CSS guru Eric Meyer looks forward to 2010

Web Designer talks to Eric Meyer and discovers what the respected web evangelist is looking forward to in the coming year.

I’m looking forward to seeing how things develop in the HTML and CSS spaces.  HTML 5 is moving forward amidst turmoil and recrimination, and who doesn’t love a soap opera?  But browsers are increasingly supporting it, and the simplification of markup it promises in some key areas (like video) are delicious.  It isn’t perfect, but it’s movement and it seems to have insurmountable momentum.  Similarly, some of the CSS3 efforts are moving into implementation, among them selectors and some cool border and background effects.

As a result of those two trends alone, there’s going to be a renewed emphasis on progressive enhancement, which is always welcome in my home.  We’ll also continue to see JavaScript-mediated upgrades of old browsers (in the mold of IE8.js) and enhancements of current browsers, which I always find fascinating.

The one thing I’m really expecting to see happen in 2010 is the loss of a majority browser.  I might be a little early on this, but I’d be entirely unsurprised if by the end of 2010 there’s no browser with more than 50% “global share”.  I’m generally deeply skeptical of such figures but they do help visualize large-scale trends in the browser space.  I think we’re shifting to a plurality.  What will be really interesting to see beyond 2010 is if we’re shifting to a new dominant-share browser, or to a permanent plurality.