Now its time for a round of Buzzword Bingo! So who has ever been in one of those meetings where the tech guy starts throwing around acronyms like there is no tomorrow?
“Yeah, see we are going to connect the PHP back end to a MySQL database using an internal net connection between the co-located servers. Then the front end will be primarily Flex driven using some AJAX elements to update real time data using an XML feed.”
AJAX - Its for websites!
Ok, I know what that means, and you may too, but I also know that is 90% posturing and about 10% actual solution. So what do we make of all this mess? Well, I won’t tackle it all today, but lets go into a few terms that seem to be the ‘in’ thing lately.
“Web 2.0 will save us all”
At least that is what everyone is saying. So what is Web 2.0? Are we throwing out our browsers? Not exactly. Most people associated web 2.0 with something they have seen. A nice interactive interface, or the magic of something updating in the middle of a page when you click. In reality Web 2.0 is not a technology as much as it is a concept. Now I am sure some tech-extremists are about to email and correct me on certain finer points of this, but lets break the concept down into some very straight forward layman’s terms.
“The web as it was”
Well, actually the web as it mostly is. Currently we have a general expectation for most web sites. You load a bunch of text and images on a page. You read, see something you like and click. What happens next? You wait. You have high speed access so you don’t wait as long but your page goes blank, you scroll back to the top of the page again and everything reloads. It works, but its not elegant and not very intuitive.
“The web as it can be”
So what if I want to do a lot of things in a page quickly? Ever tried to reorder a list of items with one of those clunky up/down arrow lists? You’ll go crazy if there are more than 3 items. This is where the web 2.0 concept comes into play. If I want to see a change to one item, why reload the whole page? There are many approaches to this including Flash/Flex, DHTML, and AJAX. I’ll cover some AJAX/DHTML examples, as the same basic principles apply to all 3.
Lets say I do have that list of 40 pictures and they just need to be rearranged. Sure I can click a “move up” link under each repeatedly, but wouldn’t it be easier to just put them where I want them? Now you get web 2.0. Its all the joys of applications with all the power of a web interface. Just drag and rearrange your images. As you do its saving the results to the server without you ever loading a page. AJAX is not a dish soap (well this version is not), it stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. In layman’s terms it means that Javascript running in the page takes care of all that cumbersome back and forth talk between the server and the page while you just enjoy the bliss that is the interface you are in.
Overall a web 2.0 approach can do wonders for your web site or web application. Usability goes up, user frustrations go down and everyone is happy. The key is making sure that its being used intelligently and as the right tool for the job. Everything should not be “Web 2.0″. Its all about the experience. Here are places we like to use these kinds of technologies.
- Displaying a list of items that can be sorted
- Displaying a gallery of images over a page without leaving the base content
- Showing detail content as a popup or tool-tip
- “In place” editing of page content, titles, etc.
- Offering editors in the viewable page rather than through a complex admin system
- Anywhere the user does not need to wait for an entire page to load to get to simple information
Its the tip of the iceberg, but the possibilities are limitless. The overall goal is to consider usability and user experience so the tools become transparent and the user has a feeling of satisfaction at how simple your site or application is to use.
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