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5 Web Technologies and Trends to Watch in 2011

Tuesday, January 11, 2011
In 2010 we saw the rise of HTML5, the maturation of CSS3, the release of Rails 3.0, and the widespread adoption of the @font-face selector (part of CSS3) — among other things. In short: it was a busy year for advancing web development technologies.

What will 2011 hold?

Below is a list, compiled by Mashable editors of some of the web technologies and trends we think should be on your radar for the coming year. These aren’t all straight up web dev technologies, per se, but they’re all things that will have an impact on website and app development in 2011.

1. jQuery Mobile

jQuery has become practically synonymous with JavaScript, in large part because of its extensibility, ease of use and strong project leadership. With the goal of being a touch-optimized web framework for tablets and smartphones, jQuery Mobile is one of the most visible projects aiming to take cross-platform, cross-device web development for mobile browsers to the next level. As more and more developers consider building apps with HTML5, a solid mobile JavaScript framework becomes more and more enticing. jQuery Mobile has the pedigree to become the de facto JavaScript framework for mobile.

2. Hardware-Accelerated Web Browsers

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is lightning fast, thanks to its use of DirectX 10 and hardware acceleration, vastly improving the speed and capabilities of the browser versus its competitors. Thanks to that envelope-pushing from Microsoft, Google and Mozilla are quickly scrambling to match the hardware acceleration capabilities of IE9. Next year, your browser is going to feel a lot faster.

3. Node.js and Server Side JavaScript

The Node.js website describes it as an “evented I/O for V8 JavaScript.” Essentially, it’s a toolkit for writing event-driven servers in JavaScript. What does that mean? In simple terms, it means no waiting around for slow I/O operations to complete before moving on to other operations; and for Node.js specifically, it means doing it all in server side JavaScript. For things like real-time web apps, web crawlers, file uploading, streaming, etc. — where speed is paramount — this is very important. Node.js represents the beginning of what I expect will be a wider spread adoption of server side JavaScript in 2011. For more on what Node.js is and how it works, check out this excellent overview on Simon Willison’s blog.

4. Real-Time Clickstream Sharing

There are tons of ways to share what you’re reading on the Internet — social sites and other online publishing tools made waves this year, with mass integration of share buttons and the gradual adoption of desktop clients, widgets and bookmarklets, which all made sharing easier. Real-time clickstream sharing is the next step in sharing your personal online experience, and 2011 is the year that will decide if the Internet is ready for it or not. Keep on sites like Sitesimon, Voyurl and Dscover.me.

5. NoSQL Databases

NoSQL, a loosely defined term used to describe alternative database engines that generally don’t follow the traditional relational database schemas widely in use, has been on the rise in recent years. Notable
alternative databases that gained attention recently include Google’s BigTable, Amazon’s Dynamo, Apache Cassandra, MongoDB, CouchDB, Voldemort and Riak. Of course, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater — different doesn’t necessarily mean better. There are always trade-offs when choosing one data model over another. As Ted Dziuba wrote, “by replacing MySQL or Postgres with a different, new data store, you have traded a well-enumerated list of limitations and warts for a newer, poorly understood list of limitations and warts.”

Still, the explosive growth of alternative database systems in the past couple of years definitely singles NoSQL out as a web technology trend to watch in 2011.

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