5 Web Design Trends For 2010
It’s always hard to predict the future for anything, especially the internet as it continues to move and evolve at a fast pace, with new techniques and technologies being developed to make it more accessible for everyone.
I know I cannot predict what the web trends will be for 2010 but I have picked out what I think are the five most important trends that will continue in the new year and become more popular over time.
1. Typography
Typography is a very important part of website design and the use of non-system fonts in websites was unthinkable due to cross browser compatibility. Last year saw the start of using font replacement methods to allow designers to focus more on the typography and using more exciting fonts. There are a few font replacement methods available, which include cufón, @font-face and Typekit. Probably the easiest font replacement method to use is cufón, which uses two Javascript files to display the font to be used on the website.

2. Mobile Websites
With the introduction of the iPhone and other smart phones, browsing on the phone is becoming more popular across the globe, especially in the USA, Europe and Asia. Web designers now have more flexibility when it comes to creating websites for mobile phones and developers will be able to create more interactive applications.

3. Interactive Designs
Web designers are adding more interactivity to their websites using jQuery and Flash. Since jQuery is still fairly new, Flash is more popular with designers because it can be flexible with what can be achieved but jQuery is beginning to take off as it is much easier to implement. Using either of these on a site will make it more engaging for users as they can be used to get the users to interact with the website.
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4. HTML5/CSS3
It will still be a long time before HTML5 and CSS3 will become web design standards but web designers are starting to create better websites using both of these languages.
HTML5 will enable designers to produce cleaner code and easily implement videos and audio into websites and CSS3 will allow designers to add more style to a site such as text drop shadow, rounded corners and multiple backgrounds.

5. Web Videos
Videos on the web are becoming more popular because of YouTube and other video streaming services. Because of this, large businesses are adding videos to their websites to advertise products and therefore attract more customers. Since there is an increase in videos, Google can now index videos and users can easily search for them. YouTube have also added auto closed captioning and transcripts for their videos, which will greatly improve the optimising of videos. The next few years could see the increase of videos on business or personal websites and better ways of optimising them.

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