Web Development Trends 2007

Almost four months of 2007 have passed and it seemed to me interesting to identify current trends in the web development market and, if possible, take them into account when planning new projects. Actually below is the result of my research.

• One of the most well-established principles of 2006, and which will obviously find its development in 2007, is the principle of continuously updated software. It seems that we will gradually move away from naming versions in the manner of 1.2.3 beta and only indicate the date of the last update (2007-05-05 13:09:03 push).
• In 2007, the open API of successful projects will be increasingly used. Currently, there is not yet a sufficient selection of publicly available web services servers. Yes, and developers are often cautious about the prospect of being dependent on the performance of other people's services. However, the possibilities of Internet solutions are growing with each new startup. Obviously, the time is coming when developers will have to choose, either to provide users with modern solutions built on third-party services, or try to keep up with market innovations, relying only on their own strength. By the way, those who choose to use third-party services will automatically receive the already mentioned continuously updated software.
  
  Links: Example of creating a photo gallery using Flickr
  
  An example of integration of the Google Analytics and CakePHP statistics service
  
  Open API List
  
  
• Operations on the XML data structure using the built-in JavaScript functions are relatively resource-intensive and poorly portable between platforms. In this vein, we can expect the further spread of alternative JSON technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON), as well as the growing demand for the XML E4X service language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4X) , remaining until recently in the shadows. Now that Firefox supports this language, developers will finally be able to appreciate its simplicity and elegance in practice.
• In the market of enriched Internet applications, specialized tools will begin to crowd AJAX frameworks. The industry giants were worried about this and the beginning of 2007 was marked by the launch of the Silverlight SDK and cross-browser plug-in (http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/) from Microsoft (formerly known as the Windows Presentation Foundation) and the release of the Flash CS3 product from Adobe / Macromedia (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/introducing_flash_cs3.html). Very soon, web applications of companies using ready-made tool environments based on either WPF or Flex will stand out against the general background of a new degree of “enrichment.” Take a look, for example, at the GUI components available at NetAdvantage (http://www.infragistics.com/hot/wpf.aspx#NetAdvantageforWPFBeta). Unfortunately, and perhaps fortunately it will be affordable only for quite large studios.
• The practice of distributed project development is becoming more and more relevant. And now it is already predictable that products of the class “virtual office space” will appear on the market. These systems are designed to embody the full power of Web 2.0 applications for organizing and monitoring real-time collaborative work on projects. Perhaps this will reduce the risk of project development teams from freelancers.
• Special attention will be paid to the development of multimodal portals using widgets. When designing projects, support for various mobile devices will increasingly be provided.
• Probably, there will be new technologies and programs for compressing various types of data. The trends of 2006, aimed at the separation between text users, audio and video, have generated countless streams of diverse media on the Web. In this amount of information is difficult to navigate. However, in order to view / listen to a particular file and decide whether you need it, you may need to download tens of megabytes from the server. This state of affairs cannot suit the users and will most likely generate new solutions.
• Already in 2006, studying the proposals of leading Java developers could draw attention to the popularity of the Java Content Repository (JCR) technology. The migration of content-dependent Java applications to JCR will continue this year. We can also expect the emergence of similar solutions for other software platforms.
• Will find further development of unification of authorization services in large companies. The growing popularity of OpenID (www.openid.net) makes this solution a leader. However, other solutions such as SAML, Liberty and MS Passport will also be widely used.
• As already mentioned, RIA solutions are becoming more complex, but at the same time the capabilities of popular AJAX frameworks are growing. Considerable investments were made in standardization of AJAX-based solutions (www.openajax.org). Web development studios are forced to stop developing private AJAX solutions, but use a fully functional proven platform. However, choosing the AJAX framework with the current abundance of solutions presented is quite difficult (http://ajaxpatterns.org/Ajax_Frameworks). Applications created in various frameworks are distinguished by a rich assortment of special effects (www.miniajax.com), an integrated approach (http://www.yui-ext.com/docs/), and a thoughtful user interface (http://samples.visualwebgui.com/ MainForm.wgx). But one can hardly distinguish the absolute leader among them. I think the key role in choosing frameworks will be played by the specific features of a particular solution. So, for example, GWT (http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/) allows you to write user interfaces in Java and then compile them into Java Script. Experts with experience in Java will appreciate this solution, because the development of complex projects in Java Script with its scant debugging capabilities is sometimes a real disaster. However, for particularly specific needs, there is also a solution that allows using JavaScript on the server side (https://phobos.dev.java.net/).
• This year we should also expect new open source projects working with multimedia. Already, you can watch similar projects. Here you can pay attention to CcHost - an application for online interaction and sharing of multimedia (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CcHost), snap2eyes (www.snap2eyes.com) and Spotzer (www.spotzer.com/) - solutions for online video production and rich media for online advertising, Veotag (www.veotag.com) - an application that allows you to add text labels and supporting information to audio and video content.
• UPDATE: Given the popularity of mashup projects that use applications from distributed owners, there is a need to constantly be aware of: if they all work and interact correctly. Modern management and monitoring systems do not solve such problems very well. In addition, now they are too complex and inflexible. The market needs more dynamic monitoring systems and perhaps those will appear soon.