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2005 Predictions

Thursday December 23, 2004

There are already plenty of lists going around blogland, and very nice they are too, especially the one with me on it ;-)

Still, I am always miserable at this time of year it has to be said. I've finally worked out why - it's getting close to my birthday, again, and I hate getting older. I was happy when I was twenty one; when my waist size was 32 and not just the number you get when subtracting 1973 from 2005; when my only worries were, who nicked my last can of Stella? And what are all these tiny little burn holes in the carpet!

So heart and soul set on being a grumpy old man, here is my pessimistic look at the year ahead on the interweb.

Design theft

Lowlife pond dwellers will steal at least one of the following designs (some of my favourites this year) and try to pass them off as their own:

Flash

Flash will continue to grow in popularity in the standards community. Resulting in sites that are essentially just animations with lots of hidden bits (in the name of accessibility!). These sites will continue to masquerade as standards based design and, despite the continued lack of a W3C recommendation, they will win lots of awards. SVG will continue to languish in the shadows wondering if it's day will ever come (and I can get a return on the fucking investment I made buying books on the subject!).

Innovation

Usability culture will die a death as the endless quest for innovation in design is pursued, at all costs! On a brighter note, Jakob Nielsen will be captured and sent to Guantanamo bay, where he will be beaten, repeatedly, for his attempts to make the facility more user friendly.

Gmail

Gmail will come out of beta leaving many sad and lonely people searching for something new and cutting edge, just so they can say that they have something you don't (I have three spare invites, if you want one - tell me I am cool!).

Joshuaink

Visitor numbers will continue in a downward spiral as more and more people realise that Oxton is a one joke pony. In a desperate attempt to increase traffic we can expect posts designed to start flame wars, pictures of naked celebrities and a feature length post on influential web developers, whom John will claim to hate. More interestingly he will start writing posts in the third person and will stop responding so enthusiastically to emails as his interest in any kind of social life subsides rapidly due to age and/or work load. At least one person will accuse him of being an arrogant tosser (hopefully someone who can send some traffic his way).

  1. Rob

    1905 days ago

    Zeldman will have release child version 2, and fail to further standards due to being preoccupied.

    I will fail my degree.

    Apple will continue to silence Dunstan.

    Microsoft will release IE 7, an adaptation to IE 4, with a new ticker effect which will win over the internet.

    FrontPage 2005 will become the development platform of choice for the internet.

    BT will decide the stress on the exchanged is too much and 56k modems will be reissued to all.

  2. Jared

    1905 days ago

    In 2005, some young bright soul will finally come up with an snappy alternate term for “blogger.” Like “web author,” or “tosser.” ;)

  3. Martagnan

    1905 days ago

    John you arrogant tosser! I see I was the FIRST site you thought of… oh, hang on, thats a good thing – Sorry! :)

  4. Turnip

    1905 days ago

    “we can expect posts designed to start flame wars, pictures of naked celebrities and a feature length post on influential web developers, whom John will claim to hate”

    Wow! It sounds like it’s going to be a great year!

    I’m such an individual for not having one of these lists… ;)

  5. Jeremy

    1905 days ago

    Hey, I’m on the list! Jason did you see it? I made it! Ha, very flattered sir.

    We will certainly see more iterations of joshuaink around the information highway for sure. Oh yeah, I don’t want to get people too excited but when Jason and I release zMail, heads will turn. – ha

  6. Andy Mac

    1905 days ago

    Well, I’m absolutley chuffed. One of your favourites? I don’t know what to say.

    As far as predictions for 2005. Arsenal to retain the Premiership and win the Champions League maybe? Not quite what you meant I know but it’s damn important to me. :)

  7. David

    1905 days ago

    Something new and exclusive, by invite only, and by a member of the Google team? Why, it could only be Orkut!

  8. John Oxton

    1905 days ago

    Ha! I am already a member! ;-)

  9. John Oxton

    1905 days ago

    ... and when I say member I do mean Penis!

  10. David

    1905 days ago

    Me too! And Tantek Celik (sp?), he of the box model hack, is as well.

    I feel in exalted company!

  11. Anton

    1904 days ago

    ‘05 will be the birth/maturity/acceptance of the FLOG.
    They can steal my site, but they can’t steal my soul.
    I’m honored to have made your list, even if there are dozens others that are more worthy than mine.

  12. Gordon

    1904 days ago

    Ohh Orkut is SOOO 2004 it hurts.

    I predict a rise in female blogging. It’s gonna happen so enjoy leaving that seat up for as long as you can!

  13. jolo

    1904 days ago

    hey john you deserve it… as well as the others ;)

    I think this coming year, people will come more to embrace RSS. Spammers/Spams will hit the net bigtime.

  14. Stefan

    1904 days ago

    On Design theft:

    Well – this (sDS) looks somehow common to me…

    But it’s just a thought, look yourself: http://bartelme.at/

    Who was first, the egg or…

  15. Wolfgang Bartelme

    1903 days ago

    Well, if you take a look at the the blog entry from the 3rd of December on solarDreamStudios – ”...After months of waiting, I finally decided that I needed to redesign sDS…” – then it’s quite obvious, because the new design of Bartelme Design is online since 26th of October...

  16. Stefan

    1903 days ago

    Of course – I know – I saw your site the first time month ago.
    So I realised when I saw sDS, this “looks somehow familiar” ;-)

  17. Wolfgang Bartelme

    1903 days ago

    I just take it as a kind of compliment, that my design is implicitly among John’s favorite designs ;)

  18. Craig

    1903 days ago

    Nice… at least someone was kind enough to include me in this discussion. The fact that I have never even seen http://www.bartelme.at/ or that I’ve been working on my design for about 6 months before my launch date probably won’t sway any of you.

    I had my design at new.solardreamstudios.com for a good 4 months before December and search engines/TXP’s forum had links to it all during that time. Now… let’s do the math:

    December – 4 months = August
    August < October

    Anyway… I made a few cosmetic changes to my site so that it doesn’t look so close anymore. I’m saying that I was the one who stole the design… I’m just saying that you guys need to do some research before accusing. I have over 12 years of professional web design experience… there’s no need for me to steal anything.

  19. Craig

    1903 days ago

    I guess if you look hard enough you could say that I/Wolfgang stole this design too… whatever…

  20. Stefan

    1902 days ago

    Nobody said “stole”. It was just a funny fact they look simular. And I knew justwatchthesky – so both of you do – I think.

    You did all awesome work, I don’t think anybody “stole” from another.

    So it’s chrismas, shall we leave it on “everybody got inspired from everybody” ;-))

    By the way I like these diagonal lines, maybe next time.
    Happy Chrismas and calm down.

  21. Wolfgang Bartelme

    1902 days ago

    I didn’t accuse anyone of stealing any design and especially I don’t want Craig to modify his design – I liked it.

    The point is, that many of the CSS-based sites look mainly the same: they are centered, use a horizontal navigation in the header, make use of a sidebar for providing additional information and use the footer to inform the user about the use of XHTML, CSS and about their section 508 compatibility. Also this tri-band background-image is currently used on many sites, such as allinthead, Justwatchthesky or Jeff Croft’s website.

    Based on these thoughts, the only similarities between both sites were that they used a similar color scheme and a quite similar background-image below the navigation…

  22. Craig

    1900 days ago

    There, the new design is up.

    All of the testing was done locally so no one could have seen the design while it was being built (besides the wife… and she ain’t talkin’).

    I’m planning on writing a FW MX 2K4 tutorial on the 100% vector “worn” look that I used. Stay tuned.

  23. John Oxton

    1898 days ago

    It looks great Craig. Really would love to know how you did the wicked worn look in Fireworks! :-)

  24. Craig

    1897 days ago

    Thanks, John.

    I just completed the FW tutorial for the worn look...

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