409 : Winter 2006 : Prof. Jeff Sonstein
Web 2.0 Discussion Ideas
What is "Web 2.0"?
(From Wikipedia article)
a Web 2.0 website may exhibit some basic characteristics. These might include:
- "Network as platform" — delivering (and allowing users to use) applications entirely through a web-browser
- Users owning the data on the site and exercising control over that data
- An architecture of participation and democracy that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it
- A rich, interactive, user-friendly interface based on Ajax
- Some social-networking aspects
Technology overview
The complex and evolving technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 includes server-software, content-syndication, messaging-protocols, standards-based browsers with plugins and extensions, and various client-applications. These differing but complementary approaches provide Web 2.0 with information-storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that go beyond what the public formerly expected of websites.
A Web 2.0 website typically features a number of the following techniques:
- AJAX and other Rich Internet Application techniques
- CSS
- Semantically valid XHTML markup and/or the use of Microformats
- Syndication and aggregation of data in RSS/Atom
- Clean and meaningful URLs
- Extensive use of folksonomies (in the form of tags or tagclouds, for example)
- Weblog publishing
- Mashups
- REST or XML Webservice APIs
What About Handheld Devices?
How might handheld devices fit into a future Web 2.0? Given XHTML-MP and Mobile CSS support
on the latest and upcoming handheld browsers, how would you handle the lack of JavaScript? (M and V,
but no C)
