Wahandisi Web Solutions (Kenya)- Web Technologies for the New Generation

A story is being told of Tim O’Reaily and media interactive, a renowned technology writers and reviewers, these people were planning on holding a seminar but they didn’t know the best name to code name the seminar, as a result of searching for a captivating name, they finally settled, on web 2.0, this was the advent of the web 2.0 journey to stardom.

Soon after this, people really started thinking outside the box, people started asking whats really web 2.0, several arguments and questions were raised on the validity of the term web 2.0 and all other functionalities associated with it, of most importance was the ability of the web server and the browser to interact asynchronously i.e. on the fly validation of fields e.g. yahoo new user signup.

The end of the web 2.0 seminar marked the beginning of a thorough and dedicated research on the web 2.0 concepts, web designers and script programmers immediately got to work in trying to exploit this window of opportunity that was going to give stand-alone developers a run for their money and also Technologically shape the user’s experience and feel in interacting with web apps.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that , over the years, stand-alone applications have been rated best in terms of user experience and server-client interaction as compared to web applications. Stand-alone apps have the ability to operate asynchronously and seamlessly, meaning, when you submit a form, you can as well be doing something else on the application, as compared to web 1.0 applications where submitting a form means sending the entire page to the server, this means you cannot do anything else until the server sends back its response, this makes web applications to have the following drawbacks.

§ Slow application processing

§ Poor user experience in interacting with the application

§ Un-necessary utilization of server’s resources.

§ Un-necessary packet streams on the n/w.

§ Holding the users at ransom

The above drawbacks are the inspirational sources behind the development and catapulting of the web 2.0 platform, I term them inspirational factors since web 2.0 is simply a platform to re-define web technology [web 1.0], and in redefining this, it means addressing the drawbacks associated with the former web 1.0 platform.

You might ask, whats the definition of web 2.0?

This has been a question on several people’s lips, even the best designers and programmers were not at a good position to define it, until recently that people started to comprehend and dig the concepts behind this platform [pioneered by Google], personally as I write this article, I would define web 2.0 as a radical shift in developing web apps, it simply means in a layman’s language, doing things differently.

The web 2.0 platform is not a new Technology as some may purport it to be, in fact web 2.0 platforms is based on the language and concepts we have been applying in web 1.0 applications, that’s why the definition of doing things differently, defines in total what web 2.0 is, just a radical shift of workings.

Below is a list of web 2.0 companies that are making their users to have a different feel when interacting with their applications.

§ Google Earth

§ Yahoo

§ Google

Several companies are making use of this platform, but the pioneering fathers include the now giant company Google, don’t get worried, you too can make you website/web application be web 2.0 compliant, and watch for my next article, Anatomy of Web 2.0.this will be more of a practical article to take you through the anatomy and practical concepts of web 2.0 with examples.

After this you should be on your way to developing web 2.0 web applications

http://www.wahandisi.com