Web 2.0

Posted on:May 27 2006

I never thought it was a good idea to name the recently hyped AJAX web development technique 'Web 2.0'. In my opinion it is useful for some very few toy applications like maybe flickr or maps.google.com and helps improving web services, but I don't think that AJAX is that revolutionary to claim that this will be the foundation of a new web area. Did you ever really think of editing letters or pictures via a website? Or did you ever try out live.com? It's horrible, a user interface nightmare. Ok, maybe the technique still has to evolve a bit and browsers are not prepared for it yet.
O'Reilly recently trademarked (servicemarked? whatever) the name 'Web 2.0' for use in their conference names and is sueing people using it. Maybe at least the name Web 2.0 will disappear now slowly and people will use a more adeqate name for it. Ok, I doubt it, but at least I may be allowed to hope. :)

Comments:

I have seen and been part of many debates about "Web 2.0", we talked a lot about it at the Boston SecureWorld Expo. It's just a hype word really. AJAX is as well, Javascript and the XMLHTTPREQUEST has been around for a while, people just realized they could use it.

Keep up the good work!

Stephen Gricci

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2006-05-27 16:39:00

That's the point :) And because of this __doc__ from the german python irc channel on freenode and I are currently working on a blog that aims to be a web2.0 application with the worst userinterface ever by implementing features nobody wants: http://lucumr.pocoo.org/entry/road-to-20/

Something like an anti-web2.0 blog :)

Armin Ronacher

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2006-05-27 16:46:00

well there's a lot of examples of what Ajax is good for. Take Gmail for example, it's mainly a pure Ajax application and have an awesome interface. I'm working on an intranet application at work and Ajax + WebServices + EDRA are doing quite well the job.

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2006-05-28 02:41:00

Try Web 2.1

Look for the Sunday, May 28 entry.

Cromwell D. Enag

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2006-05-29 03:57:00

Sorry, the form processor removed my link: http://www.userfriendly.org

Cromwell D. Enag

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2006-05-29 03:58:00