Current technologies

One of the things that many sites do is being what people called it yesterday. The yesterday factor comes in design and features. It is good to avoid the mindset of changing only after you have a reputation of being out-of-date. Here are some thoughts on how to stay either current or more state of the art.

AJAX

As a server-side developer, this technology pushed us back into the browser-side of code. Basically, we expanded our skills to include JavaScript and libraries to help us interact with the browser-side interface. ColdFusion has some AJAX built in, but most of us will need to extend beyond that sooner or later. The richness of learning one of these libraries cannot be overstated.

One word of caution is due here. When we start to enhance these features on our pages with AJAX, we need to make sure we don't get distracted by coolness, and leave usability and testing behind. Make sure it works on required devices and browsers.

Flash (Flex/AIR)

This is not an alternative alone to AJAX. Sometimes these tools run hand-in-hand. On the other hand, there are things you can do with Flash that can be extended to the desktop in standalone applications via Adobe AIR. This would be nice by itself, but there is more than that. The same file you create to distribute among desktop-application users can be delivered to Mac and PC users. In this case, who cares if you have a Mac or a PC. The programs just work! Oh, Flash is working on a tool that translates Flash applications into iPhone-style applications that should run on the iPad also. Perhaps Apple will open those doors again. Until then, you can build applications for Android and perhaps other platforms as we move on with technology.

Future

It has been said that the only constant is change. Web and technology seem to strive to show this. The following topics are some of those changes to come.

HTML 5

HTML 5 and other technologies are also coming into the picture. Some have stated that HTML 5 may dent the Flash market. Perhaps, but the Flash market has expanded beyond things provided by HTML 5. The bigger question would be the impact of HTML 5 on Silverlight. I will not push a prediction in that area at this time. In the mobile device arena, there is more active support for HTML 5 at this point than on the browsers. It appears to be coming on all fronts, so put this on the learning list either way.

Devices

Devices are obviously another strong consideration. We spent years enjoying the constant progress to larger screens only to have mobility throw us back into screens smaller than most of us ever planned to build sites to work on. Now, we must learn to put the same content out to different devices. Another technology we might want to consider as time rolls on is SMS. Of course, CF8 onwards has supported this through a server-side component, but I wonder how long simple text will prevail before it becomes rich like Google Wave.