Top 5 Emerging Web Technologies in 2016
This is a great time to be a web developer. The web is ubiquitous, browsers are more capable and Evergreen Browsers give browser vendors increased adoption rate. To get you excited, here’s a list of some of the emerging web technologies in 2016 including recommended resources to get up to speed on the topics that interests you the most.
1. App-Like Web Experiences with Progressive Web Apps
Progressive Web Apps are fast, app-like experiences, built using modern web capabilities like App Shell, App Install Banners, Push Notifications and Service Workers.
2. Create Your Own HTML Elements with Web Components
Web Components allow you to create your own HTML elements. It’s an emerging W3C standard that hopefully will be implemented in all major browsers. Web Components libraries like Polymer already allow you to make cool and interoperable web components today.
TRY: Polymer Starter Kit
3. Plugin-Free Real-Time Communication with WebRTC
WebRTC provides browsers and mobile applications with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via a common set of protocols, basically making it much easier for developers working with media streams across different clients. WebRTC is currently supported in Chrome, Firefox and Opera and developers can access it via JavaScript API’s. Edge and Safari are coming along.
4. Faster Web Apps with Angular 2.0
Angular 2.0 is a powerful framework for developing rich web apps and has now reached beta. It’s dramatically faster than Angular 1 and you can use either JavaScript, TypeScript or Dart.
5. Better Cross Platform Hybrid Mobile Apps with Ionic Framework 2
With Hybrid Mobile Apps, you can use your existing web development skills to build mobile experiences, get access to native capabilities and app store distribution. In 2016 smartphones are much better than just a few years ago and the demand for mobile apps is high. Hybrid Mobile Apps are a perfectly valid choice for many data-driven apps and Ionic 2 (alpha) looks like the most promising framework now.
TRY: Ionic Framework 2 (based on Angular 2.0)
BONUS: Walk up and use anything with the Physical Web
The Physical Web is an open source approach to help you build contextual interactions that people can discover and use with less friction. We should be able to walk up to any smart device, a vending machine, a poster, a toy, a bus stop, a rental car, and not have to download an app before interacting with it. A small utility on the phone scans for nearby URLs using the open Eddystone-URL Bluetooth beacon format without requiring any centralized registrar.
TRY: The Physical Web Cookbook
Happy Hacking in 2016!
