If you've used Google Maps (maps.google.com), shared your photos online with Flickr (www.flickr.com), looked up (or contributed to) an entry at Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) or read your email in an Internet cafe with Microsoft Outlook Web Access, then you've already experienced at least some of the technologies that go to make up Web 2.0. You might also have come across terms such Ajax, web services, RSS, tagging or podcasts. You've almost certainly read a blog, or you may even have your own. Well, all of these (and more) can be wrapped up in the all embracing term Web 2.0.
But is it all hype? For instance, if you own a web site you may be wondering if you have to reinvest in new technologies to bring your site "up-to-date" and if so, what is it going to cost you? In this, the first of a short series of articles, I'm going to attempt to demystify what Web 2.0 is and (maybe more importantly) isn't.
The phrase Web 2.0 was first used at an O'Reilly Media seminar in late 2004 and the buzzword stuck, but many of the elements that make Web 2.0 possible have actually been around in some form since the mid 1990s.
In its broadest sense Web 2.0 refers to the second generation of web sites and services supplied via the Internet. The main distinguishing point between these and the earlier generation is the "look and feel" of the service. Web 2.0 sites tend to present the user with an interface that looks and acts more like a desktop application than a plain HTML web site.
But Web 2.0 can also be described in some ways as a philosophy rather than just a collection of technologies. In this sense it is the view that people shouldn't be restricted to being passive "browsers" of the web, rather they should have the opportunity to be active contributors. The massive number of online blogs, podcasts, social networking sites, and so on that have sprung up over the last few years indicate that many people share this view.
Just to confuse things further, Web 2.0 is sometimes described as "Internet 2.0," which can then be misinterpreted as referring to "Internet2" - a specific project to develope the next generation of network infrastructure.
You may also have heard the phrase "the web is the platform" when describing Web 2.0. If this sounds familiar, then you probably remember that Netscape was touting the same phrase back in its early days. Its goal was to develop a dominant browser in the marketplace that would drive sales of its server products. In the end they lost the "browser war" to Microsoft and effectively disappeared. As it is beginning to become clear, web servers and web browsers themselves are not the important part of the equation - it's the web services delivered over them.
I referred to Google Maps earlier and it's worth taking another look at this service as I regard it as being a good example of a definitive Web 2.0 site. Being a long time web user and developer, the first time I saw Google Maps I couldn't get over the feeling of "wow!" as I dragged and zoomed the map around in real time and switched between map and satellite views without the tedious old web experience of waiting for the whole page to redraw. When I saw this I knew I was looking at and experiencing the future of the web.
As the initial fun of map browsing wore off, I began to wonder just how they did it. How had they made a web page behave so similar to a desktop application? That was my first introduction to Ajax, an acronym for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. Ajax is a technique used to exchange small amounts of data between your browser and the web site server so that only the parts of your page that have actually changed get updated, not the whole page.
Ajax is the core to the dynamic features of Web 2.0. It is not the whole story, but without it Web 2.0 would be a very different and probably less exciting platform.
How Ajax works, its benefits and its disadvantages (yes, it has some) will be covered in more detail in the next article. In the meantime, as you conduct your daily surfing on the web, see if you can spot which of your favourite sites are starting to introduce these more dynamic Web 2.0 features. You'll probably be surprised at how fast it's happening.
David Judge is a Bangkok-based IT consultant, with a focus on emerging web technologies.
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