Form or Function? Both!
There used to be a time when you had a very important choice to make when developing a website. You could choose to incorporate tons of flash, or even create the entire site out of Flash, which required users to have the proper plugins and a computer that could support the technology you used. At the same time, you risked losing all of the potential users that could not load your site due to incompatible browsers, outdated computers, slow dialup internet connections. Luckily, for the most part, those days are over now. As a developer it is becoming easier and easier to push the envelope without risk that users are being left in the dark.
Depending on the site, varying factors affect the type of users interacting with your website, which in turn affects which technologies the users will have and which browsers they will use. For example, W3schools, a very well known web technologies resource on the Internet shows that approximately 44% of its users used Firefox and 46% used Internet Explorer in the month of November. Sites like this cater to the more technoligically advanced crowd, which is more likely to use alternative browsers such as Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc.
Regardless, the times have changed and we are now in an era where the majority of your audience can download and view Flash movies and Java applications, a far cry from the days when you crossed your fingers that JavaScript was enabled. This isn’t to say users regret the advance in technology, most users don’t even know the difference between the Flash portion of a webpage and a static image anymore. The integration of advancing technologies within website design has provided seemless integration of various media types.
Now that we’ve now entered the new year, we can only sit back and wait to see what new technologies await us in the upcoming year.
The evolution of the web definitely means that users must stay on top of the latest technology if they want to experience a website the way it was built. Developers aren’t catering to those who fall behind much anymore.