31 Yes, keep it simple.

An interesting and in some ways reassuring article. All I know about Ruby on Rails is from Wikipedia… kind of scary. What on earth is Ajax on Rails and can it be explained to a layperson? Probably not. With (X)HTML, CSS, php, and a smattering of JavaScript – and a bit of Flash thrown in, maybe – all on Apache, one can build almost anything nice and useful, beginning absolutely from scratch. Technologically, this has become my web world and this is why Geoffrey Zeldman’s article is reassuring (I’ve always found JavaScript nasty stuff, for some reason).

And with ever-faster connections, I don’t see such a big advantage in client-side processing, especially with the proliferation of devices and the important issues around accessibility.

posted at 03:28 pm on January 17, 2006 by Patrick Taylor

32 creamy smooth vituperation

I like it when Brother Zeldman blows his top. This is creamy smooth vituperation on a level with his “The Day the Browser Died“ — the dirty little secret of Netscape 4.

As a cubicle-dwelling Web application GUI developer, I see a proliferation of hyped tech being adopted, yet the focus is wrong. Too much attention is on programming and middle-layer magic bullets rather than user-centered design. Technology has never been the thing that holds the Web back.

In fact, no silliness has been able to hold the Web back at all. Despite the media hype of “the dot com bust”, the Web has continued to accelerate its expansion into new areas, new uses, and new audiences.

posted at 05:53 pm on January 17, 2006 by Brett Merkey

33 We will save the Web 2.0

OK, you are right, right, right, AJAX is very difficult, which means the majority of apps is bad, unless the programmer is very gifted.

What also sux in the Web 2.0 / social software hype is that its all about content or bookmark sharing. Even the so called social software is not very social. It’s without people. And this is what virtual presence changes. OK, this sounds like an advertisement. But it isn’t. If you check out the Jabber Virtual Presence project (please google it, no ad, no URL here), then you might get a topic for your next blog. And if people read and do it then it might save the Web by making the social web really social.

posted at 05:55 pm on January 17, 2006 by Heiner Wolf

34 Paraphrasing sly stone...

I want to thank you for letting [us hard-working hype-abhoring designers] be ourselves, again.

Jeffrey, I don’t know how old you are (I suspect I may be older), but I want to be just like you when I grow up. Reading this article relieved a dull aching pain and gave me hope that this “2.0” shall pass.

posted at 07:15 pm on January 17, 2006 by Nick Gould

35 Shortsightedness

Tired…………………..Wired

Web 1.0…………………Web 2.0

Centralized……………..Decentralized

Laptop………………….Thin computing

Freehosted………………Hosted

Photoshop……………….AJAX Gimp

MS Office……………….AJAX OpenOffice

Dumb Textareas…………..AJAX-WYSIWYG

Blogger…………………Wordpress

Windows Desktop………….Cpanel

If you still don’t get it…too bad.

posted at 07:23 pm on January 17, 2006 by PJ Brunet

37 Note to Ross Howard:

“Web technologies are not on/off switches to be adopted and/or thrown away at the whim of a book or article you have read.”

Never said I did.

What I wrote was that

“Thanks to Zeldman’s influence, I completely abandoned DHTML and Flash in favor of web standards. (Against my will, mind you. I wanted to like these things—but…)”

Even with my conservative use of language, it’s clear that my resulting conclusions were much more than just a “whim.” “Against my will” is a cute, shorthand way of alluding to my years of philosophical struggle with dynamic web interfaces under the constraints of section 508 compliance.

But really, none of this detail is necessary if you stop and think about the number of “whims” /you’ve/ engaged in “against [your] will”…

posted at 07:54 pm on January 17, 2006 by Everett Lindsay

38 Web 3.1

For me, Web 2.0 or 3.0 whichever version you prefer, is about mobile computing not some cool Java-Script effects.

The next wave of web sites and content online will have to adapt and be able to feed cellphones, PDAs and PocketPCs. To this end we need MOBILE DEVICE BROWSERS TO ADOPT WEB STANDARDS (Mr.Zeldman can you do anything about this?). The adoption of these web standards by mobile browsers should be called Web 1.0.

Web 1.0 is point when all devices and browsers truly support web standards through different platforms, devices and browsers. Until, then this Web 2.0 stuff is all nonsense to me….

@media=“handheld” style sheets are currently not supported in PocketPCs as they should be, what’s up with that?

posted at 08:00 pm on January 17, 2006 by Sharaf Atakhanov

39 When is it worth to design an application using AJ

Information design or unique impression? Centralized or decentralized? XHTML or JavaScript?

Point one: It’s the money, stupid! Designing an application using AJAX will cost you 5x – 20x more then doing the same work with PHP or any similar language. Google is able to spends 100k on the design of a few AJAX pages for Google Maps. But that doesn’t make sense if you’ve only got a few hundered visitors.

Point two: It’s centralization against decentralization. We’re going in cycles, did you notice? From the simple and comprehensible to more and more features back to the simple. Do you still remember why we’ve discarded “fat clients” (decentralization) as lame a few years ago? And why fat clients were great compared to the (centralized) green and amber terminals of IBM machines?

Point three: Web 1.0 got close to the terminals again and Web 2.0 moves towards the direction of fat clients. So expect the same “innovative” amateur GUI design, until somebody comes up and imposes a standard. MS again?

No, please, don’t!!!

posted at 08:12 pm on January 17, 2006 by Frank Bergmann

40 software & design

My analysis: There’s no web 2.0 past the marketing, yet something is beginning to happen.

We talk AJAX (burp) and all that nice stuff that is been cited more than often here and all over the place, and in my opinion fail to see the simple course of events in the blurry background.

As a software designer in love with networking and user interfaces for a long time now I’ve seen with much delight something really big happening the past few years: programming met design. I don’t know if I’m the only one thinking it’s huge… sometimes it feels like that.

Computer tools are beginning to take the shape of users’ hands. Distance between user and hardware shortens. At least we strive to make it so, more and more. Whatever the tools and the technical trends most user don’t give a * about. Sure those help, but it’s not the point.

I agree that it’s really nice to be given technology that’s (not that much) fit to make something worth/more of the web, yet I think that mobile terminals, for a dumb exemple, are more of an achievement than AJAX (re-burp) in the networking trends.

I suggest (but feel free to do whatever you want;) we stop focusing on this small spot in the bottom left corner of the big picture of the web currently passing by us, and spend our time, ideas and ink to more rewarding (and profitable, in the end) matters.

It’s not really that I’m fed up with empty articles, piles of books born out of ten lines of JS code and promising talks devoid of any juice (trust me I TRY HARD to find the juice), but more that I am hungry for more.

I’m confident. much more will come out of it if we don’t go astray.

posted at 09:21 pm on January 17, 2006 by Thibaut S