Tis the season to get the mystic prediction kit out and do some predictions. As part of this, here are my ones for this year in traditional blog manner. It’s like putting up tinsel for blogs, hang your predictions for the year as you shake the web like some magic 8 ball.

Design

• Colour schemes :
  In 2007 I think that natural tones will be seen more and more as the primary colours of the web 2.0 unicorn are muted into tone combinations. It’s sort of ironic where you see something that is so man made such as the web turn to nature, but I also think it’s a natural process (excuse the pun). I think the web will get lighter as we see more and more subtlety in colours. This is in some ways a reaction against the dark that seeped through the web this year.
• It’s in the details :
  From the recent surge in use of icons, this will lead to things looking better when you microscope it - every part of the site is now seen as important and this will be seen in a surge of attention to the details of the web.
• Return of the true minimal :
  There has been slowly over the last year a simmering down in design as more minimal elegant designs are seen where less is the focus and more is put out with the old wrapping paper.
• Text that does things :
  Shaun Inman recently showed in his new design the colour of the text fading and the page getting more transparent as time passes. I think in 2007 there will be a bit more of the static elements such as text having styles attached to them so they become more reactive to the site. Site with CSS can be enhanced easily and this is one area that people have just left to the same font, maybe header in the past.
• Originality isn’t a swear word :
  After the attack of the web clones from web 2.0, I see a back lash against the glaze of this and everything having the same thing attached to it. I am not saying web 2.0 is over (as you know I am not ever sure it began and isn’t just marketing speak), it’s just that it might be going to school now and as such has become more individual and refined in it’s design.
• Doing what it says on the Tin :
  Design has come to make much more sense now, FAQs are becoming not the main focus for having an understanding of how to do things on the site. I’ve seen more and more user interface design being required as the ignorance of design towards the market and users is built upon this year.

Web trends

• Giving users a choice :
  From scheme changers to dragging interfaces to customise your experience, designs are becoming more and more open to user choice. I think this will increase over this year as people are able to choose more and more their experience.
• Feeds to the masses :
  With the update of Internet explorer RSS and feeds are now able to more and more. Feeds have been known about by a large amount of online users but I’ve personally experienced a fair few that were not aware of it. This is changing though and I think more and more companies will also start using feeds to keep their customers updated.
• Thinning of the crowd :
  I said last year that a lot of the web 2.0 unicorn boom would see maturity and weeding out as the year went on. I think this will continue this year. I for one know from the range I began to play with in beta I now only use a handful. Nothing stays purely for novelty value in the long term - it has to be addictive / compelling and ultimately useful.
• Stick it to people :
  The new crack is finding an application your web junkies will suck their hours away with - from twitter to deliicious. 2007 will see more traditional websites seeing these features and incorporating them. This has started to happen and I think 2007 will see this take a faster uptake.
• UK gets blogging :
  Apart from small sections of the web design and development industry and some personal ones, the UK has been relatively slow on the blog uptake. 2006 saw a lot of press and fuss about blogging starting to happen in the UK. Before 2006 I often had to explain what the term meant and lately even the casual net users I’ve met are starting to know or at least have heard the word blog.
• More community, more caring - less corporate :
  Corporations have always looked for innovative ways to bolster their business and maintain their client base. I see more and more this happening with a pleasant return to higher levels of customer service. This return to customer caring I think in part does actually come from blogs. You get a bad service, you blog about it. Nothing like a blogger to give a company bad press. It’s not a dramatic efffect but it’s happened on more than one occasion.

Personal predictions

Well, these aren’t really predictions as most are going to happen.

• Moving onward :
  Moving into a house where I get a better office set up - finally.
• Focusing business :
  After my first year fully back with Logical Binary there is a lot to do and build on from this hectic time.
• New launches :
  I have a number of web based projects that are simmering and boiling next year onto the web. These are:
  • Collabwrite :
    An online writing collaboration application.
  • Daily Lister :
    This is where the Lister family (well Simon (husband) and me) take one image a day for a year. It’s a sort of experiment to get us both back into photography so anything could happen in that. It will be done from the 1st January until the 31st December and use a blog like format to show these images at Daily Lister.
  • So what do you eat? :
    This is a blog site that came about due to the diet requirements of both myself and Simon. He is unable to eat wheat, gluten or diary and couple that with my allergies to various foods we often get asked ’so what do you eat?’ Hence the name and hence the blog. Simon is a great cook and I like to eat his food so this project is a joint one. 2007 is going to see both of us starting to work on projects together more.

There are a few more I am not going to talk about at this stage as I want to do them slowly over the year. The above ones are about the first quater launches so I am able to speak about them now. Collabwrite may not be that early but it’s hoped it will. It’s an exciting year planned out for me personally as I’ve wanted to do a few of them for a while and never had a chance so it’s about time on a number of them.

The blogs

I will go into this one a little bit later, but there are 2 other blogs that I see as needing much more attention this coming year. Earlier on in the year woofbarkwag got launched and it’s gone pretty well considering I’ve been slowly trying to build it up. It’s nowhere near what I want it to be and there are more and more things I can think I want to do with it almost every day. Logical Binary also as of November has a blog and slowly this will build up to include client resource information. I want to not draw away from this blog with that one but to more use it for the company Logical Binary.

The rejects

I am going to be closing down one project for now and that is quotethem.com. I never dedicated enough time to it and will be keeping the domain and coding so it’s more than likely to receive a life line at some point, it’s just not cutting it in my books. I will give a site a chance but if I don’t focus even a little on it then usually it means I’m not ready to do it or the time isn’t right for me. Sadly, this is the case with quotethem.

Diary of a website

I thought I wouldn’t miss out this blog from this round up and look to next year. There is a fair bit planned. I want to continue to build on the last year which was a good one for this blog. From getting into 9rules to working on the community side, Diary of a website has seen a year of growth and development.

There will be at least 4 new flavours next year as is the tradition around here. I learnt a lot through dog food eating and the now infamous for all the wrong reasons chocolate raspberry theme. Vanilla certainly taught me a lot and I hope I’ve applied that in the latest one Coconut. I’ve decided probably that Diary of a website will also get a new logo per flavour with the coffee bean staying to tie the site in. We shall see how this pans out. I am going to go through over the next few weeks each theme and link up all the new parts that have happened along the way - this will result in nothing being missed if you do choose a different flavour - before this was a slight issue.

Phew, take a lie down it’s going to be a bit of a year

I’d like to take this time to thank everyone who has come and supported this blog and me throughout the year. You are always welcome here and I hope you start using the community aspects that have come with Coconut and will continue to grow with new flavours. It’s been great to get to know those of you who have commented and I encourage more of you to join in with the discussions and other things on this site. I value everyone that comes this way so a big hug and happy end of year smile from me to you all.