I’ve long viewed web development as a shifting balance of power between graphic designers and software developers. A rough timeline would go something like this
- In the beginning: web creators used text and html, Advantage Developers
- 1997 – People discover html tables, allowing precise graphic placement. Placement allowed graphic designers to go nuts with Photoshop – Advantage Designers
- 1998 – ASP, Perl and PHP come about, allowing developers to make content decisions – Advantage Developers
- 2000 – Flash gets easy enough to use – Advantage Designers
- 2005 – Browser standards and search engines become competant, which makes the actual code matter – Advantage Developers
- 2008 – Tools like TypePad, WordPress, and JQuery automate Javascript, SEO and CSS standardization, which had been a huge part of what developers did on a day to day basis. The automation allows emphasis to shift to the look and feel – Advantage Designers
- 2010 – Html 5 arrives (sort of), making the web much more of an application! – Advantage Developers
I haven’t had much time to research Html 5, but I’m impressed so far. It’s not a sea change from anything that exists now, but Html 5 is an impressive refinement of existing technology.
photo credit: B.K. Ragsdale
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog