From clutter to clarity – this is what can best sum up the future of web design. Looking back, we can only gasp in horror at an age when a hundred page annual report or a whopping 1000-word company profile was the chosen home page design, with amateur graphics and images punched in. Today, with style sheets, JavaScript and even Flash being stretched to their optimum potential, website designs have become much more elegant and easy on the eye. And a host of such web design trends are set to revolutionize the arena of design and development, and achieve the ideal state of user-oriented setups they were meant to be.

What we are looking at while sketching up the state of web design in the near future is based on two main factors – cross-platform usability and how user driven these sites are. Here are some of the main avenues which have opened up, courtesy innovation and thorough groundwork from veteran designers:

Inclusive Interaction

The days of incorporating a scripted form screaming 'Welcome User!' is passé. The goal of having an interactive web design was relevant in the era when simple text and image layouts couldn't add life to the site. The dynamic nature of the database or the server cannot guarantee a great user-interaction interface for any site. What is actually required, (and is being increasingly implemented as well) is a 'real' or more 'human' interaction from the designs' perspective, offering recommendations to the user or commenting on the record of the users' activities till date. So building a site that does not allow freedom to the user barring the input of name or similar data for a dumb display of interactivity will not take you far. The future of webdesign hints at offering a completely personalized experience to the users.

Navigation Styles

Navigation is something that is still to evolve completely as far as webdesign is concerned. A lot of us assume that having weird or arcade-like navigation styles will provide a more modern, futuristic outlook to our webdesigns. Wrong! In fact, the actual future of web design does not lie in avant-garde navigation styles but in ingeniously designing and improving upon the traditional navigation models. Maturity is what is expected most from state-of-the-art technology, and offering clean, crisp and easy-to-comprehend (but stylized) horizontal tabs, drop-downs, sidebar menus et al is to be the order of the day. CSS are of great help today, with a professional webdesigner easily scripting exceptional navigation styles without having to resort to Flash, Java or other possible complexities.

Community Is Where the Heart Is

Let's face it. Community-driven sites are here to stay, and you will do well to build your web design around the blog-community-comment model. This is because not only are these sites easy to update and achieve great rankings on Google, they also tend to hook on users better. So, even if the over-abundance of such sites and their tacky designs bore you, concentrating on a model that revolves around the same will only bode well for the future.

Catching Up with the Internet

The internet speeds have transformed phenomenally over the years, and web designers have a lot of catching up to do. The lightning speed of the web has enabled people to incorporate Flash-based features on their websites. Therefore, adding that popular heavy-metal song as background music or an animated guitarist in the foreground for your "royalty-free music site' is what the future of web design is heading towards. However, you also need to keep in mind the consumer base you target. If a majority of your niche consumer base is concentrated in regions where bandwidth may be an issue, Flash-heavy sites may prove to be your downfall.

Therefore, it is crystal clear that the future of web design is speeding towards a leaner feel and a user-integrated model. The faster you can adapt, the better are your chances of standing out in the melee of website designs - today as well as on the morrow.