SXSW 2005: Web Design 2010, Leonard-stylee

The Tuesday morning SXSW panel was entitled: Web Design 2010: What Will the Web Look Like When It Turns 20?. After SubEthaEdit mishappery, the panel started off talking about “web apps” and gave some real WTF answers (ah, designers pontificating on development trends) so… I had to step out. Maybe I overreacted, but Molly had the same reaction in the hallway when she stepped in for a different 5 minutes, so I’m assuming that it wasn’t just me (todo: find transcript)

On the bright side, Dave had started a blog to do panel prep, and has opened it up for discussion. This is great. I wish more panels would have done that (or that all panels had this automatically, and that these sites were open for discussion beforehand and could also be used to help schedule rooms based on participation… oh wait, there I go again. Anyway, since I got kinda carried away in my posts (ahh, the inner pundit), here’s how I would have answered if I were on the panel (reproduced from comments for easy reading):

1. Are Web Apps going to happen?
What are they going to look like? Desktop apps? Something else?
How are we going to be doing them

We’ve very obviously been seeing the expansion of traditional web apps w/ the recent round of AJAX-based apps. Will web apps be able to expand beyond their core markets in the communications and shared media space? I think so, especially as the idea of the personal infocloud encompasses more and more facets. The need for data sharing and sync will outweigh the cost barriers of rewriting more and more applications. The subsequent improvements in ease of update and stable revenue stream will end up being better for almost everyone (B&M software shops excepted).

The biggest question IMO is whether the push for subscription-based net-delivered thick client apps (think .NET) wins over more webby variations. This may largely depend on the type of application (ie, Photoshop would fit easily in the former but not the latter), but also largely on strategic and technical decisions that won’t be easy to predict…

2. What will web designers be doing in 2010?
What sort of devices will be most commonly used to access the web?
What technologies will enable this?

“International Data Corp predicts that by the year
2004, there will be close to 1.3 billion web-enabled cellular phones
globally. And Motorola predicts that by that same year, more consumers
will be accessing the Internet from a wireless device, than a wired
one.”

src: http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=10825

3. Will IE6 still be significant to the work you will be doing?

[Jeremy,] I agree that CSS implementations will continue to be a problem regardless of which version of IE (see the latest IE7/CSS support hubbub), but I think that one of two things will happen: 1) people will stop testing/caring as IE6 support drops below a certain level, or more likely (I’ve begun doing this for various personal sites, it’s just a matter of time it becomes production ready), something like Dean Edwards’ IE7 library will be used to ‘fix’ the IE issues.

As far as scripting goes, I don’t think IE6 will play a major factor again, if it breaks things and goes under a certain percentage. This will be doubly so as XAML, FLEX, and other RIA front-ends fight it out.

4. In 2010, these technologies will be important for web developers:

(vote for, vote against, abstain)

CSS3
SVG
Flash
XML/XSLT (more generally than XHTML)
XHTML
XHTML2
XForms
XAML/XUL

[Mark, presuming that Macromedia is still around…] Anyway, one issues w/ the current incarnation of Flash Lite is that it’s the functional equivalent of Flash 4 (+ some XML), which means that it’s not a 1:1 transfer. I don’t see Flash going away on the desktop regardless, but their footing in the mobile (and to a much greater degree) in the enterprise space is quite precarious (well, nonexistant in the latter).

CSS3 – yes, although IE won’t support most of it properly so it will be of limited use. Also, there will be 5 bajillion selectors, but still sorely lacking in descriptors, especially for relations and dynamic calculations so JavaScript and large amounts of structural tags will still be required layouts that could be done ‘the bad way’ in 1998.

SVG – yes, especially if Flash flounders, but even if that doesn’t happen, SVG will ride the AJAX wave (especially once SVG rendering makes it into Mozilla core). Having DOM-based structure is a beautiful thing.

Flash – see top

XML/XSLT (more generally than XHTML) – an increasing need for transforms will push XSLT into the web design world so that designers everywhere will be able to enjoy how bass-ackwards and almost entirely retarded XSLT is. On the bright side XSLT 2.0 will have regular expressions (hallef’inlujah) although most web designers’ eyes will glaze over. XML will continue to dominate everywhere as the format for everything. Much fun will be had as people continue using it COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATELY EVERYWHERE.

XHTML – yes, and it’ll need to validate too if you don’t want your XSLT parser to barf.

XHTML2 – haha, no.

XForms – despite Eris’ nice try in the Flash vs HTML panel, I will throw my hat firmly in the “XForms sucks and should burn in RFC hell and die” camp. XForms accomplishes the standards trifecta of reinventing the wheel, solving problems no one asked it to, and simultaneously not solving the the fundamental problems people were having with its predecessor. I’ve sat through lengthy presentations and even lengthier discussions on this and really, I’ll never get that time of my life back again. Luckily for the rest of you, XForms has this much traction -> . and we’ll get a much saner WebForms 2.0 courtesy of WHAT group (fingers crossed). Banks will love XForms though. (never underestimate the power of enterprise software)

XAML/XUL – Yes, although it’s a bit unclear how much these will encroach into web-space. Regardless, these XML-based widget sets w/ custom rendering engines (to differentiate from stuff like Dojo and to include things like Flex and Laszlo) will probably take over intranets, giving all the maintenance and development benefits of the web, and all the richness that comes with being able to draw lines and pulldowns that overlap properly among other things (XAML/Avalon will be downright scary).

5. Will industrialization drive the independent web developer out of existence, with the economies of scale of big development houses and cookie cutter design making this role economically unviable?

No, independents will just have to adapt to provide services (and service) that big development house, cookie cutter design can’t. I think web developers will have an easier time than some, but as Daniel Pink would put it, it’s just a function of the transition to the conceptual age. (That, BTW was a kick-ass presentation, and done in a way that I even remember most of it – guess that levity, brevity, and repetition thing really works).

6. Which philosophy will ultimately win on the web: openness (open source, open formats) or closed proprietary systems?

From an technical perspective, due to the nature of the data interchange, “openness” will increasingly be a simple fact of life in the coming years.

From an economic perspective, due to the nature of market efficiencies, “openness” will increasingly be a simple fact of life in the coming years.

I don’t think there’s much of a choice barring complete and total hegemony (whether this is legislative or otherwise).

There will be closed networks, protocols, stacks, but these will by definition not reside on the “Web” but by and large in the darknets.