days are over.

As for IE8, watch out for this monthā€™s Browser Trends report tomorrow!

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Thanks dojoVader. Actually, browsers are closer than theyā€™ve ever been and you donā€™t necessarily need to worry about incompatibilities if you adopt progressive enhancement. I think itā€™s more a matter of development speedā€¦

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Although I agree with many predictions, I strongly doubt, that web components will rise. Many things may be polyfilled by Polymer, but http2 cannot and without http2 every html import is an extra http request => massive performance issue. Furthermore web components and polymer are imo still too experimental to be used in production.

I also doubt, that less Frameworks will be used/created. The only trend I recognize is the modularization of frameworks. I agree, that huge monolithic frameworks are on the decline, but small modules as well as package managers to integrate these modules are on the rise. e.g. i believe that less people use sass-compass for everything, but more people use bourbon for the mixins, susy for the grid-layout, purecss for the base styling, etc.

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I have framework fatigue. I find theyā€™re usually trying to crack a nut with a sledgehammer. If the solution isnā€™t going to be worked on by a bunch of developers with similar skillsets, why not take the best paradigms from frameworks youā€™ve worked with and make your own cut down framework? I did it for my tiny brochure site. Total MVC (relevant to my site only) for 2kb - although Iā€™ve not made it compatible with IE8. Also, there are many ways to help performance. Using asynchronous loading where possible, using compression, minification, caching where possible. Use of local storage can help too. If youā€™re interested, this is my site: http://web-dewd.com. Btw, happy to post unminified js if youā€™d like to see it.

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Thatā€™s impressive and I totally agree. If you can write your own simple, fast, custom framework in 2Kb, why use some monolithic alternative? Frameworks can be great, but theyā€™re often very generic and you need to spend time learning, customising and updating it. Could that time be better spent?

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I agree 2015 may be a little premature for web components but they have a promising future. Iā€™m not totally convinced Polymer will succeed - Google doesnā€™t appear to be using it in many projects - but the library should become redundant over time.

More frameworks will be created - thatā€™s inevitable. My point was that monolithic frameworks will decline in favour of smaller modules and package managers ā€¦ which will be aided by web components.

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I donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever used Amazon to search for productsā€¦ I use Google exclusively.

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Cool piece. But I though this was funny:

You say Google is set to have a very tough year, but in the very next paragraph, mention that Chrome is about to hit 1/2 of all browsers. You also mention FF moving to a Yahoo default search (which is 2 clicks from a change) but again contrasting that to Chromeā€™s rise. And you also do remind us that Google has the top two search engines on the planet: Google and YouTube.
Googleā€™s biggest challenge will be growing - and they have footing in your home (Nest) which is where theyā€™ll prob feel the most push back. Weā€™ll see.

Frameworks are like Photoshop: mostly used well below capacity/capabilities. Thatā€™s the main issue. Iā€™ve discussed this long before, but ppl donā€™t squeeze as much as they should from frameworks.

But I do love the idea of performance becoming a focus. Very happy I got into #webperf seriously in 2013 and love the academia involved. Watching a panel debate image optimization for 1hr+ has become so entertaining.

Wish you would have added accessibility. Between laws and the final realization that thereā€™s some real world issues emerging (low viz is the biggest one), we need to see changes, because some of your friends right now canā€™t see whatā€™s written on these webpages - but are too embarrassed to say it. And the designers are mostly at fault.

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I think Google will have a tough year as a business and, as you say, they cannot expect exponential growth every year. Their share price has already been affected - itā€™s down 20% on this time last year.

As for Chrome, itā€™s not really a revenue-raising product. It helps indirectly but, again, usage is growing at a slower rate and I donā€™t think itā€™ll ever reach the IE-like 95%.

Iā€™m not sure I agree that devs should squeeze more out of frameworks. Part of the problem is that overblown frameworks are adopted for relatively simple projects. Smaller, more focused libraries would benefit.

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Thanks for writing a great post ceeb,
I particularly like point 9, I see many websites adding very pretty effects yet failing to consider how they might affect performance, not only during loading but also during run-time. I hope at the very least that these developers, at the very least start concatenating the scripts and CSS they download, Very easy now with the built tools we have at our disposal.
As for run-time performance I hope to see developers writing more performant JavaScript, keeping a very special eye on DOM interaction, most of us know that repaints are costly but choose to ignore this. No animation is better than a choppy one. Lets get this fixed in 2015.

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Youā€™re right, that very often huge frameworks are used for small projects and smaller, more focused libraries would be better. I disagree, however, that this is a real problem.

If I work on different projects, I shouldnā€™t reevaluate and pick new frameworks for each project. It makes sense to be consistent and stick with the ones already know, even if the (small) project doesnā€™t require all of it (as long as the framework isnā€™t going into the completely wrong direction).

IMO the outcome is better, if i use a not-perfectly-fitting framework right than if i use a better-fitting framework wrong.

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Whats you take on Vue.js and Golang ?

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Google are beginning to scare the crap out of me. Read an interesting article about google misjudging social media and having to play catchup so are now buying into everything from pharmaceuticals to agriculture. You have a company that will/can be able to control everything we do and know when and how we are doing whatever it is we are doing. They have more money than a lot of countries and a lot more leverage.

Does it matter if google knows i am buying baked beans? yes if they can then affect the global market prices. When you have the power to advertise to billions of people you can make some big impacts.

Be interesting if they are forced to break up.

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