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25 Years ago the World wide web was born which revolutionized the communications and computer world and has paved careers for over 20 million developers worldwide. When you compare a developers skillset from 20 years ago to a modern day developer some of the core languages are still present such as HTML, shortly followed by CSS and JavaScript. With the progression of these languages over the last 20 years it has revolutionised the industry with what we can now achieve in web development. With these changes it has completely change the way we construct and use these languages from 20 Years ago.
In this blog I will aim to highlight some of the biggest changes we have experienced as working in the Web development team in Superdream and the skillset changes we have all had to adapted to over the 5 years I have been here.
The Responsive Revolution
Over the last few years websites have seen users grow exponentially across a huge range of devices such as mobile phones, Tablets, Small screen notepads and games consoles which has promoted the use of websites across all types of screen sizes including large screen TVs. The rise in responsive use meant that developers have had to adapt their skillsets to provide users with an optimal viewing experience of a website across multiple devices and screen resolutions.
In 2014 global statistics showed us that a typical site would see website use on responsive devices would overtake normal desktop viewing which proved it’s a critical requirement that all websites now cater for this need. Developers and Designers have had to adapt by break out of their Fixed-Width Design approach and adapt to using percent based layouts or use existing prebuilt CSS frameworks or Grid Systems.
Social Network Integration
In 2002 the web saw a rise of social medias platforms starting with Friendster, LinkedIn, Myspace leading to the social media giants of today such as twitter and Facebook. Social media platforms have added to a developer skillset through two different means.
The First is through integrating social media own website technology into your own websites via the use of an API (Application Programming Interface). An API allows developers to connect your website directly to your social media page or account and interact with it. A simple example of this would be displaying your posts or tweets on a page on your site. A more complex example of this is using a technology used by the big social media platforms called Oauth which allows your website users to login to your website or application by using their social media credentials to authenticate with your site. Social media sites offer hundreds of API settings allowing you to interact and control social media element away from their own site.
The Second means that social media sites have contributed to a developers arsenal is a side product from the first means. Companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter have a large amounts of resource, budget and talent to code and construct their social media sites often elements and functionality are often packaged up as side projects and released as open source for the web community to freely use, This can be in form of a new programming language or something small like a feature that you can implement on your site. An example of all the resources that Facebook and Twitter have brought to the web community can be found at (link: https://code.facebook.com/projects/ text: Facebook )and (link: https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource/projects text: Twitter).
Fall of flash and HTML5
For the last 10 years flash has been an important part of the web and was once the primary means of adding interactive functionality to a website. Flash initially grew momentum early in 2005 when YouTube launched which adopted flash technology within its media player. Flash was initially an important part of the web but its most recent downfall occurred during the rise of responsive use as mobile devices such as Apples iPhone did not allow the use of flash due to security issues. As this only left flash to be favoured for Desktop only sites which was not practice to reach entire web audiences.
Google has recently hinted that Adobe flash advertising will cease during 2017 along with the persisting amount of flash security issues starting to surface which is causing the use of flash to rapidly decline, Firefox has also recently said in 2015 that it has now dropped support to Flash due to security issues which I would predict that other browsers will soon follow.
The next successor in place to fill Flash’s position is the latest version of the core web technologies HTML5 & CCS3. These new versions of HTML and CSS now allow developers to achieve the same results that could offer and have now become an essential part of a modern developer’s toolkit. HTML5 & CSS3 is also usable on all devices which is a great addition that flash could not provide.
CSS Tools, Pre-processors and Task runners
Cascading Style sheets (CSS) which controls how the page visually looks has been around since the start of the world wide web, The language layout and syntax used is very similar to the code used today. One of the downsides to CSS is that it is very difficult to produce the code in a programmatic way. SASS (Systematically Awesome Style sheets) came along in 2006 which was is a pre-processor which suddenly allowed developers to write cleaner, minimal code in a progmattic way which makes it easier to make a single change to update the file. For example a colour theme for a website can be updated by changing a few characters of code compared to many lines of code via CSS.
SASS is one of the many thousands of Pre-Processors across the web today which allows developers to add extended functionality to the original language or platform. When using a pre-processer language or syntax it will ultimately need to be complied to convert it to one of the core languages which can then be used on your site.
In 2013 a new phase started which offered another tool called a task runner. A Task runner will automate the development process whilst you are working which will automatically run tasks. One of the huge benefits of a task runner is that it can be instructed to automatically compile your pre-processers when something changes so that you can see the changes nearly instantly .
The following is a list of example of what pre-processing and task runners can bring to your site:
o Automatically render SASS to CSS
o Compress images during development
o Minimise and compress files
o Run any pre-processor automatically
These topic are just a few examples of how the web development industry is changing, There are now more and more web languages and essential code library’s being added more frequently than ever. A good developer today has to be more versatile than ever to keep up with the latest trends and essential practices of web.