I predict the national economic statistics will show a substantial increase in worker productivity in the next quarter.
Why? The new beta version of Firebug shows clearly how long it takes for various web pages to load. I know of three web sites who’s load time has been improved by significant margins already and I expect we will see a speed up to from 5-10 across the board.
I predict data: URLs (see also) will suddenly become quite popular. Finally, we need an Apache module ASAP that automatically splices in data urls for small GIFs and css files.
One small problem – data: urls don’t work in IE6 or 7.
If you want to reduce the number of http requests while also having your site to work in all browsers, you need to use other techniques like CSS sprites.