Wednesday, December 06, 2006

what the f**k is Web 2.0 ?

We hear and talk about Web 2.0 so often now. Ask most of the web designers what is it? Hardly anyone is able to answer straight. Same went with me; I am not a web guy at all. But just want to be kept informed about these stuff that goes around us.

Anyway whats the big deal about this Web 2.0? The new world wide web? hmmm! now I don't think anyone should look at it that way. I guess for most people Web 2.0 means a combination of technologies implemented on to a web site, like namely AJAX, DHTML,RSS,CSS and a few. More to add to those, sites which are more interactive and open socially. Also I guess no longer we have simple web pages, mostly its small applications and systems. These systems should work inside a web browser ; without having to launch external applications.

I guess the biggest contributor to this vibe was and is google. But I guess nothing new has come up in reality or there is not much major new stuff, compared to the so called "Web 1.0". Its just the same stuff; with new names and with improvements. Yeah sure; there is new stuff, but maybe just based on the same old techniques and concepts. You throw out; ActiveX and Applets and bring in AJAX, etc. But over all the web has developed and maybe we call these new developments the "Web 2.0" era. For me the biggest change was things becoming more platform in depended. Also the fact that data is made more available and easy accessible.

As for us Maldivian and our sites, we need to improve too. Mostly the web sites are very static and too much focused on hard core graphics. Too much useless content and images. Yeah! the travel sites. They do have loads of content and pictures, but how informative and easy its to access them and locate what you are looking for. Simple things like that is ignored. We do see some improvements slowly, but I guess mostly the developers don't care much about web standards or any such issues. But I do sure hope and wanna see better stuff coming up.

Maybe I am not the right person to talk about web development and standards, so guys out there who are more experienced in this field would like to shed some light on this? What can we do to improve the looks and functionalities, what do we need to stop doing, etc.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i just found out what web2.0 from this post , though i've been hearing it over and over. and about the bit about the harcore graphics thats true .. most maldivian sites seem to focus to o much on graphics while they need to focus on functionality as well

Anonymous said...

whoa.. nice blog btw, i caught this from mvblogs, and fyls unhappy from ur news coz.. my workplace previously used some expensive vb made software to search for archives and was a headach coz needed to be installed in every comp. but now using this web 2.0 features the archives cud b used by any comp and much reliable.. thnks to web 2.0
im seeing AJAX websms n was gr8. so this web2.0 stuff is positive 4 me

Anonymous said...

well he never said it was useless. but i do agree with him we need to see some more of the dynamic side of pages. i have come across many pages with simply just a big image as the page. which was for a resort i believe or something related to tourism and when i googled the site the page rank was so far behind even the other sites that were in a total other domain was above it. so webmasters and designers try to create ur sites friendlier to search engines and humans thats my thoughts. how ever if anyone can prove me wrong please do :).

M said...

Moment of Zen: One cannot be told what a Web 2.0 is, one has to see it for oneself.

Ultimately it is up to the old farts to decide what the requirements are for the website. For them the beeyooteefool colours are more appealing than the functionality the website is meant to provide.

Why bother about AJAX when you can have pretty pretty colours and bold pictures?