INFOBOX

Half-serious, half-fictional look into the future of web design, new technologies and our place in the future.

Ever so often we dream of jumping into some sort of time machine and running through the thick matter of events and particles into the future. To see ourselves, our close friends and relatives. No, we didn't (yet) invent a time machine, there are still some technicalities to be solved. However, we can try and imagine the future. So go on, make yourself a cup of steamy hot tea, put your feet up and read on. This is your future, too.

Come on, use my time machine!

Yes, I know, it is bloody difficult to predict future. But nevertheless, I will try to do just so. Where do you expect to find yourself in, say, five years time? What will happen to your web page? These questions are of utmost importance to us. For us web life is the only life. Will we use Internet for more than eight hours per day? Will we use it in subway? On a bus? Will we watch movies by demanding them from Microsoft Cinema web server?

Well, if you want these questions answered, I guess we just have to open our imagination just a bit. And we will have a vision of things to come (and yours will no doubt be different from mine). Anyway, close your eyes and start imagining... In 2001 we will all be sitting (all right, you can open your eyes now), staring at our monitors, trying to make sense of new W3C specifications for MSHT4 (Microsoft Hyper Text) and debugging new MSJAVA (Microsoft Java) applet for global object manipulation.

On a more serious note, there seem to be several very important tendencies. First, design becomes more and more complex process. Even now not any single person is expected to draw good images in PhotoShop, at the same time know everything there is on HTML, be a fast JavaScript coder, be able to create secure CGI scripts and write Java applets. It's getting very specialised and hence there will be a division of labour soon. Designers will again be left with "no-programming-involved" tools, like web authoring packages and image manipulation / creation software. Programmers will take care of scripting and applets. And amateurs will be left with rudimentary tools, so that their pages will never look as polished as professional designers' work.

Second, you might've noticed how Internet tends to get interconnected with everything else. Yes, "global communication" is just a buzz word for "many computer connected by slow telephone lines", but there is a tendency to treat your computer indifferently as a remote Internet location. I was told that Windows98 will have Internet Explorer as its core component, which will be used to do everything you ever wanted your OS to do. Wanna copy files - use explorer; wanna format your disk - run explorer; wanna telnet... well, obviously, run explorer! So very soon there will be no difference between a local and a remote computer. Internet will be treated as a part of your disk... or rather your disk will be treated just as a part of Internet.

What does it leave us with? Well, I think a logical step will be to create Internet-specific software, software that can be run on Internet. It goes like this - you buy software, say a shiny disk with a special code on it. You put it in your CD-ROM, it auto-runs, connects to a site of software developer and runs a program from its server. The program is never actually copied to your hard disk. This means less piracy (it should be quite easy to test that two copies of the same license or an invalid license is being run) and more control over user. Developers will be able to get a lot of information from your computer (how much time you spend word processing, do you use software often, etc.) and will (ab)use it to improve their product (get more money from you).

But what use these predictions to web designers? Well, I believe there soon be no job as a web designer. As I said, not any person today can possibly claim to be expert in every sphere of web design, so "web designer" will cease to exist. And, as I argued in the previous paragraphs, the whole "computer technology" will move towards Internet. Non-platform-specific programs will be created (obvious choice today seems to be Java, but that might change, because Microsoft already thought of something, judging by their quarrels with Sun Microsystems) and distributed over the net.

Another strong trend is in "merging" process. Now you can easily display an MS Word document on your web site (using ActiveX) or play sounds or movies (using ActiveX or applets). An obvious step is a unification. Why not code any information using a uniform coding system (similar to MIME but super-universal) so that any difference between a web page or a Word document or a spreadsheet will simply cease to exist? Say you use a PageMaker and you save your result in Java-coded data file. Now you go to your web editor and simply ask editor to display the PageMaker file. And the same process will repeat when you use any other application. The data file will be device independent (and possibly even application independent, though unlikely, at least in the near future) and hence will only depend on the power of browser to display them.

Users will be presented with more and more simple versions of "things", soon an average user will not be expected to be able to uninstall a software or format a floppy (hey, even floppy will have to go). Layers, styles, downloadable fonts will all have to go, because a new uniform data handling will be able to handle any structure of web site design.

So if this prophecies will come true, this would mean only one thing - everything will get even more complicated and no one person would know even a small part of the whole huge subject of web design.

So come on, use my time machine to get hold of "Adobe Photoshop 2001 Bible" and start reading now, if you don't want to lose your skills.

If this account leaves you craving for more prophecies, you will be pleasantly surprised when I tell you that there is another look into future on webIGN site. It's a fictionalised account of things to come in next 100 years, don't treat it too seriously, read it like a piece of science fiction, and I hope you enjoy it. Well, where is it? It's on our page, but you can go there directly by using this link: @ALT:TimeLine.

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