Website of the future: what does it look like? | Hacker News Reader

Website of the future: what does it look like?

10 pointsmbriyo16 comments

I am looking for examples that illustrate cutting edge innovation in the following areas: website navigation content community customization commerce support

thanks!

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Be aware of a problem here. If you go back several years and look at sites people defined as "cutting edge" or "futuristic", they were mostly gawdy Flash-ridden wastes of space that were certainly unique, but ultimately unusable and hard on the eyes. Even if you go back just a year, Adobe's Flex was being touted by many as a way of the future - especially in e-commerce - yet take a look at Amazon now. It's evolved, but not in that way.

Looking at the high-end fashion catwalks to predict consumer fashions for the next decade doesn't work. So it goes with Web design. Remember that the future is made of lots of tiny changes compounded - not large sweeping innovations.

so true. But still, I feel that with a big enough sample you can make some assumptions about what people feel is emerging. And I trust that the audience of this blog are more likely to have an interesting point of view...

The problem is that if you take a sample of people (even smart ones) and ask them what they think the future holds they will almost certainly be wrong.

Which is exactly why paleo-futurism can be quite funny.

2advanced.com; when I was a young chap I'd spend hours just mulling over Eric Jordan's stuff.

So I'm not the only one! Ah to be 16 again... everything flashy was good.

I'm a big fan of the 'grunge' trend we're starting to see

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/29/grunge-style-in-m...

With mobile devices growing - I think the website of the future will have a strong component on accessibility from various screen sizes. Another feature that will become important is having offline mode/app to enable data access, synchronization, etc.

Aza Raskin is developing some really cool technology over at Mozilla, dealing with things such as user interface and intuitive design. I expect that some of what he is producing now will be standard within the next couple of years, for example Geode, which was discussed yesterday (http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/10/introducing-geode/).

A short while back, the folks at Adaptive Path invited me and the gang at Unit to contribute to a cool project they had in the works for Mozilla Labs. Our part would be to design how The New York Times sports page would look a few years into the future.

http://www.andyrutledge.com/times-new-omen.php

I've got some innovation going at http://www.nestedguis.com. (update: previous link was wrong)

Louis Gray blogged about it.. http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/09/will-future-informatio...

My top sites of the moment that to be are trend leaders:

http://www.mint.com/

http://www.tripit.com/

http://www.yelp.com/

the website of the future will be a wiki. Simple navigation, lots of content, but based on real impressions of your company by customers, partners etc. instead of propaganda from the company.

Do you honestly think that's not a terrible idea? Replacing your company website with a wiki?

Maybe there's a tiny minority of companies for which that would work -- they'd be small, obscure, have a loyal fanbase, and almost never piss anyone off. For anyone else it's a disaster -- all you need is one disgruntled customer (or fanboy for the competition) with too much time on his hands.

It's not just the "control content from one bad seed" issue. Wikis are great to solve some problems, deliver some content, etc, but they're not the answer for everyone. There are different levels of transparency for us to explore...

apple.com (navigation, commerce)

amazon (especially for nagivation, also commerce)

facebook (for community)

nytimes (for content)

backpack

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