archive for March, 2006

Whats with Web 2.0?

mikesmullin — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:49:32 -0700

In case you haven't heard, "Web 2.0" is a concept primarily advocated by O'Reilly Media during their periodic Web 2.0 Conference in downtown San Francisco.

Tim O'Reilly officially defines it as, "design patterns and business models for the next generation of software."

To illustrate, Markus Angermeier was kind enough to design a visual mindmap summing up the memes of Web 2.0. There are even some example sites and services listed. Check it out!

Real-world examples? Don't tell me you haven't seen:

clouding/tagging (folksonomy; like Flickr, TagCloud, Technorati, Eurekster),
RSS/Atom/OPML (syndication; like Bloglines, FeedBurner)
XML/XHTML/CSS (web standards; like CSS Zen Garden)
commenting/trackback/voting (participation; like Digg, Newsvine, Yahoo! My Web)

And that is just the beginning! Most likely you have seen and love all these sites but had no idea how it related to Web 2.0.

It is up to us as web developers to break out of our functional fixedness and find practical ways to apply these concepts in our own projects, possibly even in ways that haven't been thought of before. People just can't get enough!

How? I recommend these great books.

Backbase AJAX Library

mikesmullin — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 19:37:56 -0700

Introducing Backbase, a 3-year-old company that develops and sells great AJAX applications. Like 37Signals, they too have released a Community Edition of their framework. Beyond great asynchronous capability, they've got some pretty sweet objects demonstrated by their drag-and-drop shop, directory explorer, RSS reader, office locator, and more.

For those of you who have seen the script.aculo.us drag-and-drop shopping cart example, this one is much more complete.

UPDATE: This is not an open-source solution as indicated by digg.com. Sucks for them!

Amazing JavaScript Libraries

mikesmullin — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 03:24:18 -0700

It has been a year since Jesse James Garret first coined the term AJAX and based on his observations of Google's Gmail, Maps, Suggest, etc. and it's now officially annoying to use web apps that haven't replaced clunky html functionality with peppy AJAX goodness.

If you aren't using it, maybe it would help to know that there are now open-source JavaScript libraries available for download. Prototype seems to be the most popular but there's also Dojo, Advanced AJAX, and SAJAX.

Assuming you've already seen some great AJAX in action, check out this excellent introduction to the prototype.js library and a round-up of 30 AJAX tutorials.

On top of all that, since 37Signals released Basecamp, along with an open-source version of their visual effects javascript libraries (now script.aculo.us) which made Ruby popular (now Ruby w/ Rails), a few more combinations have appeared: moo.fx, Rico, ThinkCap JX, and Backbase which are all pretty cool and mostly depend on the latest version of Prototype.

Some people think the combination of AJAX and JavaScript effects are so cool they will replace the need for Macromedi a (now Adobe) Flash but I disagree. You have to know how to use AJAX appropriately.

Want more? Check out this comprehensive JavaScript Library Roundup.

Join the fight for Web Standards!

mikesmullin — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 03:27:45 -0700

In light of ongoing discussion regarding a new professionalism for Web designers and developers, it’s clear that some people still don't get it: XML, XHTML, CSS, ECMAScript, Accessibility, WaSP, W3C -- what do they all have in common?

Web standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development and increase the usability and lifespan of sites published on the Web. That's what!

In an interview with Accessify’s Ian Lloyd, Accessibility: The gloves come off, Andy Clarke delivers a strong message that truly needs to be heard:

“Those people still delivering nested table layout, spacer gifs or ignoring accessibility can no longer call themselves web professionals.”

In 2006 we have books, blogs, wikis, geek dinners, and SXSW conferences and there is absolutely no excuse to remain neutral.

Resistance is futile!