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Web Development Trends
By Allison Reed
That’s not a secret, how quickly things change in web development industry. If you’re into it,
you’ve seen the rise and fall of numerous technologies and web development trends. However, the
rising technologies are the ones that have the potential to make you the best in the game. So, it’s
important to keep your finger on the pulse and your ears open. These are the new web development
trends that already got traction and have the largest potential for growth.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
are web-based applications that have the feel and UX similar to
mobile apps. They utilize the latest web technologies to bring users app-like experience in a
browser tab. They are the happy medium between casual websites and mobile apps. They take the
best from the two and bring you the dual benefits.
Similarly to websites, PWAs have URLs for every page for trouble-free linking. You can access
them in every modern browser without installation. Next, Search engines index PWAs’ content.
Moreover, PWAs deliver top-lever full-screen experiences regardless the viewport. Similarly to
mobile apps, PWAs load when the network connection is bad or absent. Next, PWAs are
identifiable as apps, so that more users can discover them. Then, users can add the PWAs’ shortcuts
to their Home screens to keep coming back in one tap. Furthermore, the progressive web apps are
capable of sending users push notifications and re-engaging them. Last but not least, PWAs are fast,
reliable and engaging thanks to the UI and UX borrowed from mobile apps.
Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence
Currently, Artificial Intelligence has left the realm of sci-fi and ventured into top 10 web
development trends. The big cheeses, such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon,
saw the prospects of investment into AI development and galvanized the effort that goes into it.
They predict that chatbots will ‘fundamentally revolutionize how computing is experienced by
everybody’.
A chatbot is a computer program based on the advances of machine learning and natural language
processing that assists people in completing some tasks. The typical tasks that bots can help with
are shopping, finding some information or ordering a service. Bots provide help in Q&A form. At
present, bots prevail on messengers, such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Kik, Skype, WeChat,
etc. The incorporation of bots is considered to be the future of mobile apps. In addition to this, big
players made their bot-building frameworks and tools open-source to make bot creation even more
accessible. Currently, you don’t have to code a bot from the ground up. Popular bot frameworks let
every developer power a custom bot in a matter of days. Among them, check out the following:
Microsoft Bot Framework, api.ai, wit.ai, and bottr.me. By and large, bots secured their place in web
development industry for the years to come.
