October 20189 WITH THE TECHNICAL ADVANCES IN COMPUTING POWER, FOR LAST 10-15 YEARS, WE HAVE SEEN THAT THE NORMAL LAPTOPS AND DESKTOP COMPUTERS GAIN MORE FIREPOWER IN TERMS OF PROCESSOR AND RAMheavy. In web development, to get the best performance we need to find ways and means of reducing the data transfer between the client and the server. Due to this, XML based web services are replaced with lightweight Representational State Transfer (REST) based services which are great for supporting multiple platforms. REST is based on standard HTTP verbs like get, put, delete etc. They provide great flexibility by integrating with existing technology stacks as well as compatibility with modern day mobile devices. JSON has replaced XML as preferred data exchange mechanism. Enhancements in HTML 2 standards also will make it possible for us deliver more streaming content to end users.Web developments have completely moved away from having static web pages in the `80's and `90's to fully immersive mobile-first applications in the last 5-10 years. Such has been the advent of mobile computing that some businesses have shut down their traditional website and moved completely to the mobile-only version. Frameworks like AngularJS, React, Ember, etc. which are reshaping the way web development was done traditionally in the past. JavaScript has become the most popular language for web development. We no longer need to have big web servers to host web content. Node.js is a JavaScript-based web server built on top of Google Chrome's JavaScript Engine (V8) which can run as a standalone process and outclass traditional server-side frameworks.Earlier in the century, web developers had the challenge of making their websites work with a set of browsers like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari or Firefox. Nowadays, mobile usage has increased resulting in more users accessing content from their mobile devices and tablets and the web development challenge shifted from browser compatibility to display port responsiveness. Users expect to have a similar experience between native applications on their handheld devices and a laptop or a desktop PC.Microservices and APIsTraditionally, applications were built using the same set of technologies like. Net and Java for all the layers like the front end, middle tier or business logic and backend services. Nowadays, the polyglot architecture enables developers to use the best tool, framework, language, technology to use for different use-cases. Polyglot engineering has led to the rise of Microservices architecture. Microservices help to encapsulate the functionality into smaller composable units which can scale to great extent. This helps in agility and deploying changes to end users at a rapid pace. Microservice architecture enabled web development teams to release features in small chunks. Users don't need to wait for months to get new features. Based on the maturity of the organization, multiple releases can be done in quick time.On the architecture side, we've also seen a rise in the number of business functionalities exposed as Application Programming Interface (API). Tooling (Swagger, Postman, and Fiddler), Techniques (HATEOAS, GraphQL, Gateway Aggregation) and frameworks dedicated to building APIs had seen a boom recently.FutureWeb development and design are still rapidly evolving. It has seen huge improvements in the last two decades. The future looks quite promising. Internet as a whole has been transforming since its inception and so does the web technologies. Advances in mobile technologies have also attributed to the way people interact with the web. Streaming multimedia content to mobile users is a perfect example of this. In the coming years, we can expect the last remaining big giant personal desktops to be replaced with modern day portable devices. These would change the way end-users interact with the web. Touch or gestures are already part of many of our lives. Augmented reality in the form of voice commands is also becoming commonplace with the rise of digital assistants and chatbots. We can expect these to have a huge impact in the future. Maybe we can call that Web 3.0. Nilesh Gule
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