Much has changed in the last 20 years, but few things have undergone so many changes as web development. We go through several phases, often so different, that it is unimaginable that it is the same story.
The past of web development:
The past of the web, for those who experienced this era, seems to have occurred yesterday. Sites flickered, things jumped on the screen or on the screen, we checked with users if their browsers could display images – marquee, blink, image map – the web interfaces looked more like a lively party than a place where information and links to more information.
After this phase, we entered another, which, despite having played an important role in the growth of the web itself, was extremely complicated for development. Those who have not seen have certainly heard of the browser war – Microsoft Internet Explorer versus Netscape Navigator, JavaScript versus JScript.
This competition has brought important advances, but also many problems. Among the most notorious is the lack of compatibility of the technologies used. We no longer checked whether the user’s browser had a particular feature. We started developing for specific browsers. We checked for screen resolution if the user was using Internet Explorer and the browser version. We have come to the point of restricting access to content, based on the tool that the user used.
It was a dark phase. Urgent intervention was needed. It was necessary for the competition to bring advances rather than constraints. It was necessary for an organization to promote standardization.
The present of web development:
Perhaps the biggest breakthrough we’ve had in web development was the October 1994 W3C foundation. If we now have SVG, PNG, HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, DOM, RDF, SOAP, and many others, and these formats work equally well on almost any device, we owe it to W3C. The main objective of the entity, which is to promote standardization and interoperability, has been achieved. Development has become simpler, precisely because of this standardization. If we now have the possibility of an agnostic development, we must thank the W3C for the standardization work done at the time of those 20 years.
I wonder what the development would be like today, if we were still developing as before. If we checked whether the user had the Flash plugin installed, or if it had a screen resolution of 1024 × 768 pixels, how would we do it today? We are no longer able to do this kind of verification. Today, access to applications comes from a variety of sources and devices. If we were to check each one, our applications would be pretty much a gigantic conditional structure, with different paths and branches for each type of access source. No, we do not need it any more.
The future of web development:
Although the semantic web is already a current topic and we are already developing applications with this concern, I believe that much will still happen. Processors like TrueNorth, recently introduced by IBM, will become reality in a short time. Machines will come to understand, in fact, the content we produce. And if machines can understand the meaning of things, these machines can, for example, increase the accessibility of content.
One of the biggest difficulties I see today is offering the content to a user who has a special need. We already have standardizations and specifications in this sense, but how do we produce content for someone who has a different experience? How can we deliver the best experience for those who do not see, hear, or have any other special needs?
I believe that when we give semantic meaning to the content and comprehension capacity of the machines, we take a step towards more accessible content. Semantics is already a reality, but I believe that accessibility to content, regardless of the origin of access, of the difficulties that the user has, will be the reality in the near future.
Conclusion:
By analyzing the past and the present of web development, the technological advances and the diverse possibilities of access to the content that we have today, it is somewhat complicated to predict the future. A lot has changed in 20 years and will certainly change much more quickly in the next 20 years.
What is easy to notice, however, is that web development is now much easier. And it is much easier, because today we have a much greater probability of the means of access to content to be made by a standardized technology. If we have standardization and a greater ease of development, we also have much better access experiences than we have ever had.
There is still a lot to do to make content accessible. I believe we will have a lot of efforts in accessibility in the future. Regardless of which way we go, I believe it will be a future with standardization. Therefore, as a web developer since a long time, I have much to thank the W3C for the role it has played in the standardization of web technologies.
