The State Of Web Development - Ajax set to surpass Flash in '07
Ektron and SitePoint did a survey of 5,000 web developers over the US summer, and have just released the results in a report entitled The State of Web Development 2006/2007. It's packed full of useful data, even in the 25-page preview (which is free). The bits that particularly interested me were the following two charts, showing which web technologies developers and organizations are using now - and plan to use in future.
Interestingly AJAX is not that far behind Flash (which has been around for much longer). See below for more on that trend... Blogs are well-used, while wikis not so - no real surprise there, as blogs are generally easier to use. Syndication / RSS at 36% is still a little low, but I predict it'll be much higher next year thanks to the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo bringing it into the mainstream.
Most web technologies will apparently be used more - in particular Ajax, which next year is predicted to surpass Flash for the first time.
I'm quite surprised that syndication is not planned to be used more next year, as to my mind RSS and syndication has only just scratched the surface of development opportunities. Custom search is another that I pick to be used more - yet it's slated to go down in this report! Microformats are probably a 'long bet', as it's still low on peoples radar according to this report.
What will be the next big thing on the Web?
I also enjoyed the section about the 'next big thing' on the Web. Some responses:
- Real-time visual 3D view and navigation of a site
- more standards compliance, responsible use of technologies and semantics
- portable information progress
- Paradigm shift: you will not search the Web for information. You will define what you want, and the Web will collect it for you.
- Voice interactivity/navigation
- "...total immersion. Cell phones, PDAs, laptops, PCs, TVs – so many different ways exist to access the Web and more are added every day. The Web is going to become –if it hasn’t already – the hub on which the world spins."
- "Integration of Internet technologies into everyday life that does not involve a desktop or even a mobile/cell/PDA"
What are your thoughts on the next big thing on the Web?
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Next big thing? OpenLaszlo, I'd say.. I've experimented it a little bit and seems like it really rocks! It has an XML based syntax and allows you to produce Flash or AJAX content with the same code (beta feature yet). The Eclipse plug-in allows you to use it in a free, full-featured IDE. However, last time I checked it wasn't very good yet. But in overall, Laszlo seems promising and the best thing is that it is open source and licensed under a very liberal BSD-like license.
And no, I'm not affiliated with LaszloSystems :)
You can check it out on http://www.openlaszlo.org/
My prediction is a big crash of web 2.0 firms in 2008 . . .
Interesting article! I would take the results with a pinch of salt though - AJAX has obviously received massive exposure over the last year or so putting it into the minds of developers. Unfortunately there are still things that it simply cannot do which is where flash will always come out on top. Once the development community start to see some well developed and designed Adobe Flex 2 applications I think flash will be right up there again.
AJAX + Flex could make a very interesting combo..
Laszlo is fine - it has the advantage of being open source and the ability to output to AJAX is a very strong selling point however the data services (from what I have seen) are far from that of Flex.
Flash/Flex and Ajax offers different experience and it's like to compare apples to oranges. Ajax has limited rich capabilities and graphics support, Flash has problems with text. Both have problems with SEO, Flash a bit less but still.
How could you compare the two?
I don't think it's apples and oranges.... maybe apples and pears. Because they are both used to achieve rich interactive functionality. But I certainly agree that Flash is 'richer' than Ajax, and that Ajax is better for text-based things (and so better for search engines etc).
@Michael - "Both have problems with SEO, Flash a bit less but still."
Actually, Flash doesn't.
While I'll disclose that I am actually anti-Flash (I hate the lack of usability that Flash website have), the one benefit is that by in large, Flash works across OSes (Linux coming soon?) and across browsers. Ajax toolkits like what Google offers attempt to address this problem. But when an Ajax application will 'just work' across heterogeneous systems, I won't shed a tear for Flash.
jake, can you elaborate?
One small correction: "Most web technologies will apparently be used more - in particular Ajax, which next year is predicted to surpass Flash for the first time." isn't necessarily true (it may be true, but the survey doesn't give enough information).
It would be true *if* the majority of Flash applications that were in use today were completely disbanded and rewritten in Ajax, but that's likely not going to happen.
What the survey does say is that more people are going to evaluate Ajax than Flash, but it doesn't say that next year Ajax will be more popular than Flash.
In a survey of 5,000, nearly 40% say they use Flash at the moment, about 2,000 people. 30% say they use Ajax, or 1,500 people. Next year, 45% may use Ajax, about 2,200 people, and 28% may use Flash, about 1,400 people.
No where in the survey does it say that those 2,200 who will use Ajax are on top of the 1,500 or so that are using it now, and no where does it say that the 1,400 who may Flash are the ones currently using Flash. In fact, the report says nothing about that.
So, its possible that the 1,400 people who will use Flash are in addition to the existing 2,000, and the 2,200 who may use Ajax includes the 1,500 already using it.
I'm not saying that's true, and I think its unlikely to be true, but the survey doesn't back up your statement that next year Ajax will be more popular than Flash.
Mike
I think you will start to see a hybrid of AJAX/Flash as Flash9 and Flex2 allow for some pretty type coupling. A good example of this is a site like Streampad (http://www.streampad.com) which (as far as I can tell) uses HTML/AJAX for its UI but Flash for playing music, persistent storage and clipboard.
Using the best of both these technologies is most likely the way web development is headed in the next couple of years.
"What the survey does say is that more people are going to evaluate Ajax than Flash, but it doesn't say that next year Ajax will be more popular than Flash."
Mike, I agree that interpreting statistical results like this should be done carefully and you made very valid points. We should look at what the results really say and don't say, and try not to draw conclusions if the data does not support it. But, to make another correction, what the survey does say, based on the question asked, is that the technologies that the respondents are planning to use in the future include Ajax and Flash, among others, and that the percent that plan to use Ajax is greater than the percent that plan to use Flash (45+ % versus 27+%). It doesn't say anything specifically about just evaluating the technologies.
Dennis
What about Java Applets?
Interesting
Trying to understand this.
You are saying blog, syndicates, microformats and wikis are 'technologies' or 'applications' of technologies.
All of these can be used either with Ajax or Flash.
You can have a Flash-Blog or a Ajax-Blog. and so on...
So I feel further research is needed to drill down and get more data seperately on 'technology' alone.
Very interesting figures. I, for one, am relieved that it seems developers will be trying to adhere to standards.
Quite a few recent surveys demonstrated the significant impact of Web 2.0 technologies on the developer community. Beyond the convergence of enterprise application development and web development, these surveys show significant trends in the growing adoption of open standard based web technologies at the price of technologies that are proprietary and not web compatible.
Next big thing - virtual OS
Ajax, or rather more interactive web applications seem to be a obcious trend. Users are not going to go back to full page refreshes and static content. The main issue should be how to continually and economically serve this trend as developers, when all of the platforms are in flux. Developers that need to deliver both desktop and web solutions find themselves in a bind since they need to master disparate technologies and techniques. It is this issue that Visual WebGui (http://www.visualwebgui.com) tries to tackle by enabling development of zero-footprint rich internet applications using desktop development objects and techniques. My point is that there is no argument over whether Ajax is a defining technology - it is! The point is how to make it a solid, cost-effective choice for enterprise application developers so that they can offer quality web applications to their customers.
Very good survey. It's good to get into a glimpse into the future to keep up with whats hot on the web. Trying to take advantage of these technologies now will give people an advantage in the future. I also agree that mobile integration of the web will be huge in the future.
I think this chart is indicitive of the growth of a new technology. It is not so much that developers will be abandoning Flash, as learning about AJAX. Flash is obviously not going anywhere, as it is an industry standard for dyanamic graphics-rich features on the web. AJAX frameworks and IDEs will continue to improve, thus increasing the flexibility and speed of development. I don't think there is any doubting that AJAX will increase in popularity and integration. The question is just how robust will AJAX be two years from now?
Also, this person that says Web 2.0 will be dead by 2008: how could you even arrive at this conclusion? The whole concept of Web 2.0 is the direction the web has been heading for a couple years now. Everyone wants personalization, and to contribute to a cause. This trend will grow and mutate, web developers will innovate upon it, and some goof ball will coin the phrase Web 3.0. Web 2.0 has only just begun.
Here's a cool AJAX website that does free URL forwarding and redirection: http://URLic.com