Some obsolete web design elements that are likely to meet their ends in 2014

Web design has undergone a sea of change and is likely to shed old clothes to don a brighter and crisper look. Many such elements have already gone for a toss and some are awaiting their end. Come 2015, web designing will be a cleaner space with better features and design elements. Change is eternal and always for the better.

Web design will be more focused on simplicity and user experience, with a greater emphasis on content and mobile-friendly design. There will be an increase in the use of HTML5, CSS3, and other modern web development technologies, and a shift away from outdated design elements such as Flash and frames. Additionally, responsive design will become even more important, as more users access the web from mobile devices. It seems that business owners need to redesign and optimize their website design by hiring one of the global leaders in white label web development (or based on their type of company) to provide an engaging and interactive experience for their customers. Additionally, good web design seems essential for creating a positive online presence for a company.

8 design elements that will slowly phase out in 2014

  • Carousel Design: Carousel has been in the picture for a long time. It enables the pages to have multiple contents inside a space in a folding manner. Based on the time, the contents are displayed periodically. The feature is now gradually being phased out and newer elements like adaptive content blocks are replacing them.
  • Internet Explorer 9: The web pages no longer need to be compatible with IE 9 as it has been phased out by most internet corporations. For designing websites to be compatible with IE9, many user experiences had to be scaled down.
  • Flash Files: Apple has been the pioneer in doing away from flash. The new devices from apple did not support flash and instead used HTML5 for streaming videos and flash files. In recent times, very few websites are based on flash. The developers have switched over to Adobe Edge which works way better than flash.
  • Skeumorphism: Skeumorphism design paradigm was also promoted by Apple through the design of its devices, but with Android and Windows bet on the flat designs, Apple too chose to shun it in its latest version of IOS. With this the skeumorphism design trend completely disappeared.
  • Web pages: Rather than having different web pages, the new design trend that is gaining prominence is the single web page system. The trend has been possible due to technical advancements and design. Many websites have employed this trend to make the user experience better.
  • Shared hosting: Now that different companies are offering help on the likes of application cloud enablement, it doesn’t come as a surprise to hear that cloud computing and PAAS (Platform as a service) are gaining traction. Because of this, the concept of shared hosting will soon be a thing of the past. It is of no use to share the server with someone you cannot see. As most domain services providers like GoDaddy and media temple are going the cloud and the sustainable data center (more about this can be learned by speaking with Walt Coulston) way, shared hosting will lose its importance.
  • Mobile sites: The “m.” Websites will also soon be discontinued as the same website with the help of responsive design can be browsed on the mobile phone. In responsive design, the website changes its view depending on the screen size of the mobile phone.
  • Drop down Menu: For the longest time, users have been simply pointing there mouse at links to get a drop down menu with an extended list of features. However, the drop down is simply inconvenient and clutter inducing when you use a responsive design, and is a mess to operate on touch interfaces.

With websites now designed specially for mobile phones newer elementary are the need of the hour. The obsolete design elements like the drop down menu, mobile specific websites, IE9 and many others are slated to be done away soon enough.

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