Wel­come to 2012! The web has reached its third decade and it’s chang­ing more rapidly than ever. I’m no Nos­tradamus but, unlike him, I’m pre­pared to make ten prophe­cies with­out resort­ing to ambigu­ous lan­guage or ten­u­ous expla­na­tions. I do not claim to have mys­ti­cal pre­dic­tive pow­ers but you’re wel­come to gaze at my crys­tal ball … the mists are clear­ing …

1. Chrome Will Over­take Inter­net Explorer

If cur­rent growth rates con­tinue, Chrome will become the world’s most pop­u­lar browser by the mid­dle of 2012 and end IE’s 13-year reign. There will be much rejoic­ing fol­lowed by a sickly hang­over when every­one real­izes just how pow­er­ful Google has become.

2. But IE10 Will be Bet­ter Than You Expect

In response to Google’s dom­i­nance, Microsoft will release IE10 dur­ing the spring. It’ll be a won­der­ful browser with a slick inter­face, amaz­ing speed and excel­lent W3C stan­dards sup­port. It’ll receive glow­ing reviews and every­one will humbly acknowl­edge the fine job Microsoft is doing.
We’ll sub­se­quently return to our default browsers once we real­ize two-thirds of the world can’t install IE10.

3. Win­dows 8 and Win­dows Phone May Sur­prise You Too

Painful expe­ri­ences of Win­dows Vista will be a dis­tant mem­ory by the time Win­dows 8 appears in the fall. It’ll be applauded by busi­nesses, home users, gamers and devel­op­ers alike. It’ll sell well even though the west­ern economies are in melt­down. Web devel­op­ers will also be able to lever­age their skills and write native Win­dows appli­ca­tions using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
Sim­i­larly, devices run­ning Win­dows Phone will become a viable alter­na­tive. Not every­one wants the geek of Android, the Apple-knows-what’s-best-for-you chic of the iPhone, or the best-for-business BS of Blackberry.

4. Tablets and Mobiles Will Begin to Influ­ence Web Design

Every­one will be tak­ing tablets in 2012. The Apple iPad and Kin­dle Fire are increas­ingly pop­u­lar and, within a few months, tablets will be de rigueur for any­one attend­ing a high-powered busi­ness meet­ing. They won’t be used or required, but they’ll make you look cool and impor­tant. Thou­sands of CEOs will con­sider tablets to be the future of IT and insist that all com­pany web sites and appli­ca­tions are com­pat­i­ble. On their device. In por­trait mode. At 480×800.
Per­haps that’s a slight exag­ger­a­tion, but web design­ers will almost cer­tainly need to con­sider small screen devices. Mobiles cur­rently account for 8% of all web access and it’s ris­ing rapidly.

5. Respon­sive Design Will Go Mainstream

With the excep­tion of a few major com­pa­nies, media queries have mostly been used for tech­ni­cal web­sites and demon­stra­tions. That will change in 2012 and every­one will want their site to work on desk­tops, tablets and smart­phones.
My only reser­va­tion: is the indus­try ready for respon­sive lay­outs? I’ve worked with many graphic artists over the years but very few could make the psy­cho­log­i­cal leap beyond fixed-width design. Fluid lay­outs have been with us since day one but the major­ity of the web remains stead­fastly rigid. If you only have time to learn one skill in 2012, make sure it’s CSS3 media queries.

6. Many Mobile App Devel­op­ers Will Switch to HTML5

The mobile mar­ket has become increas­ingly frag­mented with dif­fer­ing ver­sions of iOS, Android, Sym­bian, Black­berry OS, webOS, bada, Win­dows Phone, etc. Many com­pa­nies make a good liv­ing pro­duc­ing apps for a sin­gle plat­form but it’s increas­ingly dif­fi­cult to sup­port mul­ti­ple devices.
The sophis­ti­ca­tion of mobile browsers and APIs make HTML5 web apps an attrac­tive cross-device propo­si­tion. It’s still pos­si­ble to take advan­tage of app store adver­tis­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and mon­e­ti­za­tion by cre­at­ing small native wrap­pers which link to your online application.

7. Adver­tis­ers Will Dis­cover HTML5

If you con­sider web adver­tis­ing to be ugly and intru­sive now, think how bad it’ll be when adver­tis­ers adopt HTML5! The advan­tages (for them) include:

• Adverts can adapt to dif­fer­ent devices and screen sizes using media queries and sim­i­lar technologies.
• File sizes can be reduced so adver­tise­ments appear faster.
• An advert can inter­act with any part of the page — not just its own box.
• HTML5 adverts will be more dif­fi­cult to block.

HTML5 devel­op­ment tools may not be as sophis­ti­cated, but the supremacy of Flash adver­tis­ing is begin­ning to wane.

8. But Flash Will Sur­vive. Just.

Despite a rapidly-expanding mar­ket, Adobe has aban­doned Flash on mobile devices. But the tech­nol­ogy is far from dead. The main rea­son: HTML5 and its devel­op­ment tools are rel­a­tively new whereas design­ers have been using Flash for more than 15 years.
I won’t pre­tend that the future is rosy for Flash, Sil­verlight or any other plu­gin tech­nol­ogy. They evolved to over­come the inher­ent omis­sions and slow progress of web stan­dards, but HTML5 is catch­ing up and legacy browsers will become less of an issue…

9. IE6 and IE7 Will Finally Die

In Jan­u­ary 2012, the world­wide mar­ket share for IE6 was 1.8% and IE7 was 4.0% — and they’re drop­ping fast. In many cases, the devel­op­ment cost for sup­port­ing those browsers can­not be jus­ti­fied.
How­ever, 5.8% of the mar­ket is a lot of peo­ple and they remain the default browsers for many large orga­ni­za­tions and gov­ern­ment depart­ments. The web is device agnos­tic; there may be few eco­nomic rea­sons to test legacy browsers, but active prej­u­dice against spe­cific sec­tors of the com­mu­nity is a dif­fer­ent mat­ter.
Ide­ally, web­sites should remain oper­a­tional in IE6, IE7 or any other web browser. The design need not be pixel-perfect — it can be down­right ugly. It does not nec­es­sar­ily require all the graph­ics, effects, ani­ma­tion or media. You may even choose to dis­able all CSS and JavaScript. But there’s no rea­son why your con­tent should not be avail­able to all.

10. Aver­age Page Sizes Will Reach 1MB

I hope this doesn’t come true but, if cur­rent trends con­tinue, the aver­age total weight for a sin­gle web page — includ­ing all CSS, JavaScript and media files — will be 1MB by the end of 2012. It’s ridicu­lous since HTML5 and CSS3 reduce the need for images and JavaScript. That won’t stop it hap­pen­ing, though.
If your pages are becom­ing bloated, do every­one a favor with a 2012 detox. Make it your New Year res­o­lu­tion. Who am I try­ing to fool? We’ll be stuff­ing our pages with tasty treats by Feb­ru­ary.
Do you agree with my mys­tic pre­dic­tions? Have you expe­ri­enced pre­mo­ni­tions of what’s to come in 2012? Happy New Year!