I can't help but think that rapidly changing technology is centered on the internet and connectivity. We are moving towards a common destination; the world of personal processing power, big screens, and localized computing is diminishing. Where are we going?
Cloud Computing
With huge leaps in internet technology, we find that more and more we are presented with a cloud system. That is to say, we are having our processing done at a different location. Our computers are acting more as a terminal--a recipient of the data processed elsewhere. This world of cloud computer is breaking into our lives in the form of documents(Google docs), and is even extending to games(frame by-frame communication). I believe that the future of technology is in this system. Consumers can find less expensive computers with less processing power, and simply receive data from another high-powered bulky source. We are seeing this trend in the form of iPads, tablets, and Netbooks.
Apps, not web pages
With the change in how our data is received, we also find changes in how this data is written, processed, and designed. The old static web page has since faded into new style sheeted-dynamic data. We no longer use plain HTML, as a web developer, is it suicide to commit to this old standard professionally. We now use XHTML, CSS, PHP, and AJAX. This is because we're no longer writing websites for simple informational purposes, we're writing to be interactive. We're moving into the age of web applications.
Newer New Standards
But even these "new" standards are slowly being overtaken. As we move towards a completely networked world, there exists a demand for a more standardized, feature-rich solution(that's singular, not plural). This is because of one major thing: diversity of platforms. It seems as more and more devices shrink and find their ways into your pockets, there is also an increase in the quantity of operating systems. As diverse as this scheme seems, it doesn't stop there. Each operating system usually has it's own special browser, and own way of generally doing things. What does this mean for the consumer? Not a lot.
But what does this mean for the developers? A massive headache! You see, we will never get each operating system to use only one type of program. So we have to write our applications to work across multiple systems. The only obvious answer to this is to make sure that each type of program interprets the same code the same way. This, unfortunately, isn't a reality right now. But big standard setters such as the W3C are stepping in. We have standards for old static websites--HTML--but we don't have standards for the dynamic side of things. Right now developers can choose between many acronyms, and hot new animation schemes such as AJAX, jQuery, JavaScript, Flash, Flex, etc.
Meet HTML5 and CSS3
The future is coming sooner than you think. Remember W3C? They're basically saying screw all your fancy library full of engines for dynamic content. We should have ONE dynamic language. ONE standard; that will work seamlessly across multiple programs--it will be interpreted the same way. This is the dream of HTML 5. Which, as a standard, features a Javascript powered canvas element for interactive animated content. Ideally, this will replace Flash, and other web plug ins such as silver light. CSS is also getting overhauled. CSS3, the newest version, adds much more style control than ever before. Again, the key success-maker of these new technologies will be their standardization across multiple platforms.
What do you think is the future?
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