Web 2.0 technological evolution!

Web 2.0 has come about in a way that would be best described as evolutionary, rather than any kind of deliberate change over from web 1.0 - by this I mean the ability of the web and what it can offer us has developed piece by piece over the last 10-15 years, hand in hand with hardware and software advances.

The development side of the web has become a very exciting area to be involved in.  Long gone are the days of boring static pages, powered by nothing more than HTML and CSS, we now have several powerful programming languages to build vibrant, attractive pages that are database-backed, enabling users to generate unique pages to suit their needs and access more than a standard page of information.

In terms of physical development outside of websites themselves, the two biggest developments are no doubt Internet connectivity, and platform advancement.  They say that time heals all wounds, and distance makes the heart grow fonder...this is clearly true when it comes to memories of using dial-up internet.  I can clearly remember the annoyance and impatience I felt sitting there waiting for my internet to logon to my ISP and connect me to the world, but also the excitement and anticipation.  I also remember the pain and suffering of being unable to connect, due to any number of technical issues I was ill equipped to troubleshoot back then, or being disconnected because my unknowing mother would pick up the phone to make a call downstairs, or one of my sister's friends would ring the home phone to speak with her, instantly pulling the plug on my online experience.  Yet despite all this, whenever someone mentions 'the bad old days of dial-up', or I hear that old familiar connection sound on some retro 90's video, I can't help but half crack a smile.  That said I can not describe my happiness the day we finally switched over to broadband internet.  The joys of the 'always on' internet connection are like giving a race car to a kid on a pushbike;  he's going to go as fast as he can, for as long as he can, and push the cars ability, possibly to breaking point, until the novelty wears off and it becomes the norm.

Platform advancement is, again, an area I labored through as a child.  For years I was stuck with an old 486 that ran on a whopping 66MHz, while my friends gradually upgraded to Pentiums and beyond.  When I finally upgraded, again it was a big jump to a Pentium 4, being the child I was, I instantly had about a hundred video games I had been wanting to play for so long but couldn't due to the 486 not satisfying minimum requirements.  I was also able to fully embrace the web, and in particular streaming and downloading music/video content which was just starting to take off.

Web 2.0 would not be practical, or even possible in a lot of areas, without the super fast internet speeds we enjoy today, many web sites are too feature rich and resource hungry to even display properly on 56k dial-up.  Similarly, PCs, and more recently smart phones, have advanced in both hardware and software to the point where we can enjoy heavy-duty database-backed websites and watch hours upon hours of video, listen to music, and download/upload content without batting an eyelid.

One technology that takes advantage of these first two advances, is Adobe Flash.  Flash is a piece of software used primarily for multimedia.  If you've ever used a website with an interactive video feature, there is a good chance Flash is responsible.  The use of multimedia on web pages has exploded over the last decade, with anything from a blog to a shopping website including music or video clips in their content.

A fun example:
http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/

Another huge technology to come along is Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), a client-side technology (or to be more accurate, a group of technologies) used to build web apps.  The joys of asynchronous data retrieval means it can constantly update the data being used by the webpage without interrupting the user experience of the webpage.

One man's simplified explanation

In the absence of videos such as the above, I think the best example to explain Ajax to someone would be to point them to Google Maps.  It is the use of Ajax that allows you to interact with the map, zooming in and out of a location and even going as far as to look at a house from a 'standing outside' point of view.  Without Ajax, the webpage would need to reload the page each time you adjusted the view, as it sent a request to the database for a zoomed in/out version of the current map you are looking at.  So too with the street view it would send a request to the server, and then reload the page completely to change the map to a photo rendering of the house/street - no quick and simple rolling of the mouse wheel for this handy tool!