My blog has a long memory and therefore I’ll log a prediction for 2014. April Fool’s day is as good as New Year’s for that kind of thing in my book.
I believe that the web browser as “a rectangular window/frame/tab with some content in it” model, along with HTML, will be done in 2014.
I believe that four key, transformational things are underway in the UI space – supported by advances in hardware and distributed computing capacity and distributed storage capacity and network bandwidth - that will kill off the browser paradigm as we know it:
I believe that UI will be generated / mashed-up / overlaid / processed entirely and in a personally customizable fashion very close to the user and that any popular user experience shell will concurrently leverage data from at least two dozen different sources.
I believe that interactive local client apps / gadgets / widgets will become the prime battleground for user eyeballs and for advertising display real-estate.
I believe that full-duplex, high-bandwidth, peer-to-peer network communication will be the predominant model for social networking and for sharing data the any of us produces and owns.
Call me crazy.