Ravi Saive: A Technology Blog For Newbies

Changes in viewership trends have spawned a new era of websites that are now more dynamic and interactive than ever before. Today, users look for website design elements including quick navigation, social media sharing options and information that is easy to find. Based on these changing trends, it is safe to assume that the web design elements that worked in 2011 might very well be outdated today. As a web designer, your role is to offer clients up-to-date websites, which requires ample knowledge about the latest trends. To get you started, here are the top five essential website design trends to follow in 2012.

1. Responsive Interface Design

People use more mobile browsers, tablets and apps today more than desktop computers and laptops. Accordingly, developers must now use fluid images designed to accommodate various screen sizes across a plethora of smartphones and mobile devices. Experts agree that changes in responsive interface design are just the beginning of a long list of things to come in the future of website design.

1. How To Design a SEO-friendly Website?
2. Top Five Tips to Build a Mobile-Friendly Website
3. 12 Best WordPress Mobile Plugins for Websites

2. Oversized Images and Headers

The use of oversized images and headers on homepages and general web pages is undoubtedly growing in 2012. Oversized images and headers grab the attention of the viewer and are thus a quickly growing element of website design. Web designers now use oversized images as a background or to highlight certain content. Oversized images work great across various industries including fashion, apparel, food and entertainment.

3. Image Slideshows

Many web designers are now adding image slideshows to websites using the JavaScript library jQuery. Interactive galleries are now a personal preference among webmasters and viewers alike, and have taken the place of old fashioned image galleries. Slideshows offer webmasters a more flexible means of demonstrating the inner pages and important content of the website. However, image slideshows accommodate more than just whole sets of photographs. Blog posts, demo images and entire portfolios with links can all be implemented through an image slideshow. This quickly growing trend helps many industries including software companies that use slideshows as product demo guides and tutorials.

1. 5 Awesome jQuery Image Sliders

4. Social Media Sharing Buttons

Social media is growing at a relentless pace. Social media has become such an essential website design element that websites from all industries now need sharing buttons. Social media buttons make it easy for users to share the content of a website, which in turn improves the chances of content going viral across the internet. Web designers should choose more than just Facebook and Twitter social media sharing buttons. Although these are the two powerhouse social media platforms, additional platforms exist including Pinterest and Google+ that are designed for the same viral and networking purposes.

1. Create Own Social Sharing Widget Using Sharrre
2. Mashable Like Social Subscription Widget for Blogger
3. Excellent Slide Open Heart Bookmarking Gadget

5. Infusion of CSS3 and HTML 5

Flash was once a popular website design element but mobile compatibility issues have made it outdated. Flash is also a problem for search engines as Google, Bing and others don't bother to read it. CSS3 and HTML5 are not stark replacements for Flash but many web designers are gradually adopting these as the main web development languages. Web designers use CSS3 and HTML 5 enthusiastically for creating websites as these offer increased flexibility for mobile devices.

1. HTML5 Cheat Sheets For Web Designers
2. 10 Most Interesting New HTML5 Tags
3. New HTML5 is Off and Running