Things move fast in the world of web-development, and 2011 was no exception.

If one thing was to characterize the year, it would be the continuing emergence of Javascript as a genuine programming language---at last it is starting to lose it's stigma gained after years of being hacked into shape by clueless web beginners; we are starting to see some real direction in the development of JS technologies, and some consolidation behind jQuery as the library of choice.

Let me know if I missed anything obvious in the comments, I've tried to cover a bit of ground here.