Hot Topics in Web Site Development

New technologies, new directions - where did the visions go?

[wolfadeus]

I just received a bunch of invitations to meetings and conferences on website development and SEO and I am amazed how tedious, repetitive and boring the talks seem to be: Most of the meetings look like they could have been held 5 years ago without much difference.

What are the really hot topics in website development? Is there a future beyond consolidation? Rising markets, fresh ideas - maybe even visions?

It would be nice if we could share our hopes and visions in this thread - I will start with naming a few things that I think have the potential to thoroughly change the web as we know it:

- Translation technologies: They currently still suck, but imagine your site competing with every site in the web - instead of every site on the web that is in your language

- Voice recognition and voice generation: Especially if combined with translation services, a highly useful mean to make information more available, especially in mobile use.

- Technologies for the mobile use of the web: From mobile phone to wind screen with LED navigation in your car. Again, combine with the technologies mentioned above to anticipate the full potential. Important to web developers in so far, as it requires a "back to the roots" approach in terms of accessibiltiy and layouts - at least on a short run.

Something that I find boring: Semantic search. This will only make search results for every user better, but since decent webmasters (like those reading WW) strive to produce the best content, it won't change anything in terms of how the web works in principle.

Now you speak!

[wolfadeus]

OK, here's another one from me:

- Advanced map technologies and "cross-mapping"; see a place on a map (eg google maps) and do searches on it - from pizza stand to websites of the local stamp collector's society. "What & Where" searches at a level beyond today's.

[Silvery]

You really find semantic web boring? Have you noticed Yahoo! Search's new SearchMonkey project? The concept behind it is that you could bubble up some of the more key pieces of your webpage to be delivered up directly in the search results presentation of your pages' listings.

For example, the search results listing they show from one yellow pages type of site shows things like a thumbnail of one of the business's photos, the address, phone number, and user rating stars.

If you can get the data you're seeking directly from the search results, you may not need to click through, or it may reduce the number of clicks necessary on the yellow pages site -- if you wanted a map, you could just click on the link directly to the map, for instance.

More interestingly, the sites integrating with this enhanced display protocol might be able to get higher clickthroughs overall than their competitors.

Having semantic markup on your site's pages makes integration with this protocol a lot easier.

So, this would be one case where semantic web and search might actually provide a bit of a new paradigm shift...

[wolfadeus]

Thank you for your reply; I have tried to phrase it a bit provocatively, since everybody seems to be crazy about semantic search and I am not.

Regarding a paradigm shift: If your paradigm is to provide informative, useful and good content for readers - it only means that you will benefit from improved search technologies without any shift being necessary.

Although you are of course right when you say that the implementation of semantic markup is a new or coming task for web developers.