It’s time for Touch-Friendly Web!!!

The World Wide Web has been evolving since its birth. First, it was just a collection of static web pages. Then came Web 2.0 and a new era of blogs, wikis and social networks. The web services evolved to be more user-centric. During this evolution of web, I have seen wide range of web pages; from totally ugly ones to substantially attractive ones. Web has become much more sophisticated than it was in late ’90s.

The thing about evolution is, it never stops. Not so long back, we used to access internet at sluggish speeds using dial-up modem. Look at us now, we have so many means to access much faster version of the web. Accessibility in fixed machines is way faster using Cable/DSL. One also can access internet using laptops, tablets or cell phones, when mobile, using Wi-Fi and EDGE/3G/HSDPA. Specifically looking at recent hardware developments, web access using mobiles (specifically, touch screen mobiles) has increased over last 2 years. Manufacturers also started developing touch-screen monitors and nettops after introduction of basic touchscreen support in Windows 7. Rumor has it, Apple is also in process of manufacturing a touchscreen tablet and hopefully bringing touchscreen support to OS X with it.

So, where does it lead us? Web access from touchscreen cell phones is constantly increasing, desktop computers are becoming touch-sensitive and desktop operating systems are going touch-friendly – these things lead to only one conclusion; the web usage using touchscreen devices will keep increasing. These newly developed devices may not penetrate the mainstream market soon but it’s going to happen sooner or later so, why not be prepared for it?

How does this affect web developers? Keeping user experience in mind, nobody wants to lose visits from touchscreen device users, do they? Developers started making “iPhone friendly” web pages long back; it’s just that iPhone is not going to be the only touchscreen device forever using which, people access web.