- The year of the UI component, and tree of UI components, for building complex UI's.
- No longer mainstream development blasphemy: components being constructed from a single file, potentially contain HTML, CSS, and JS, IN ONE FILE!
- React, Redux, Webpack, ECMAScript 2015 (aka ES6), and Babel gain massive adoption. These solutions rise to the top of all the polls as the most used tech.
- Developers realized, in most cases, HTML 5 hybrid mobile development via webviews doesn't provide enough wins when building native apps.
- React Native and NativeScript start to replace mobile HTML5 hybrid webview development.
- Many abandon Gulp for NPM scripts, but Gulp remains popular.
- SASS remains a popular tool, while PostCSS (+ CSSNext) gains ground.
- Linting/Hinting HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is a thing most developers do (ESlint replaces JShint & JSCS merges into ESLint).
- A trend of developers abandoning Sublime and Atom for Visual Studio Code begins.
- jQuery remains, but usage/interest is declining. jQuery 3 was released, much like a tree falling in a forest that nobody hears.
- Vue.js continues to gain converts. Deservingly so!
- JavaScript functional programming & patterns get a lot of attention.
- Offline development & Progressive Web Apps go mainstream.
- Microsoft shows up and contributes.
- Developing native applications for windows, OSX, and linux using things like NW.js and Electron via web technologies becomes a thing.
- Angular 2 (in the future aka "Angular") gets off the pot and most realize it will never be as mainstream as Angular 1.
- JavaScript broadly remains at the center of software technologies.
- More developers start caring about tooling (e.g. automation) and testing.
- Static site generators are taken seriously.
- CSS Grid excitement grows and the future looks bright.
- NPM gets some competition from Yarn.
- The next evolution of React-like solutions shows up via Preact, Deku, Rax, and inferno showcasing evolution without much API change.
- Mostly people learn to accept JSX, and now they can't imagine not using it.
- A workable CSS module pattern (CSS encapsulation) is actualized and used, thus CSS in JS becomes a viable solution for many.
- More people turning to UI functional/integration testing including concepts like visual CSS & RWD regression testing.
- The days of battling inconsistent browser API's are almost behind us due to a massive decline in usage and development for older versions of IE.
- Most everyone realized they will have to have a multi-device strategy plan when developing for the web
- More developers, from other languages, continue to flood the JavaScript space bringing with them things like type checking and an obsession with class syntax and OOP concepts.
- Front-end devs are introduced to Hot Module replacement techniques and time travel debugging.
- More waiting for a native JavaScript browser module loader.
- Enforcing CSS and JavaScript style conventions becomes more important (considering ES3 to ES6 code and CSS pre-processors syntactical variations)
- A small but noticeable number of developers are starting to choose Elm over JavaScript.
- TypeScript gets some serious use and fanboys.
- http://aurelia.io/ becomes the smart choice for enterprise developers (i.e. support!).
- Webpack gets its act together and solidifies is position over the superior JSPM solution.
- HTTPS, yeah, we're serious about that.
- BASH on windows happens.
- The notifications API gets used and abused for chrome users, but only after you give it permission.
- Firebug officially dead.
- CSS 20 years young in 2016.
- Immutability concepts run rapid.
