Web Development Trends in 2018

5 min readFeb 14, 2018

In order to stay relevant on the web, developers need to stay updated beyond what is hot today and look into tomorrow. 2017 was an eventful year for the face of web with a variety of new javascript frameworks on the block (What’s up, Vue?) and a hugely UX based development process. With mobile browsing overtaking desktop usage, creating responsive websites will no longer be an option in 2018. The real goal will be to make it as stirring in design and phenomenal in performance as possible. All this while adapting to the ever evolving frameworks and advancement in CSS3. Before you pass out from the phantom stress, read along to better equip yourself for 2018’s new version of the web. In no particular order -

1. Web Components

Think of them as widgets for your websites which can very easily be reused any number of times; by you or by anyone else (if you intend to).

Web Components allow you to create reusable custom user interface components with their functionalities encapsulated away from the rest of your code — essentially the component’s DOM is hidden from the parent’s and none of the code (including styles) can face any conflicts.

And no wonder the developers love it! It’s quite in line with the component based approach that made React and Angular so famous. But since they rely on vanilla JavaScript, they can seamlessly integrate with the former frameworks without messing with their functioning.

2. Static Site Generator

You can love them, or hate them. But you sure can’t ignore them!

Static Site Generators help you generate a static HTML-only website using CMS-like concepts such as templates. The site generation occurs on a development machine or staging server. The resulting HTML files are then deployed to a live web server.

The USP of static sites are that they’re ‘simple’. They do not use a database or processing power to stitch together webpage on the fly. This means that they are super fast, are highly secure (because, well, you can’t exploit a database when there isn’t any) and tend to use very less of the server’s resources. To add to these, a simple version control can be used for the contents allowing content creators to harness the power of GIT and the likes.

Though updating content on the fly is much harder without a CMS (Content Management System) we believe that the pros outweigh the cons in ‘certain’ use cases.

3. CSS grid

Bootstrap created such a revolution that W3C decided to come up with their own spin off — well, kinda. Though CSS Grid has been around for a bit, it sure will pick up pace and we see it taking center stage this year!

CSS Grid Layout is the most powerful layout system to date. Gone are the days of hacking your way to center things vertically. Or using floats. Quite like Bootstrap, it has both columns and rows. And coupled with media queries it can give you a feature rich responsive development experience.

As of Jan ’18, many browsers ship unprefixed support for CSS Grid — Chrome (PC & Android), Firefox, Safari (PC, Mac & iOS), Edge and Opera. Internet Explorer 10 and 11 on the other hand support it, but it’s an old implementation with an outdated syntax.

4. GDPR — General Data Protection Regulation

This is something we believe will have our attention throughout the second half of this year. And not just us, anyone involved with IT for that matter.

GDPR, in simple terms, is a set of regulations proposed by the European Union in order to protect its people’s personal data. And it’s not just confined to Europe. It also applies to any other entity that deals with them.

It becomes enforceable from 25 May ’18 and failure to comply with the guidelines can really have negative consequences for a company’s bottom line as well as image.

5. Progressive Web Apps & Push notifications for websites

PWAs and Push Notifications go so hand in hand that we decided to club them together!

PWAs have been around for a bit now. And who doesn’t love them? They give a mobile app like experience without having to install them using App/Play store. Push notification, offline support, camera access and the feature list is endless.

Flipkart tripled their time-on-site with it, BookMyShow increased their conversion rates by 80%! It’s time for this trend to move way beyond the early adopter’s stage and we couldn’t be more excited about it.

6. Customer support automation

While help docs and toll free support centers have been great, we’re ready to move on to the bigger and better version of customer support. With improved Natural Language Processing and understanding, Chatbots and AI embedded systems will nip tier-1 problems in the bud. This increases the possibility to scale operations and personalize customer profiles at the same time. Next gen human like AI service agents will have you fooled; that’s how seamlessly conversational we expect them to be.