Like everything else, the web designing industry also has transcending moods and its own fashion statements. Trends, come and go.
A few months down the year, we have already witnessed a surge in the overall need to own a website for your brand or service. However, the coming few month beckon the need for more favorable web designing trends to be implemented in design layouts. These hot new trends are synced with the human need for better, technological updates, UI preferences and more.
To talk of a few, 2013’s popular web designing trends include:
Responsive Layouts: Such web designing layouts are flexible (fluid layouts) and allow optimal viewing experience depending on your viewing device. The elements in the layout like banners, images, text, HTML elements etc. adjust, re-size, reposition themselves based on the device and its resolution. The layouts focus on being easily accessible across a huge range of devices (mobiles, tablets, desktops, laptops etc.)
Fixed Header Bars: This trend has managed to rank high with most web designers. With the use of basic CSS coding, we can staple header bars to the top of the web browser so that you never lose sight of them, irrespective of where you browse on the web page.
Retina Display: With the evolving of devices and requirement for more enhanced device media, retina displays have become the need for the hour. These images are basically twice more dense than an average LCD screen supported on Iphones.
Minimalist Landing Pages: This web designing trend rotates around the ethos of ‘simple and focused.’ Its primary function is to grab the attention of the customer and enable him to understand, without complications, the gist of the business/service/product. You don’t want him to go around in circles now, do you? Therefore, the use of minimal flashy images, clutter on the website and unnecessary accessorizing. Minimum, is ‘in.’
Large Photo Backgrounds: A new fad with several web designers is the incorporation of large photos for backgrounds. These are emphatic, realistic and emotive. They add a dimension to the website parallel to none other. This creative option can be integrated into landing pages, portfolios or websites.
CSS Background Transparency: If you look at most web pages of recent times, almost exclusively all of them will include some semi-transparency of elements. The new CSS3 properties allow web designers to generate opacity edits on any webpage element (usually on any modern web browser) without being Photoshop dependent!
Infinite Scrolling: Infinite page scrolling=endless page scrolling! That’s correct. Basically what it does is pre-fetches the content from a subsequent page onto your current page and can be viewed as you scroll down. As soon as you log into your page, the pages that you viewed previously will appear on your dashboard and will continue to scroll endlessly on your page.
Social Media Badges : Social media, is today, one of the most robust mediums of marketing. And marketing, as we all know, goes a long way in determining the success of any website.
You can check practically any social community for sharing badges and will probably find a good solution. You can position these badges pinned to blog posts and articles anywhere in your layout. These are still used actively by readers and fans who want to share content quickly on places like Facebook, Twitter, or even LinkedIn.
Some of the popular ones in this category are:
AIM, Blinklist, Blogger, Blogmarks, Delicious, Design Bump, Design Float, Digg, Diglog, Diigo, Dzone, Facebook, Fark, Favorites, Feedburner, Flickr, Friendfeed, Gmail, Google, HI5, iGoogle, LastFM, Linked In, Mail, Mister Wong, Mixx, MSN, Myspace, Netvibes, Netvous, Newsvine, Orkut, Picasa, Propeller, Reddit, RSS, Shout Wire, Simpy, SlashDot, Spurl, Stumbleupon, Swik, Technorati, Twitter, WordPress, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz, and Ziki, Deviantart, Devmarks, Drupal, Friendster, Gtalk, Izeby, Joomla, Meneame, PF Buzz, Script and Style, Skype, Soundcloud, Tipped, Tumblr, Vimeo, Wikimedia, Wykop, Xing, Yellow Pages, Yelp, and YouTube.
Mobile Navigation Toggle: This trend is creating a major buzz in the world of web designing. This trend is likely to hover around with web designers for a while. The market is flooded with many types of screen sizes such as desktop, laptop, tablet and phones. In this scenario, responsive design seems to be the perfect solution and it allows you to create a website that adapts to different screen resolutions according to device in use. You want to give your readers direct access to all your important links, without making the page chaotic and unreadable.
To bail you out of this situation there is this beautiful design trend of mobile navigation toggle menus. What we love about toggled navigation is that it enables us to design menus in various forms. You can have links drop down from the top, or slide down, or push content over from the left or right side. Web designers have plenty of options to play with and there is plenty of time for UI experiments.
Vertical Navigation: Vertical menus allow you to stack the navigation bars one on top of the other and can make the menu look distinct from the rest of the design. Great harmony can be established with a vertically stacked menu and the main website design. The result, if rendered with correct cohesiveness, can generate phenomenal designs.
Sliding Webpage Panels: The panels which glide from left to right across the screen, is another fancy web designing trend in 2013. The effects are caused by JavaScript and jQuery.
CSS3 Animations: The CSS3 transition property and all associated browser prefixes offer CSS dynamic effects just like those offered in the JavaScript. Some are very useful and can be used as Javascript alternatives. It creates great emphasis, home pages, sliders, and general just-add-water-awesomeness.
Single Page Web Design: Many would say that this is a trend that has been around since the initiation of the web community. In recent times, however, these designs have evolved to become more aesthetic and user friendly.
Perfect for a portfolio, these are often used in apps or product sites, basically anything that is not heavy on content. Showcasing all the content of a website in a single page is a great way to save time for visitors as they won’t have to hop from one page to another in search of information.
Circular Design Elements: The use of circular elements in designing web pages has gained great momentum in the past few months. A rage lately, this shape has gained a new fully justified position in the design toolbox after the introduction of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. This is probably because round buttons somehow, fit the tip of your finger. Some designers add these simply on virtue of the uniqueness in the elements.
