I have seen people of several different forums before calling a site Web 2.0 accidentally and I thought it would be a good idea to clarify what a Web 2.0 website is like. Look: Web 2.0 websites generally will have a shiny logo that has a gloss effect and most likey a reflection. If you are not sure what I mean, take a look at this picture where the artist took common logos and made them look like Web 2.0 logos. Also, the site will most likely have rounded corners. There will probably will be gradients used in the design of the layout. Feel: These kinds of websites will have lots of script.aculo.us affects added. These include fades and motions. If you see a moving object and wonder why it isn't Flash, then this is your answer. You will notice that there are lots of smooth moving objects and that there are absolutely no tables or iframes. NONE. Everything will be done with CSS. Data: Web 2.0 websites are user fueled. Most of the stuff will be submitted by the users, for the users. Good examples of this include: Digg, Youtube, and Wikipedia. Personality: Being a user of a web 2.0 website means you support anything Apple does and hate anything Microsoft does. Also, you have your own blog that you update regularly. (This one's kind of a joke. If you have anymore Web 2.0 jokes then tell me.) I know I left a lot out. So please help me expand this article and hopefully we can make it a sticky. Thanks!
Wow, thanks alot for that. I've always wondered what was really meant when the term Web 2.0 is used and you seem to have given an insight to it.
i think the website design is just like fashion. looks good now, but may be outdated tomorrow. this has imho nothing to do with "web2.0". imho the focus on web2.0 is user generated content like myspace, flickr, youtube etc. where users can upload own stuff.
I fear you have drunk the Web 2.0 buzzword KoolAid without truly understanding the core concepts. It has nothing to do with logo shininess or rounded corners or gradients. The look is clean, without distracting clutter. Though an æsthetically pleasing design is to be hoped for, it does not define Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 design guides the eye to the various parts of the page, gently helping the user to find whatever it was he came to the page to see. Where the design distracts the user from his purpose, it is anathema to Web 2.0. Web 2.0 sites will be very wary of adding movement of any kind. The modern web developer may add some javascript fades and movement, but it will be innocuous and not required. (More on that in a moment.) Tables are used, just not for layout purposes. Likewise, no framesets are used, but iframes might be needed to import a document. The object element would be preferred, but IE has crappy support for it. (Why bother, it's only been around for seven years.) The orthogonality of structure, presentation and behavior is very much a cornerstone of the modern web page. The Web 2.0 page works just as well with or without Flash, images, css, javascript or other progressive enhancements. (Flash and images might be content, which is a different issue.) That is one facet of the modern web; a small part in the over all picture. It is user oriented. Joe's Web Order Car Parts has neither a need for nor an interest in user submitted content. Joe is interested in making the site easy for the user to navigate and order. Where his site meets these criteria, and creates no barriers it is Web 2.0. A NULL statement. No comment. You left out the two key bases of the modern Web 2.0. First is usability. Everything from from graphic design to site architecture, to content is created to aid the user perform whichever task he came to the site to do. The Web 2.0 site does not depend on the user having anything more than a UA that knows html or xml. If css or javascript is required to use the site, it's not Web 2.0. Second is accessibility. And, no, it's not just about blind people. It's about not creating barriers to use, whatever the UA. It's about making sites that work on the cell phone, PDA, text browser, Braille pad, screen reader, graphical browser or page parser. In the last, consider a site that has the weather forecast. A UA could parse the page for the forecast low temp, and turn on the pipe heaters if freezing weather is on the way and turn it off when the danger is past. A Web 2.0 site is properly designed and marked up so that we can do that without human intervention. You cited script.aculo.us. That is a spect.aculo.us.ly bad example. If javascript is disabled, the site is inaccessible and unusable. It is the poster child for bad design. cheers, gary
I guess you could say I was stereotyping web 2.0 websites in a way. If you dont mind, can I take your info and help shape it into a nice little guide and edit the post?
argh . . . Web 2.0 sites are simply Web 1.0 concepts, sites and methods which have passed through the Web 2.0 marketing hype machine. It is simply an effort to get another tech bubble going. Money people still remember the Web 1.0 bust, but the Web 2.0 hype makes it seem like this is an entirely new deal. Once again monstrous and absurd amounts of money are being thrown around as the Web 2.0 bubble gains momentum. I have yet to see anything new. Unless, of course, you count the idea of having users provide all the content that web site owners earn money off. I saw someone refer to that as "sharecropping", where users do all the work and the site gets all the benefit. Of course, Web 2.0 sites need to look better and cleaner . . . though famous Web 2.0 sites such as wikipedia, digg and youtube still do not match the coolest Web 1.0 sites.
Feel free to use my comments as a basis of further study. Clancy makes a good point: there is no Web 2.0, at least not as some kind of entity its ownself. I believe Tim O'Reilly was speaking of the world wide web having reached some degree of maturity, and being ready to enter into its next phase when he coined the term Web 2.0. Were I you, I'd simply make it my goal to learn the best practices of web development, and not spend a lot of effort trying to describe something that doesn't really exist. cheers, gary
If you look through the questions, I think this validation is hardly valid. How does using Adsense makes a website Web 2.0? It's pretty much crap and only for the fun of it, seriously.