Welcome to Web 2.0
05 May 2007

"I get in my car, punch in a postcode and my sat nav tells me exactly where I am and gives me directions to where I want to go. It's space age stuff, or at least would've seemed like it when I was getting excited about paperback sized TV remotes"

Back in the 1970's if you had a musical doorbell then you owned the height of modern technology. I remember when a television became available that had a detachable unit (about the size of a small paperback) that let you remotely switch between the 3 available television channels. It was very expensive and like something out of Star Trek (and I don't mean those pointy ears).

Skip forward 30 years and technology appears to have infiltrated every part of our daily lives. It's not that the 70's were the Dark Ages (we had electricity then, you know) however the intervening years have given us more gadgets than we know what to do with. When I was in Norway recently, for example, I thought nothing of pulling a mobile phone out of my pocket and calling or sending a message to someone in the UK. I get in my car, punch in a postcode and my sat nav tells me exactly where I am and gives me directions to where I want to go. It's space age stuff, or at least would've seemed like it when I was getting excited about paperback sized TV remotes. We all take it in our stride.

In the future when they write the history books I don't believe that it will be high definition television or personal digital assistants that will occupy the pages of school text books. Instead I believe that the "Technological Revolution" (or whatever it will become known as) will consist mainly of boring lessons and essays about the birth of the internet.

When I first logged on to the net in the mid-1990's what I saw was very different to what we see today. There was only one browser (Netscape) and this was a very early prototype. There weren't many web sites and those that existed had plain text with a few hyperlinks. The "browser" was a novelty - slow and generally shut down very quickly in favour of text-based bulletin boards and utilities like "gopher". It seems almost unbelievable that we've come so far in such a short space of time. When I first logged on there was no business carried out over the net, now there are billions spent worldwide every year.

Most consumers have joined the internet bandwagon much more recently and so could be forgiven for thinking that "what you see is what you get". However the net has evolved very quickly and is continuing to change all the time. What we see and do over our (faster) network connections by the time the London Olympics start in 2012 could be very different from what we see today. The current evolution of the internet is being dubbed "Web 2.0". It's not a new version of the internet but rather a maturing and to a certain respect combining of existing technologies.

Over recent months I've been developing using something called AJAX which isn't a kitchen cleaner but rather stands for Asyncronous Javascript And XML. It's partly a new way of thinking, of creating web sites that look cleaner, aren't so cluttered (don't try to be all things to all men) and more interactive. One of the ways they become more interactive is allowing visitors to post information back to the web server without refreshing the web page you're on. We've all become used to navigating through many pages as we surf a web site - especially when we're shopping. However AJAX enables a single page to do everything without the need to go to a new one. It's a subtle but very important improvement. The best thing of all is that AJAX uses existing technologies available in all modern web browsers and is pretty easy to program. Expect to see much more of it over the coming months. I've written a number of web based programs at work using it and the improvement in usability is superb even if I do say so myself.

I'm using an AJAX library from Adobe called Spry. This is also built in to Dreamweaver CS3 so when I get my free upgrade expect to see more AJAX-like functionality on TripleW sites as well as the Claytonfamily site itself.

There is, however, more to Web 2.0 and more to come in the evolution of the net. Perhaps a sign of things to come is a new framework (also from Adobe) called Apollo. Unlike AJAX (which uses existing technology already present in browsers and on web servers) Apollo requires a framework to be installed on your PC or Mac (a Linux version isn't available yet). Once installed a computer can access "web sites" that work just like fully blown computer programs. It's like the sites have escaped the confines of the browser and can exist and operate in their own space. This gives designers the freedom to create their own look and feel while losing nothing of what makes a web enabled experience work. eBay have written a sample application in Apollo that shows off its capabilities. No more browser, just a fully functional, branded eBay application that works in an intuitive way just like any other software. However, because it's "Web 2.0" the interface is bold and different. Perhaps, at last, this is going to be the basis for the distributed applications we've been promised since the "dumb terminals" of the IBM age.

Whatever you call it, the huge advantage of an Apollo app is that it works cross platform - whatever computer you own you get the same content and see the same design. From a developer's point of view you can write the app on a Mac or a PC and it will run on either with no need to recompile. Programming Nirvana? Even Microsoft (who are notoriously PC-centric) can see the writing on the wall and are busy writing something similar to Adobe's Flash technology that will, from release, be cross-platform. Very unusual! However, what is no surprise is that this development is very much "Web 1.0" and inside the browser. Playing catchup, again, Redmond? 

There's no doubt that exciting times are ahead and that the internet will continue to evolve. It's an exciting time. I expect I can forget about that remote control now and concentrate instead on that musical doorbell I never bought...