Response

Considering the 30 year leap from ARPANET to the doorstep of 4G mobile technology, an expectation of change in the way that we interact with the internet is reasonable. Mobile devices with their limited viewing real estate and wide range of resolutions and browser abilities continue to develop greater and greater utility even as a 100 Mb connection becomes possible for someone walking down a street in Syracuse. Meanwhile the screens on our office and home machines achieve greater and greater resolutions and larger viewable areas and 1Gb connections are coming making complex sites with incredibly rich, file-heavy content not simply possible but a standard.

What this means for web design is that there must be greater flexibility rather than a simple increase or decrease in size and density of content. The ability to be viewed on screens both large and small as well as cope with potentially vast differences in bandwidth and browser ability. I think that we are just entering a time when web design, from the architecture to the graphical content, is going to become far more nuanced and powerful than it has been to date.