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We all have our own web design predictions for the coming year, here are some I think will happen in 2012. 2012 will bring the end of Internet Explorer 6. The usage of this 10-year old web browser has been rapidly declining since 2011 thanks to the push by Microsoft via IE6Countdown.com to reduce worldwide usage of the once-popular browser to below 1%. According to the site, Internet Explorer 6 usage had decreased 6% between December 2010 and December 2011. Despite this push, it is thought that 7.7% of the world’s internet enabled population are still using this Browser Dinosaur. Will 2012 finally be the year that ends this headache for designers and developers?

HTML 5 will become the standard. With an increasing number of the most popular websites already making the switch over to this new specification already in one form or another, for example, Youtube making use of the new video tags, it is likely that this will create a ripple that will quickly spread across the internet. HTML 5 offers not just more semantic code, but additional features, and APIs for web designers and developers to create more powerful and interactive websites, being able to utilise features such as Canvas which is often compared as an alternative to Adobe’s Flash. The main issue with HTML5 is browser support, but with the major browser manufacturers like Google, Mozilla and Opera bringing out updates frequently, this doesn’t look to be an issue for much longer.

The birth of CSS4. “CSS4?!” I hear you say, “But CSS3 isn’t even fully supported yet!” Rest assured, work will continue on CSS3, however working drafts of the CSS4 specification has begun appearing, and already it looks promising! Primary Specifications detail new selectors which allow for things like styling an element based on its children, applying different styles to internal and external links, so you can, for example, make an external link red, and an internal link blue, and finally Reference Combinators which sounds fancy but allows you to style elements in relation to actions on other elements, for example, you can set the style for an input field when it’s corresponding label is hovered over. There is no doubt that CSS4 will be good, but, why don’t they just add it to CSS3?!

2012 begins the dominance of responsive design. Responsive design began growing in popularity in the latter half of 2011. Since the responsive design movement set off, it has started a revolution in web design and the way we design our websites. When making a design now, it is all about its responsiveness, or the ability to adapt to a multitude of different screen resolutions easily. Responsive design involves styling elements based on the current screen resolution using CSS3′s media queries, which enables the creation of a very fluid web layout that works great on both the large and small screen, when implemented correctly of course, reducing the requirement to have a separate mobile version of a website.

Clash of the Titans – The Google and Facebook War. As Google, with its need to control everything, rolls out its shiny new social network, Google+, in an attempt to steal traffic from Facebook’s empire, it is predicted that there will be a crossing of paths between the 2 internet giants, this can lead to only 2 things, a feature race like no other, in an attempt to win favour with the end user and gain the traffic, both companies will rapidly roll out changes and new features, this can benefit the user, however for the not-so-technical users, it may be off-putting, it will also lead to news coverage on a grand scale, which will, like the recent coverage between Apple and Samsung on the patent dispute, fill headlines on technology sites worldwide, and inevitably by the end of it, probably make you sick of hearing about it!

Of course, not every prediction made will come true, but based on current trends, it is likely that the majority of these will be fully or partly fulfilled by this time next year.

Chris and his team strive to understand your core challenges then work passionately with you to develop tools that help you deliver real business solutions which often includes the use of web design and online marketing.