Our predictions for 2013

The last year proved to be an exciting year for the website industry with a drastic increase in tablet device usage, fluid layout designs and HTML5 technology setting up the standards for the future.

2013 shows no sign of this stopping. However, rather than being a year of new technology coming to market, it will be year that builds on the foundations that 2012 had set. The biggest technology that will really drive forward this year will be tablets with the devices perhaps overtaking desktop usage when looking purely from an Internet perspective. That may be a bold statement but you have to analyse the statistics from any big website to realise that this statement has plenty of ground.

The biggest problem that plagues tablets is the diverse screen resolutions. As technology gets cheaper, we may see HD displays become the standard this year. We do not envisage resolutions getting higher than HD any time soon. The simple nature with the size of the panels means that any increase does not represent higher quality. The cost of increasing the resolution even more without much benefit is at this stage pointless.

One big aspect of the Internet we think many haven't considered is the new gaming consoles from Microsoft and Sony. While browsing the web from a console isn't new, we do feel that one of the two may take on the role of having a browsing tablet. Kind of like the Wii U has with games. As a web design agency, we have to keep in mind such things can happen, which as a result could further diversify our considerations and testing. Even if they don't go down this route, we do think consoles will angle themselves towards having a slick web interface, especially as many people now tend to stay away from their computers and browse in the luxury of their living room.

2013 will finally be the year of HTML5. As we have seen, HTML5 is a powerful technology. Even the highly popular Angry Birds is now available to play via an HTML5 web browser and is a real showcase of what the technology can do. The further aid of tablets this year will mean with a large market share, HTML5 can be used with far less worry by developers than ever before.

As a web design company, our biggest push will be for fluid layouts. As in our previous article, fluid layouts are an excellent way to cater for different devices and screen resolutions. AWD as of January 2013 are now developing new fluid layouts for all our new website creations starting with our own site.

Look out for amazing fluid designs soon, as well as the exciting technology leap in 2013.