Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Web 2.0 ~ beta site

Ok, for those non early-adopters the second movement of the Internet is here (Web 2.0) - but how can you tell? well these are the characteristics of a Web2.0 site:

Rule 1 - if the web site doesn't have beta in its description then it is not Web2.0! According to dictionary.com beta relates to preliminary or testing stage of a software or hardware product; 'a beta version'! I can't wait until business adopts beta projects. As mentioned in this 37 signals article, beta mode is where new companies want to be. That is, focusing on core funcion and then delivering it quickly (with the possibility of errors). Phew, I can't wait - no more deliberation on the correct colouring of table border X, text box Y; I wonder what the requirements gathering/documentation artefacts are for a Web2.0 project - no doubt there is a project collaboration tools (aka Basecamp, Writeboard), central repositories (aka Wikis) where all content is stored dynamically, and sophisticated issue trackers (aka Jira). Bring on this paradigm shift!

Rule 2 - very quick response user actions, and UI functionality not associated with the web (e.g. drag-and-drop); underpinned by AJAX, asynchronous request/responses. I haven't developed an AJAX web layer, but are we all going to become procedural Javascript developers (yuck!)

Rule 3 - an inability to bookmark any page apart from the initial page

List of Web2.0 sites I use: GMail, Google Groups, FlickR, RememberTheMilk, Ta-da Lists, Del.icio.us, and the latest Google Calendar!

I will have a look at Google Calendar over the next week; now when will Google Maps be available for Australia!


TAGS: Web 2.0, Google, Ajax

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What do you mean "procedural Javascript developers (yuck!)"?
Have you actually looked at Javascript?

I thought the same thing until I had a quick look recently.
Sure, it's a bit weird compared to Java, but you should at least make an informed comment. You can do (slightly strange) OO, and it even insludes closures. I've heard it is similar to python in some ways.

Of course, just because the language features are there doesn't mean most people don't use it in a procedural way.