Larry Becker, vice president of marketing and business development at Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG) asks can the web 2.0 new tools shake things up on ones site, but will they help you sell more stuff? Becker challenges us to take a closer look at what we are selling and who our customers are before we engage them in social tagging. If putting the user in charge of the website content and offerings is not germane to the business plan of selling more products we are not only wasting time but resources. Becker continues to say “ make sure your site has mastered the fundamentals” Becker advocates clean design and less clutter, then as one engages new tools such as tagging, and interactive content it will build on the solid design already in place. Becker also encourages us to seek the advice of the experts like online marketers.

     This new Web 2.0 terminology has attracted opposition and notable skepticism from technology experts such as Tim Berners-Lee the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and the original inventor of the World Wide Web in1989 while working at the European Particle Physics Laboratory, CERN . Berners-Lee questions “whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have existed since the early days of the Web”

     Web 2.0 offers social elements with the embracement of the, my-web attitude. Users generate and distribute content, customize their user environments, share files, music, and applications with other users. Users can run software applications entirely through a browser. Bart Decrem , a founder and former CEO of Flock , calls Web 2.0 the "Participatory Web" and regards legacy Web as information-source or Web 1.0.

     Some impacts that Web 2.0 have on the creation of websites are that users can own the data on a site with content control over that data. Tim O'Reilly the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., states that these sites may have “Architecture of Participation” that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. He continues to say that this stands in sharp contrast to traditional websites which limit visitors to viewing and whose content can only be modified by the site's owner.

     Web 2.0 sites often feature rich, user-friendly interactive interfaces based on Asynchronous JavaScript and XML “AJAX,” Adobe “ Flex ” or similar rich media. And with the perceived second generation of webology come new and refreshed buzz acronyms like , “ wikis ” collaborative web software, “ folksonomies ” user-driven Content organizing “ JSON” JavaScript Object Notation, “masups” multi source web applications, “RSS” really simple syndication for auto feeding updated content like news stories, and “CSS” Cascading Style Sheets for user defined colors , fonts , and  layouts, to name just a few. All these new or renewed web infrastructures are focused on the web 2.0 social-networking aspect concepts.

     So again how do these new concepts, tools, and fresh focus for our web future sculpt the way we build our websites? Do we allow our intended goals to be redefined by the users; how far do we go. Isn’t the overall scheme of things is to engage our customers in order to get them to buy what we are selling? Can these things allegedly result in a rise in the economic value of the web as users have control to do more online?

     We apply Romance and Hollywood effect to web 2.0 to the point that it can be all things to everyone a system with out flaw with instant answers and gratification. We can fill it with flash and cool special effects and sensationalize its star qualities as we jump it across immeasurable caverns, loft nuclear weapons at it and pent it against all challengers as it emerges without a hair out of place. But at the end of the day we have taken the world’s potentially most powerful tool and turned it into a video game. Games are not real nor are super heroes. Content and functionality is king we must not lose site of this. Flash, fun, and entertaining interaction is wonderful but we must not lose the usefulness of the web, long live the king.

References

Becker, Larry, Rimm-Kaufman Group (Keeping your eye on the 2.0 user) January 2007 Multichannel Merchant, Copyright 2007 Prism business media http://www.multichannelmerchant.com

Berners-Lee, Tim W3C ( The Future of The web ) http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

Decrem, Bart , CEO of Flock (Participation Revolution) ©2007 The Conversations Network http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail778.html

O'Reilly, Tim O'Reilly Media, Inc., (The Architecture of Participation) June (2004) © 2007, O'Reilly Media, Inc http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/articles/architecture_of_participation.html

Wikipedia, (Social Bookmarking) last modified 05:02, 9 December (2007) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking Wikipedia® Foundation, Inc

  AJAX is used for creating interactive web applications by asynchronously requesting small bits of extra data from the server and loading it in the background without adversely affecting the overall behavior of the existing page. JavaScript is the most common scripting language used with AJAX function calls. Data are sent and retrieved using an XML HTTP request object. AJAX is open standard, cross plat-formed and supported with free frameworks and libraries. Ajax is not a technology in itself, but the use of a group of technologies. The combined technologies function as an Inner-Browser with navigation occurring within a single page, as a application interface.

  The intent of AJAX style programming is to reduce the page loading requirements of HTML/HTTP web pages while delivering additional information to a browser when someone clicks on a button or moves the mouse cursor over a part of the page, without refreshing the entire page . AJAX implementation allows complex, intuitive, dynamic, data-centric user interfaces in web pages. The combined technology inner-work of AJAX supports interactions of real-time form data validation, via XML, with auto completion as the user types, and load on demand HTML by loading more data in the background for quick access.

  An example of a site that uses AJAX is the online video rental site Netflix. The site automatically pops up a movie's synopsis, with a thumbnail image of the movie poster, when a customer moves the cursor over titles in a list of search results. Interactive scripting such as this allows the site to provide detailed content without the required loading to a brand-new page if a user wants to find out more about a movie. The user has instant feedback without waiting for a completely new page thus dramatically speeding up the site visit. (2007) Wikipedia

  AJAX supports sophisticated user interface controls, page effects with real-time data refresh and server push. The data can be polled from a server for up-to-date-data such as a stock market ticker. These web effects can be accomplish without the need to refresh the entire web page. AJAX scripts can be used to mix external data using server side proxies with ones own server applications and third party data; this mix of data is called Mashups. Additionally AJAX techniques can be used to create single-page applications that run like a typical desktop application environment. (2007) Sun Microsystems, Inc

  The power of AJAX is apparent with the generation of HTML locally within the browser while utilizing JavaScript calls to bring down only the small amount of actual data needed. Web pages appear to load quicker due to the fact the overall layout does not have to be completely redrawn. With Ajax, the HTML of the page can be produced locally in the browser, with load on demand content. AJAX Web-based applications can load event handlers then load the functions on the fly, which significantly cuts down the bandwidth consumption for web applications.

  Bandwidth speed, navigation and content all vie for top billing in web site creation. Web tools such as AJAX, Active X, and scripts help balance the resources. How the web page interacts with the user is paramount to the success of the site.

  In an article by John Zaner an associate professor, from University of Southern Maine, Gorham he speaks of user interaction with content feedback and how it can be accomplished with client and server-side scripts. Client-side scripts use languages like JavaScript that are included in the HTML code and processed by the web browser. Server-side scripts use languages like PHP, ASP and Perl and are processed by the web server. Zaner states that without scripts, web pages are a "one-way street" limited to displaying static information to the user.

  Server-side scripts can interact with other files and databases to store and retrieve information. Server-side script web applications include guest books, discussion groups, search engines, and online businesses. Client-side scripts use the client's computer to process instructions that can be handled locally reducing the load on the server, speeding up the process by reducing the number of times the browser needs to connect to the server. Client-side scripts include form pre-processing, online games, and can display customization with out reloading the page.

  Rosemarie Wise a self-proclaimed "web enthusiast" says about Server Side Validation is “the best thing about validating the input on the server is that your visitors don't need to meet any specific browser requirements. Of course validating on the server side can be much more demanding on server resources, but it does help to catch any invalid data that comes into the script directly or happens to make it past any client side filters you created.”

(2007) Sun Microsystems, Inc

References

Murray, Greg,  June 9, 2005; updated October 2006 (Asynchronous JavaScript Technology and XML (Ajax) With the Java Platform) (2007) Sun Microsystems, Inc http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2EE/AJAX/

Wikipedia® November 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29

Wise, Rosemarie, Tue 25th Dec, 2001 http://websiteowner.info/articles/cgi/whichside.as

© 2000-2007 Rosemarie Wise

Zaner, John,  associate professor, Department of Technology, University of Southern Maine Gorham, Copyright © 2007 ProQuest LLC http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1129268131&sid=10&Fmt=3&clientId=2606&RQ T=309&VName=PQD

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