Web 2.0
Although the idea of the second generation www has been around for some years (probably since 2004), it is still a very active part of the community that works on the web.
Web 2.0 represents a major trend on the web towards Interactive content. One of the more authoritative sources is O’Reilly’s pages. To give you an idea of the difference between the traditional www and the concept of web 2.0, here is a quote from that site
This article is an attempt to clarify just what we mean by Web 2.0.
“In our initial brainstorming, we formulated our sense of Web 2.0 by example:
| Web 2.0 | ||
|---|---|---|
| DoubleClick | –> | Google AdSense |
| Ofoto | –> | Flickr |
| Akamai | –> | BitTorrent |
| mp3.com | –> | Napster |
| Britannica Online | –> | Wikipedia |
| personal websites | –> | blogging |
| evite | –> | upcoming.org and EVDB |
| domain name speculation | –> | search engine optimization |
| page views | –> | cost per click |
| screen scraping | –> | web services |
| publishing | –> | participation |
| content management systems | –> | wikis |
| directories (taxonomy) | –> | tagging (”folksonomy”) |
| stickiness | –> | syndication” |
What we see here is an emphasis on content rich web sites, and user contribution to web content.
Another listing gives a more detailed picture of what is considered to be Web 2.0 about a web site
* Uses python?
* Is in public beta?
* Uses inline AJAX?
* Is Shadows-aware?
* Uses the prefix “meta” or “micro”?
* Uses Cascading Style Sheets?
* Rocks out to the dance noise of Chinese Forehead ?
* Mentions startup ?
* Refers to mash-ups ?
* Mentions Less is More ?
* Has favicon ?
* Appears to be web 3.0 ?
* Attempts to be XHTML Strict ?
* Uses Google Maps API?
* Uses tags ?
* Has a Blogline blogroll ?
* Refers to the Web 2.0 Validator’s ruleset ?
* Mentions an “architecture of participation”?
* Appears to use AJAX ?
* Makes reference to Technorati ?
* Appears to be built using Ruby on Rails ?
* Refers to VCs ?
* Refers to Flickr ?
* Links Slashdot and Digg ?
* Mentions Ruby?
* Mentions The Long Tail ?
* Mentions Nitro ?
* Possibly contains bytes ?
* Appears to use MonoRail ?
* Refers to podcasting ?
* Creative Commons license ?
* Has prototype.js ?
* Mentions Ruby ?
* Uses microformats ?
* Actually mentions Web 2.0 ?
* Use Catalyst ?
* Refers to web2.0validator ?
* Uses Semantic Markup?
* Mentions RDF and the Semantic Web?
* Refers to Rocketboom ?
* Refers to del.icio.us ?
* References Firefox?
* Validates as XHTML 1.1 ?
* References isometric.sixsided.org?
* Appears to over-punctuate ?
* Mentions 30 Second Rule and Web 2.0 ?
* Uses the “blink” tag?
* Appears to have Adsense ?
Source: Web 2.0 validator
This is an eclectic list where some items are vastly more important than others.
According to the authors of the Web 2.0 site, the definition of web two is made by the people who use it and it changes on a daily basis. Not unlike the original www!
What is important about this is the focus interactivity between the web page and the user and the pre-eminence of dynamic content. Content is developed collaboratively. Information is contributed by a wide area of users and organised by labelling topic areas with tags. Tagging allows users to find the material they are looking for by use of what are, in essence, keywords. Tags also allow content to be associated with authors.
The format of contributions varies considerably, from text blocks through to images, and can include blogs, web sites and music.
Because the www is (some would say) a library of information, a variety of referencing systems (web sites) have grown up to allow users to share their bookmarks (favorites) with others. A primary web 2 example of this is del.icio.us. This has achieved a considerable reputation and is seen as setting the standard for “social bookmarking”.
As people explore the web they can mark their web addresses and share them through the medium of the social bookmarking site. An early example that I used was Blackflip. As I surfed the web and bookmarked the web sites I wanted to go back to, I could upload my web addresses to this site and store and organise them there. I could then access my (large) collection of web sites via any computer linked to the Internet.
Another thing to do with web 2 I am coming to terms with is AJAX. Its a sort of programming language for developing interactive web applications. It enables web designers to make web pages that can exchange data so the the user can make changes to the content of a web page without the page having to be reloaded each time.
Whilst the term “ajax” is thought to have been coined in 2005, there are numerous precoursers, including the “Iframe”, which appeared as far as back at 1996.
AJAX works by generating HTML content within the browser, thus reducing the need to download large amounts of data. Its advantage is the ability to allow users to interact with and contribute to the page. An AJAX driven web site reacts faster to input by the user because some of the processing is done on the users computer. In traditional web pages, input from the user needs to be sent back to the web server for processing before being reloaded back into the users machine. AJAX is thus able to speed up this process and give the user a richer experience.
There are web sites that allow users to create their own content - they do this via the browser window, clicking on options and choosing what they want to display on their site. I made up one in a few minutes and called it Webby’s Kitchen.
RSS (news) feeds
RSS news syndications News feed have been around a long time but the technology is maturing now and they are everywhere. News is distributed to web sites via RSS or ATOM. These technologies syndicate news - regularly distributed textual content.
This is dejavu for me because one of my first serious jobs was as a reporter for REUTERS in Fleet Street (London) where I was employed to feed data into the world’s first economic data systems (long before the invention of the personal computer).
REUTERS became a world leader in the global dissemination of news and market intelligence.
The process of sending information out to web sites is called “syndication” and one of the tools that is used to do this is a “news reader” (sometimes called an “aggregator”). I have been putting news feeds on to web sites for a long time. I have never actually set one up though - but hey! Being a web designer I hope to learn something new every day.
News can be drawn from a variety of sources and fed into a web page. In some respects news feeders are like book marks - they provide headlines which are linked to articles.