It’s that time of year where we all swap tools we know how to operate for crystal balls and pretend we have some clue about what’s going to occur in the next twelve months. Well, I’ve got no bloody idea, so here are my not-quite-predictions-more-like-nice-to-haves for 2005.

More Beards

Hicks is at it, Oxton indulges, Budd has dabbled sports with pride, and I myself have practised the art of the Beardy Wierdy. Ladies and gents (well, perhaps just the gents) 2005 is the year of the beard, mark my words. Just wait for the SXSW photos, then you’ll see.

More Rails

David Heinemeier Hansson’s Rails framework for web application development in Ruby is set to hit the magic v1.0 in early 2005. Rails is really picking up momentum, and for good reason. It’s the web app dev framework for the MVC generation, or something. If you haven’t checked it out yet – especially if you do a lot of big development in dynamic languages such as PHP – do so.

More Content Management

With Weblog Management Systems really growing up in 2004, more and more people are seeing the sense in rolling out a CMS to support even smaller web sites. Whilst it’s more than possible to use a weblog tool to power a non-blog site, none of them actually help you to do this and you’re often having to work against all the built in metaphors. 2005 could well see the appearance of more dedicated CMSs for running smaller sites. Indeed, much of the development in this area could come from the existing tools shifting their focus from just blogs.

More JavaScript

When the web became more aware of the need to be accessible to all, a lot of people freaked out about JavaScript and its apparent inherent evilness. With CSS innovation being slowed by browser limitations, I think 2005 will see a lot more of the language of the rhinos, and more importantly more sensitive and more appropriate use of JavaScript. Looks like I’m not alone in this opinion.

Less Macromedia Flash

Flash seems to be slipping further and further away from relevance. Whereas at one time most new sites would involve Flash somewhere along the line, it now only seems to crop up for kids sites, streaming video, and advertising. Perhaps I’m wrong, but these days it seems very labour intensive for very little gain.

So that’s it – not a particularly radical bunch, but some predictions for the forthcoming year. Whether they turn out to be accurate or not (frankly, who cares?), may I take the opportunity to wish you all very happy 2005. Thanks for stopping by this year, it’s nice to have you guys around.