1. State of Web Development
@isaqahmed
22/10/2012 1

2. Introduction
• Web development is going through rapid evolution since the
onset of mobile (or rather iPhone)
• Challenges in presenting content to users with varied network
speed, screen size and capabilities limitation has increased
manifold
• There exists no silver bullet today to make web development
easier, and its harder to monetize the content
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3. Introduction
• This presentation will cover
– Challenges of web development in content design,
discovery, monetization
– Prevailing methodologies
– Predictions for the future
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4. Challenges : Design
• Fragmentation of form factors
– websites are accessed from devices with screen sizes as
low as 240 pixels to ~2000 pixels width with varying pixel
densities
• Fragmentation of capabilities
– fragmentation is not limited to screen size, it extends to
support of browser cookies, performance of JavaScript,
inclusion of HTML5 features [1]
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5. Challenges : Design
• Unknown future
– Perhaps the biggest challenge is to develop website for
tomorrows unknown devices whose screen size, device
capabilities, form is unknown. It could be a wrist watch, a
sunglass, electronic kitchen appliance
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6. Challenges : Content Discovery
• Search Engines are broken
– Most web site have dedicated optimized version of web site for
mobile phones, which generally involves changes in URL
breaking SEO
– Should Search engines show search results based on how
iphone/android user sees a website or how a PC user sees a
website?
– How does Search engine handle AJAX calls, where URLs are
composed on users interaction with the site
• App stores for web apps is not a solution
– Packaging web sites into web application is yet another
fragmentation of paid v/s unpaid subscriber to the site
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7. Challenges : Monetization
• Limited screen real estate for Ads
– Unlike websites, inclusion of Ads in smaller screen devices
impacts the usage of web site more adversely.
– Generally small screen devices have one Ad at the bottom
of the screen, where as website on PC have ~5-10 Ads
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8. Challenges : Quality Assurance
• Inventory of devices
– Testing website for usability against so many form factors
involves buying or renting these devices.
– Online tools to test real devices solve this problem to some
extent, but experience of testing is bad due to low
response time and the service is expensive.
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9. Solutions
• Responsive web development [2]
• Adaptive web development
• Combination of Responsive and Adaptive
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10. Methodology: Responsive
• Emphasis on careful design of the website and maintaining a
single copy of website for all form factors.
• Web site should alter its form and behavior based on the
device capabilities through feature detection
• Limitations
– Any change in the web site design during maintenance
needs to be tested against all form factors
– Careful design cannot cover the unknown form of the
future device
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11. Methodology: Adaptive
• Emphasis on having dedicated sites for major/popular devices
• Generally a different domain of the website starting with m.
or ending with .mobi is maintained and all mobile hits are
redirected to them
• Limitations :
– Time to add/update feature is poor, requires update on all
dedicated sites
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12. Future of Web development
• More challenges
– Expect new unknown devices to be internet enabled
• Standardization
– HTML5 to be more stable
• Monopoly of OS : Unknown
– Operating Systems hold control over device features exposed to
web browser. Access to camera, accelerometer and others are
almost unavailable till now (possible explanation: opening of
these features will affect app store sales)
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13. Future of Web development
• More and more websites will be semantically linked
• Web developers will be forced to design sites for visually
impaired as future users of websites may not necessarily be
human
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14. Bibliography
1. http://www.quirksmode.org/compatibility.html
2. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/
3. http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/09/Facebook-HTML5-Native
4. http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
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