State Of The Web In 08 Points To 09 Design Trends

Web Directions just posted a “State of the Web 2008″ report with some interesting implications for web design and development trends for 2009!

The report itself is a poll of over 50 questions regarding web practices; data which was taken from 1200 respondents over the month of December 2008. Those who replied were by and large web designers and developers, fields that necessitate keeping abreast of the best web practices and newest technologies.

A tally of the results only can be found here. Some interesting trends can be seen within the summarized data:

More than 78% of users utilize Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.5 for their day to day work. Less than 10% utilize Vista.

Firefox 3 and Safari 3 clock in overwhelmingly at a combined 80+% for use in day to day browsing. The newest high-profile browser, Google Chrome, doesn’t appear to have yet been widely adopted, as only 4% of those polled use it.

Internet Explorer does come out a “winner” in one regard: Respondents use both IE6 and IE7 very heavily to test websites, as Internet Explorer is notorious for causing problems in interpreting code; usually resulting in bugs that need to be worked around after a website is completed. In fact, over 75% of those surveyed develop to WC3 standards first, then work around Internet Explorer.

In regards to markup language, 93% use a mixture of HTML and XHTML. Those sticking exclusively to HTML are few, these days. As are designers that utilize tables for layouts. Nearly 85% of the web designers and developers responding said they never used them anymore.

In addition to this, over 75% of respondents said that consistency in design across browsers is key, although many will use features designed for newer browsers if they can find a way to represent them in older browsers as well. (And many will use media that some users need a plug-in for.)

One area that hasn’t yet caught on in regards to website optimization is designing and developing for devices other than laptops or PCs. Only 25% answered that they build sites with handhelds in mind.

Other design trends include the regular use of Javascript (over 95%!), heavy usage of JQuery (over 65%), with 75% following design etiquette that dictates separating Javascript from other markup language.

And, overwhelmingly, web developers are using open source technologies to build their sites. Open sources is a design philosophy that Noam Design adheres to very strongly. The notion being that the more open our tools are, the more rigorously tested they are, and the more reliable and pliant they become. You build a strong foundation when you build with open source technology, and that strength returns to you in kind when you seek out new open source!

This is only a drop in the bucket in regards to the information gathered. View the report results to see much more.

The overall results of this report, culled from web designers and developers, are a jump ahead of usage results from regular online users – many who still rely on browsers and operating systems that come packaged with their commercial computer purchases. The ubiquitous presence of Internet Explorer in the marketplace is in opposition to those who develop the tools and content that the marketplace uses.

In particular, it illuminates a large divide in Microsoft’s accomplishments in the past few years. Their savvy comes through brightly when you examine their distribution efforts, but seems to be altogether lacking when their products are examined at large.

Web design and development are heading down some very clear roads, but will it herald a sea change in what kind of hardware consumer use? It’ll be interesting to find out!