A Year of Web Research, Distilled

Following last year's roundup of industry surveys and reports, we've gone through the latest batch of studies published over the past year. From language popularity shifts to accessibility benchmarks, here's what the data says about the state of web development in 2021.

CSS and Styling

The HTTP Archive's Annual State of the Web report analyzes how 8.2 million sites are built, breaking down page content, user experience, and content distribution. The CSS chapter, written by Eric Meyer and Shuvam Manna, shows that CSS continues to contribute more to page weight, with the median CSS file size up 7.9% to around 70 KB. The report also logged a new record for external stylesheets loaded by a single page: 2,368 files, nearly double last year's total.

The State of CSS 2021 survey, based on 8,714 responses, tracks developer sentiment and usage of CSS features. Tailwind CSS continues its rapid rise, with usage up from 26% to 39%. CSS variables have become mainstream, now used by 84.4% of developers, up from 59.6% just two years ago. Interestingly, the perception that CSS is "easy to learn" has ticked downward between 2019 and 2021.

Over in the Angular ecosystem, the framework's developers published a dedicated State of CSS update. Angular's decision to drop Internet Explorer 11 support has opened the door to integrating CSS features like Grid, logical properties, and calc().

Languages and Developer Demographics

The GitHub 2021 State of the Octoverse shows TypeScript soaring to become the fourth most-used language on the platform, displacing PHP, which has dropped to sixth. The report also notes that more than 86% of respondents expect to work fully remote or in a hybrid arrangement in the coming year. Documentation remains a critical gap in the developer experience.

This aligns with the StackOverflow Developer Survey 2021, which polled 80,000 developers. The survey confirms TypeScript's growth and provides some comfort for anyone stuck on a problem: nearly 90% of developers resort to Google, and 80% turn to StackOverflow when they hit a wall.

The JetBrains State of Developer Ecosystem 2021, based on 31,743 responses, finds JavaScript is both the most popular language and the most-studied one. That's a shift from last year, when Python took the top spot in learning interest.

A smaller niche is covered by the Tower Git Mac Dev Survey of 4,072 developers. Most respondents are between 30 and 39, and nearly half have been development for fewer than 10 years, suggesting a growing field. JavaScript is the most-used language among Mac devs, while Swift tops the list of languages they want to learn.

Accessibility and Inclusive Design

The WebAIM Million 2021 report scanned over a million homepages. There is some progress: the number of detectable accessibility errors is down 15.6%. However, the report still found roughly 51.4 million errors, and 97.4% of homepages contain WCAG 2 failures. Low contrast text remains the biggest offender, present on 86.4% of sites.

Complementing that is the third WebAIM Survey of Web Accessibility Practitioners. Formal education in accessibility is rare—only 12.5% of practitioners have formal schooling in it. Most learning happens through online resources (91.3%) and on-the-job experience (83.4%).

The ninth WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey polled screen reader users directly. The most cited disability is blindness, and JAWS is the most-used screen reader, with VoiceOver leading on mobile. Most users navigate pages by scanning headings. There's also a split in sentiment: 40% believe the web has become more accessible, while 60% say it's unchanged or worse.

Development Practices and Tooling

The Postman 2021 State of the API Report, based on over 28,000 responses, found that Postman users made 855 million API requests in the past year, up 56%. A full 67% of developers say they've adopted an API-first approach.

In HackerEarth's 2021 Developer Survey of 25,431 developers across 171 countries, student developers are most interested in AI (16.3%) and IT (13.8%), with blockchain landing at 4.7%. Most respondents (81.8%) began coding between ages 15 and 21.

The UXTools.co Design Tools Survey of 3,359 designers shows a clear winner in tooling: Figma leads with 64% usage, far ahead of Sketch at 12%. In job titles, "product designer" edges out "UX designer" (31% to 30%).

The Chrome 2021 Scroll Survey Report highlights significant dissatisfaction with scrolling on the web. Nearly half of surveyed developers are unhappy with the current state, calling out issues with smooth scrolling and scroll snapping. One open-ended response was blunt: "Scrolljacking should be considered a crime."

The Sparkbox Design Systems Survey, with 376 respondents, shows that 39% consider their design system either successful or very successful. Encouraging adoption is the top priority, but overcoming design and technical debt is the top challenge.

An Informal Survey of Web Performance Tooling from Sia Karamalegos, though small in sample size, ties WebPageTest and Chrome DevTools as the most-used performance tools. Boomerang, Lighthouse Treemap, and Sitespeed.io top the list of tools developers want to adopt.

Working in Tech

The Developer Nation 2021 survey of over 19,000 developers found that 50% would leave their current employer for more money. Only 10% say nothing would convince them to switch jobs.

UpWork's Freelance Forward 2021 report shows 53% of freelancers provide skilled services, up from 50% in 2020. More than half of non-freelancers say they're likely to freelance in the future, and 44% of freelancers believe they earn more than they would with a traditional employer.

The LinkedIn 2021 Workplace Learning Report arrives at a curious conclusion: while 59% of professionals consider upskilling their top priority, only 40% say their managers actively challenge them to learn new skills.

The HackerRank Innovator Report 2021 shows that only 47% of respondents use skills as the foundation for writing tech job descriptions, raising questions about what informs the hiring process.

Tech Report receives no compensation for the inclusion of any survey in this roundup. The Trend Micro 2021 Midyear Cybersecurity Report detected 7.3 million ransomware threats in the first six months of 2021—a significant number, though about half of what was detected in the same period last year. The report highlights highly sophisticated attacks, including one that cut off fuel supplies to half the US East Coast.

Beyond security, broader corporate technology patterns are covered by the Microsoft IoT Signals Report, which finds 90% of companies have adopted IoT strategies. A large portion (44%) say the pandemic accelerated their IoT efforts, which are increasingly applied in manufacturing and logistics rather than consumer gadgets.

The WordPress 2020 Annual Survey paints a complex picture for the CMS. Its Net Promoter Score is at an all-time low, with 41% of respondents either passive or detractors. A telling 59% say they use WordPress because "it's what I know best," which could be a challenge as the platform pushes into block-based editing.

As always, there are plenty of unrelated but interesting side data. Google's Year in Search shows the top query including "how to be" was about stimulus check eligibility, followed by attractiveness and happiness. The HackerEarth survey reveals that 22% of developers take walks to unwind, while 5.3% don't take breaks at all.

None of these studies follow a strict scientific protocol, but they help surface patterns worth monitoring. Several broader statistics round out the picture: Gen Z learners watched 50% more hours of learning content in 2020 than in 2019 (LinkedIn), and the percentage of companies offering fully remote work stands at 48% (CodinGame), a number likely to evolve as hybrid work definitions solidify.