New developments in web interactivity

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In the next few months and years, you can expect the web to get a lot more interactive. Besides the ever-increasing processing speed and hardware advances, there are some amazing changes going on in the world of web browsing that many may not even notice. One of the more exciting trends is a movement toward JavaScript, a dynamic programming language that is interpreted directly by web browsers.

What does that mean? It means that, in general, JavaScript can provide more dynamic functions on websites with less memory and at a faster speed. A good example of a step forward in JavaScript is this cloth simulator:

Amazing Cloth Simulator!

It's literally a small program that simulates a piece of material. However, it's surprisingly fun to play with -- way more fun than a real cloth. Normally a program like this would be in Flash, a proprietary software created by Adobe mainly for animation but increasingly used for dynamic web applications. It would take longer to load and it would be completely invisible to search engines.

That's not the only thing. Recently, the new standards for web's main language, HTML, include video players. There needs to be some work on the codec for the video player, but once that's out of the way, we could see the end of Flash video. This will make web video faster, easier, more accessible, and open source (depending on the codec).

So, what does all this nerdy stuff mean to you? It means that website design in the next few years is going to take a big leap forward. The ability for interaction and dynamic applications will increase. It also means that if your site is just a glorified online brochure, it may not be up to snuff for much longer. It's already happening to a degree, but soon users are going to expect a more dynamic interaction on the web.

Things are going to get very exciting.