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There's an interesting report up at Sitepoint on the state of web development in 2006/2007. Perhaps the most important bit of useful information for designers is 'what will we be using in 2007?'.

Although the report doesn't actually tell us what we will be using in 2007 directly (i.e. via absolute figures), it does give us enough information to find out; there is a graph showing what we are using now, and another one showing what designers would like to be using in 2007. By transposing the two graphs together and normalising the results to 100%, we can draw up a graph that shows both what technologies/applications the industry is using now, and their future take-up.

I was sufficiently interested in seeing such a graph to create it myself, and here it is. The lower, solid bars show the percentage of designers using each technology/application now, and the ghosted bars above them show the predicted change in the near future. The final size of each bar (solid plus ghosted) gives the absolute number (in percent) of all designers who will be using each technology in 2007.

Source : The State of Web Development 2006/2007, SitePoint Pty Ltd. and Ektron, Inc, August 2006.
Copyright (c) 2006, SitePointPty Ltd and Ektron, Inc.

As you can see, Flash and JavaScript Libraries have pretty much the same take-up today; 35% of all designers use each. AJAX lags both at less than 30%. Usage of both Flash and JavaScript is set to rise, but AJAX will soon be the dominant one.

My feeling is that AJAX and Flash will tend to be used together in the future rather than competing, and the increase in take up of AJAX is more a sign of browser stability and cross browser compatibility in HTML/CSS/JavaScript than anything else - and that's a good thing for everyone. To see a good example of AJAX/Flash integration, take a look a lastFM, and if you really want to have a laugh, you can always take a peek at my musical tastes. The site pages are mostly AJAX, but the LastFM desktop player is a Flash web application

Also, I have a feeling that the list of technologies/applications listed in the graph above is a little (mis)leading. If web technologies related to the upcoming Microsoft Vista release and perhaps Adobe Flex (which is sufficiently diverse from Flash to warrant its own heading, and a closer competitor to AJAX than Flash) were listed, the results would be significantly different.

My guess is that many more designers will be wanting to look at XAML and Microsoft's new vector/3D UI technologies, especially if the web portions of the new stuff ends up being cross-platform. Also, many exisitng Flash users would potentially want to learn Flex/MXML for 2007 as Flex is more web application oriented.

Still, its all food for thought, and yet another good indication that the web is becoming a more interesting platform, especially for motion graphics and web application designers/developers.

As a final aside, there's also a more general set of predictions at Imagining the Internet. Almost as interesting are the predictions made in the early 1990's at the same site, as seen here.