I think the trend is due to the types of devices we are switching from (laptops) and switching to (smart phones). It combines cost, performance, and responsive

I think the trend is due to the types of devices we are switching from (laptops) and switching to (smart phones). It combines cost, performance, and responsiveness. I designed and built an app in 2009 for detecting speed traps and I was all about skeuomorph. While the mobile app looks really good[1], The website was a nightmare to design[2]. A lot of design time went into carbon fiber backgrounds, gradient buttons and logos, glowing effects on images, and drop shadows. It had lots of images and extra <div> tags to simulate the look of the mobile app which ended up costing me in web performance speed and a non-existent mobile-web version. The new mobile app I'm working on is minimal and a lot easier to convert into a web page[3]. I found a dark parallax Bootstrap theme I can modify and convert to mirror the mobile app. As people are mentioning, front end frameworks are making it a lot easier to create cheap, fast, responsive minimal site which work well on all platforms. [1] - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/996835/hn/vt01.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/996835/hn/vt01.png [2] - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/996835/hn/vt02.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/996835/hn/vt02.png [3] - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/996835/hn/m01.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/996835/hn/m01.png