[Resolved] [Resolved] [Resolved] What will the future of the web be? (Old thread)

[Incrue]

"Will Web Designing Be A Profitable Business 5-10 Years From Now?"

Hi guys!Its been a while since you first talked about this topic, so,what is your opinion about it NOW?
Do you still see dark clouds?
I am asking it cos i was wondering...that now(97-2007 maybe) is the only time on the history of mankid when all the companyes and everyone need a website...i mean, in the eighties,for example, there was no market for "webdesigners", and maybe ten years in the future most of the companyes will not need somebody to build their site, cos they already have a site.Of course, there will always be new companyes, but i am talking about the market as a whole
What do you think now?Have you noticed some diference?Is the market for webdesigner going up?Or down?Or stable?
Thank you very much

[ej0c]

Two trends:

• More TV-like web
  More web-like TV

Extrapolate.
-----
Wow! You did dig this out of the archives!

But consider life in 2010. While your Tivo runs Flash today, what version will it run then? On what speed processor?
How long do I have to wait for a customized homepage on my TV?

You can imagine apps like the animated cookbook in the kitchen. But what about education overall? An almost infinite amount of stuff remains to be well-explained through animation, game-playing, audio storytelling, atc.

And then there's the whole web-phone thing. When I drive by the site of Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman" speech, shouldn't my web-phone (instead of a bronze plaque) explain the story?

Ooh, do we live in cool times!

Ed

[JFlashK]

It's up to the pro to be better than the freetime webdesigner. I can fix my own sink and install a bathroom... But still there are pro plumbers, they work better, faster...
So there will always be room for webdesigners who are good enough.
And don't forget one thing: time... most business people don't have the time to make their own website, and when they want quality they go to a pro, not to their brother-in-law's sister's boyfriend...


there will always be people who can't see the difference between a good and a bad website... that's the real problem, it's up to us to show the difference between good and bad design.

[Incrue]

Hi Joe and JFlash!
Yeah, i dig!
Nice to know that stuff about new tendencies and pros, but talking about build a normal and traditional website, do you guys have noticed any change in the webdesign market, from its beginning (96-98 maybe)till now?
Thank You!

[ej0c]

Yeah, it's a lot harder!!

The first site I saw was on a NeXTStation. It was visible only on a NeXTStation, so cross-platform useability was pretty much a non-issue. The <img> tag was starting to confuse how a page was rendered.

And then came that NCSA Mosaic / Windows client thing...

So today, what? Internet Explorer still is thwarting the intensions of the W3C, and the amateur is farther than ever (since '92, anyway) from being able to create a page visible everywhere. And that's just computers.

A professional is now starting to worry about how his page will appear on a PDA, cell-phone, TV, or worse, how it will be rendered by an audio-only device.

Plus, the bar for the basic visual design always increases. It gets harder and harder to pass off a simple layout as a page worth paying for.

Is your site friendly to those who want it in an RDF feed? Is your community calendar info friendly to someone else building a bigger calendar?

Ooh...there's lots of room for people who stay ahead of the curve.

I know; I'm not a designer. I can just keep my nose above the rising tide of quality design as it is.

[byokitis]

My thought is that the web designing is still designing. There's no question that anyone can sit down on there computer and create a business card for there company. The real question is should they. Web designing will always be profitable because successful businesses see the value of professional designers. As for the web goes, I think we all can see the current and future move of it from the desktop to other devices. It's going to be a very nice time to be a web designer when these devices are in peoples hands. (which they will be, eventually).

[cixe]

I have 58 active clients currently with 12 more ready to go. Its still not enough period. I used to be sub contracted by big web design firms back in 1998 - 2000, those big firms went out of business. Back then having 10 big clients was more than enough, I was getting over $100,000. 4 of the clients were major record labels / musicians then 4 more are movies, 2 others were small time.


Now with 58 small clients I am lucky if I make $12,000 a year. 20 of the companies are nation wide, 2 are world wide, 4 are real estate companies and the rest are small time.


Heck one time, I bid $2000 for a nationwide site in 1998, I did the site in 2 hours all in Flash (it still looks great to this day). A company bid $32,000 for the nationwide site in 1998, they proposed a deal that would have the site completed in 2 months, offered no site designs or previous work, and the company got the bid!!! Explain how that one works! Plus to make it more comical the company that got the bid took 2 years to complete the site. For 6 months their homepage was blank, then after 6 months there was a sign that said "coming soon."

ALL of these companies do not want Flash, because they say here in the US it is not functional. I have found clients and their users in the US want to be able to simply scroll down the page, find what they need then go. With Flash you can't really scroll down the page, you scroll in a box. People just don't "get it," so none of my clients want it. All my work is in .html / .php.

Its honestly better getting a job as a factory worker.