Contents

• What's Web 2.0, AJAX, etc.?
• Good and bad approaches
• Need for standards

What's Web 2.0?

• Supposedly coined by Tim O'Reilly
  • a lot of hype!
• Rounded corners, gradient fills, colorful...
• So it's cool, cool, cool and, of course, beta

What's AJAX?

• Asynchronous JAvascript + Xml, coined by Jesse James Garrett in February 2005 while having a shower ;-)
  • "Ajax isn’t a technology"
  • mini-demo: Google Suggest

What's behind AJAX?

• XHTML + CSS + Javascript + XML... nothing new!... revenge of Web standards at last!
  • My first "AJAX" application (DHTML, more or less): 1999 (by the time of DynLayer)
• AJAX plus? FLEX (from Adobe, Flash front-end)
  • mini-demo: Flex Store (more available)
  • My first "FLEX" application: 2000

Examples

• The first and most known
  • Google Maps, Google Mail, Flickr...
• Desktop applications
  • Pixoh, Writely (and AjaxWrite), Meebo, Kiko, Google Pages Creator, CrazyEgg, Thumbstacks...

Lots and lots of examples more and reviewed

Interesting for the big ones

• Acquisitions
  • Writely, Dodgeball, Picasa, MeasureMaps, YouTube -> Google
  • Flickr, AdInterax, JumpCut -> Yahoo!
• Launching
  • Microsoft too: Windows Live, Windows Live Local, Office Live... (yes, they work in Firefox ;-)

It's a bit worrying (business side)

• Always in beta, some even in alpha ("let the users be the testers"?)
• Much to do about nothing
• 2000 bubble revival?
  • Google paying $5M for Measure Maps?, $1600M for YouTube!
  • Fox Interactive $10M for Newroo?
  • Jokes started a while ago

It's a bit worrying (technical side)

• New tools (Ruby on Rails, Dojo and others), same old errors (ex.: accessibility in AJAX)
• Where did the B2B integration go?
• Nothing new (ex.: Microformats); just different names... and hype! :-(
  • Microsoft's Web Conference, MIX06 (March 2006, 1700+ attendants):
    • "...the semantic web is really taking off with the use of microformats." - Tim O'Reilly
    • "We need microformats and to get people to agree on them. It is going to bootstrap exchanging data on the Web... we need them for things like contact cards, events, directions..." - Bill Gates
  • Not really!
• Applications for real users or for geeks?

Same old song

Web 3.0 (Zeldman)

• "It’s only castles burning

  To you who are toiling over an AJAX- and Ruby-powered social software product, good luck, God bless, and have fun. Remember that 20 other people are working on the same idea...

  To you who feel like failures because you spent last year honing your web skills and serving clients, or running a business, or perhaps publishing content, you are special and lovely, so hold that pretty head high, and never let them see the tears."

There are interesting things...

• + focus on the user (beware, geeks and users are not the same!)
• + funcionality on the Web (not only docs to read)
• standards work! (specially the old ones ;-)

...very interesting things...

The Collaborative Web... at last!

back to the basics

• Blogs and Wikis mainly
• My mother can add content to the Web... hoorray! :-)

...and surprising, too

Software as Service

• APIs: Amazon, Google, Flickr...
  • bring developers near to the company...
  • ... and the company near to more and more places (ex: Google Maps at Fundamentos Web)
• Amazon Grid Services
• Mashups (integration, for the Web veterans): gVisit, HouseMapings, Zonetag (from Yahoo!)...

What is Web and what is not?

Let's see...

A bunny,a robot...?

Opening the bunny

A phone?

Opening the phone

Do we need standards?

• I hope so! ;-)
• An example: gadgets just reviewed
• Another example: browser wars again --> the Mobile world

Remember: interoperablity!

Do we have enough standards?

Something is missing

• Rich Web Applications Activity
• Tagging vs. Ontologies
• Security...

the whole back-end!

Why we need them?

• Save costs
  • Learn from Web experts - save consultant fees
  • Share R+D: No longer constrained by company resources
  • Exchange of ideas and experiences
  • Better specifications through wider review
  • Royalty-free goal
  • Share development cost for tests
• Increase revenue
  • Open standards increase innovation and competition
  • Increased growth through increased market confidence
  • Customers have more confidence - no "lock-in"

We cannot build them alone

• They're for you!
• Help us (help you): develop, discuss, comment... tell us what's needed!

(they are here to stay)

Food for thought

• Web 2.0 or Web 0.2?
• "Dad, have you heard of...?" (put the name of any of the Web 2.0 buzzwords or companies here)

More info

This talk at:

http://www.w3c.es/Presentaciones/2006/1018-newWeb-JA/

W3C Standards

http://www.w3.org/TR/

W3C Spain Office

http://www.w3c.es

W3C

http://www.w3.org