I try to keep up with web development trends but it’s hard to keep pace since it’s such a fast evolving field. Barely a week goes by without the release of a new JS framework, elaborate build tool or testing suite — all of them touted as the one to learn. Sorting the hype from the genuinely useful is no mean feat, so my aim in this article is to summarise some of the most interesting happenings that web development saw in the last year, and what trends we expect to see more of in 2019.

A technology or framework doesn’t have to be brand new to be on our list here, it just needs to be growing rapidly or evolving in an interesting way. Let’s take a look!

Looking Back on 2018: SPA, CSS Grid, and Speed

Single Page Applications (SPAs) saw a leap in popularity in 2018. A simple concept made possible by the power of modern Javascript, a SPA loads a page once then never reloads it or navigates to another page; instead, Javascript is used to manipulate the DOM and render new layouts in the browser. JSON data can be sent between the client and server, but the page behaves more like a desktop application than a “conventional” website. (Visit the websites of Gmail, Facebook, Apple and many more to see a SPA in action). It can provide a much snappier experience to the user and really transform the responsiveness of a site, but usually requires a sizeable chunk of code shipped to the browser. It’s an idea that’s been popular for a while but really saw a lot of developer engagement last year.

2018 also saw some long-awaited improvements to core web technologies. It’s fair to say that when HTML and CSS were conceived, they were not designed to handle the modern web. Hence, CSS preprocessors and libraries are rife, because they provide a more abstract, convenient interface to create and layout UIs. Bootstrap, the most popular front-end library, has a grid system which has been widely used to easily position content for years. 2018 brought the widespread adoption of a native CSS grid, supported by all major browsers; a big deal for headache-free aligning.

Something that was really taken to heart last year was how much mobile users care about page-load speed. In fact, Google even started including this in its ranking algorithms for search. Additionally, its “Open Source” Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project continues to be popular but controversial for the amount of control Google has over it.

Expected in 2019 on the Backend:

First, let’s talk about some of the backend/server-side changes we can expect to see, before moving onto front-end technologies.

Containers

Ok, so this one certainly isn’t a new idea, but it’s a technology which is growing so fast that it’s impossible to ignore. These days, rapid deployment is the name of the game, which means your backend/server needs a consistent, repeatable environment. The goals of this is to make …read more

Source:: Hackaday