2011 was a great year for WordPress, with some excellent new updates that saw the introduction of a drag-and-drop uploader, distraction-free writing, the HTML5 Twenty Eleven theme, and movement towards a fully responsive dashboard. As well as changes to WordPress core, theme development continued to evolve, as whispers of responsive design spread like wildfire across the WordPress community.
Over the next year, some trends will become standards. Others, now just remote flickerings in the eyes of a few theme designers and developers, will start to take hold. Now that 2012 has properly started, let’s look at some trends that have emerged and are emerging.