A Look at the Web Development World Ahead
January 10, 2000
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As we begin a new millennium, a new era in Web development
is also beginning. Making predictions is dangerous in this
business, but it seems clear that important changes in the
way we use and design Web sites are underway. Web developers
who want to stay in business had better take heed of these
trends, and start boning up on the new technologies. Head
for the woodshed today, or the unemployment office tomorrow!
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HTML is king no longer.
For years, I've been admonishing my readers to the effect
that if you want to design Web pages, you need to know your
HTML
backwards and forwards. So-called "WYSIWYG"(What You
See Is What You Get) design tools, which promised to let
one design Web pages using a visually-oriented interface
like a word processor or a desktop publishing package,
were counter-productive. Also, every Web site, no matter
how complicated, had simple HTML as its basis. Sure, there
might be scripting, Java, multimedia elements and so forth,
but they were simply nuggets of complexity embedded in
straightforward HTML code.
Neither of these principles hold true any longer. In the
first place, WYSIWYG Web editors are becoming powerful
tools. Macromedia's
DreamWeaver
has won an enthusiastic following even among serious Web
developers, and even Microsoft's
FrontPage,
often called a beginner's toy (and sometimes other things
far worse), has come a long way. With today's WYSIWYG
editors, you might just be able to create a Web page more
quickly than you could by typing in the raw HTML, and
further refinements proceed apace. The day when one can
design perfectly good Web pages without really knowing
HTML may not be far off.
Paralleling these developments is a trend toward more
sophisticated Web sites that demand much more power than
HTML can deliver by itself. Aspects of this trend include
a shift toward "dynamic" as opposed to "flat" sites,
more emphasis on interactivity, which demands more use
of scripting languages, and more complex interaction
with databases and other applications. Web sites are
becoming less like pages in a magazine, which merely
inform the user, and more like software applications,
which allow the user to "do" things.
Contents:
Dynamic Sites Take Over
Interactivity is the name of the game
Compatibility Woes Forever
XML to the Rescue
A Look at the Web Development World Ahead
Dynamic Sites Take Over
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