The year has well advanced into autumn (the Fall in North America) while we have moved into a newer web designing era where not aesthetics but purpose rules the roost. Throughout the last year as well as the greater part of this year, web designers all over the United States have experimented with every conceivable idea to produce thousands of websites, each having its own exclusivity and uniqueness. However, it may be worthwhile taking a peek at what keeps the designers busy during the Fall this year.
CSS3 + HTML 5
The current trend in web designing revolves more round CSS3 and HTML 5 than Flash as is felt now. Mind you, this is happening despite the fact that HTML can hardly substitute Flash when it comes to creating outstanding design elements. Nevertheless, HTML5 now works on Firefox 3.5 and higher, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer 8. This programming language is all about giving developers more flexibility, connecting data / drawings / videos / audio by way of delivering designs faster and better.
[Excerpt from Les Orchard, who works on Mozilla’s web development team on HTML 5 drag and drop in Firefox 3.5: “Drag and drop is one of the most fundamental interactions afforded by graphical user interfaces. In one gesture, it allows users to pair the selection of an object with the execution of an action, often including a second object in the operation. It’s a simple yet powerful UI concept used to support copying, list reordering, deletion (ala the Trash / Recycle Bin), and even the creation of link relationships ………. As it turns out, this is answered by HTML 5 specification section on new drag-and-drop events, and Firefox 3.5 includes an implementation of those events.
So far as CSS3 is concerned, even though not all browsers have adopted it as such, but they are progressively attempting to do so. Nevertheless, some of the novelty features that have attracted many designers include mega drop down menus, multiple backgrounds, text shadow and box shadow, transparent images and many more. Animated images, as we know, are a great feature with CSS3.
Uncluttered Color Scheme
Complex color schemes are not in vogue now. Designers now prefer cleverly using primary colors such as yellow, red and green to create stunningly bright sites that at once ask for attention. Also, they are currently limiting their palette to two or maybe three color, along with their varying shades to communicate messages like never before. In other words, simplicity is the name of the game now.
Mobile Device Compatibility
In order to cope with the tremendous popularity of tablet technology and smart phones, web designers are now adopting to newer technology and standard. Realizing the difficulty of accommodating the entire website into varying screen resolution and sizes, they are increasingly depending on CSS3 which easily allows such compatibility. Moreover, one of the biggest advantages that the technology offers is that they can design a whole site, and at the same time allow the coding to conform to the user’s viewing device.
In fact, they have fully appreciated that a mobile website must retain the design elements of the original, but in a tinier touch-screen-friendly format and so are doing the needful in their own ways.
Responsive Web Design
It simply means taking a different approach by which one can create a flexible website layout that animatedly fits into the screen of sundry devices (any resolution) ranging from desktop to laptop as also from ‘browser supported smart phones’ to all varieties of mobile devices. What is more, this new approach or technology facilitates web designers to create just one version of the website that works on all devices instead of creating various versions of the same website for different devices.
Typographical Changes
Diversifying from 2012 typographic regulations, web designers are now more in favor of integrating custom fonts into websites, using tools such as CSS Typeset, Type tester, WhatTheFont to create more appeal in their newly designed websites. Mixing bold and scrolling letters; applying extra-large font sizes to grab the viewer’s attention is taking the hot seat during this year’s Fall.