Web technology changes every year. From newer frameworks to advanced security measures, a lot of changes take place in regards to how a website is developed each year. As 2021 comes to an end, and we prepare ourselves to step into 2022, we can expect more changes and trends heading our way than ever before.
Back in 2011, when smartphone technology had not reached its peak yet, web developers and designers were focused on how they could make the websites more user-friendly, but for laptop or desktop users only. Over time, the idea of responsiveness came about, and they had to make quick adjustments to accommodate those features. Developers have to do that again once these new trends become more widespread.
With all that in mind, let us explore 3 such web development trends that we can see in 2022.
#1 A Mobile-First Approach to Design and Development
Global internet usage statistics suggest that most user-generated internet traffic comes from mobile phones (56.89 percent) with over 4.3 billion users in 2021. That number is expected to increase, probably reaching the 5 billion mark by 2022. Hence, web developers must ensure responsiveness in their designs when building websites. And thanks to such statistics, they can see that they soon have to start the design process with a mobile-first approach.
When it comes to designing websites, developers currently follow a desktop-first approach. They will initially set the whole design based on how it will look when viewed from a laptop or desktop. After that, they use Bootstrap or other responsive frameworks to adjust the website for mobile viewing.
However, as recent statistics suggest, the number of mobile internet users is gradually increasing, and it is currently more than the number of PC internet users. Thus, the approach will eventually change, most probably from 2022, where mobile viewing gets priority when it comes to designing websites.
#2 An Increased Dependency on Smart APIs
Websites are already dependent on various APIs for several different functionalities. And that dependency will only grow come 2022, as these APIs are getting smarter by the day. From payment gateways to financial APIs, everything is getting smarter.
Even weather apps and APIs are getting smarter with time, implementing more advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques in their day-to-day operations.
No longer are they confined to providing daily or weekly weather forecasts, telling us how sunny it is going to be, or how much rain or humidity to expect. They now use all the real-time data they gather from weather radars across the world and then use advanced data science, ML, and AI technologies to give us a more refined experience.
Tomorrow.io’s API could have been a regular API displaying the weather forecast for a given day. Instead, it uses something called ‘weather intelligence’ to give its users a more refined and easy-to-understand version of its regular weather updates. What this does is make APIs more reliable, easy to use, and more appreciated by regular users. At the same time, the effort needed to deploy these APIs remains the same, which is convenient for developers too.
#3 More Focus on Implementing AR and VR Technologies
Meta – previously known as The Facebook Company – recently unveiled its plan to break into the AR, VR industry. The announcement did not come as a shock, but it did make a lot of people skeptical in regards to what the social media giants are actually up to. In all fairness, it is easy to see why Meta would push for introducing such technologies into their daily operations. After all, VR, AR are the next big things in the entertainment world.
People are already fiddling with AR and VR technologies, and sometime in 2022, we can expect more websites, mostly entertainment platforms, to introduce more features that cater to their audience via AR and VR.
Even if not a fully subversive experience, developers are still eager to experiment with small fragments of a website, maybe a 3D picture or a 30-second-video. And 2022 is the year when we can see a lot of tech companies bursting into the scene, and trying to make strides with AR and VR technology.
Apart from these three, we are likely to see a bunch of other trends popping out as we approach 2022. For now, though, developers should focus on these three first, and general users like us should hold on to our hats as well for what is about to come our way.
