Everything is susceptible to change. Web design is no exception. As we enter the New Year, the web design community and the online business community will be rocked with new developments. All these developments, of course, will lead to more diversity and more convenient online transactions. Website designers will have to sit down and study the changes in the online business world for them to improve their trade and be more competitive in their particular business realm. Copy-pasting and copycatting of designs will be the downfall of stubborn Chicago web design. Website critics will surely have a good year next year as more and more website owners opt to renovate their websites to make them more acclimatized to the current design trends. The website owners will be faced with a tough issue whether to renovate the site or not. They will soon realize that there is no such thing as “no website owner left behind” rule in the internet and each website owner must use his own decision-making process to come up with something brilliant and productive. Moreover, we also predict a proliferation of free websites as the idea of empowering the internet will indirectly promote free websites and other free website making tools. Let’s take a look at three tools which will surely rock the website design community in the next year.
1) Progressive Enhancement Tools
According to Wikipedia.org, progressive enhancement is a strategy for web design that emphasizes accessibility, semantic HTML markup, and external style sheet and scripting technologies. It uses web technologies in a layered fashion that allows everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, using any browser or internet connection, while also providing those with better bandwidth, more advanced browser software or more expensive experience an enhanced version of the page. At first, progressive enhancement was considered the separating veil between the free versions and the premium versions. With the demand for better websites getting higher and higher these days, there is no doubt that progressive enhancement tools, whether purely for modification or for website building, will rock the website design community. For the spectator or the online businessman, he should openly welcome such opportunity to make a comeback or a name in the internet ecommerce realm.
2) “Other” Photoshop Tools from the Far East
The ecommerce hubs of the Far East like Japan and South Korea have now introduced their own blockbuster photo or image-editing devices. While observers can point out the fact the Photoshop is the original, there is no doubt that there is a “photo-editing race” going on and that companies based in the Far East are catching up. In fact, the free versions or the public versions are now readily downloadable online. Furthermore, the companies are now issuing English-version of the programs in the internet. Well, 2012 is surely a year for the Photoshop enthusiast but he would surely find more enthusiasts in the Western World and these enthusiasts are using the newer versions or the sister versions of Photoshop created in the design studios of the Fat East.
3) Better Branding Tools
As the ecommerce world gets more branched and confusingly intertwined, the demand for branding tools or brand enhancement tools will get higher. According to the mainstay contributor at webdesignerdepot.com, the ecommerce world is in the verge of something exciting. He noted the trend of web designers building brands and products simultaneously. In the early days of the ecommerce boom, the new online businessmen did not pay much attention on the “brand”. They ignored the effect of the brand on the mindset of the buyers. Of course, most of these new online businessmen are young adults and lacking in experience when it comes to branding. Now, there is an increasing attention on the importance of brands and how can one use the branding tools online for his next website renovation.