Thursday, October 06, 2005

Re: What is Web 2.0?

I had read the article recently. That term seems to have got a lot of buzz of late. I guess one of the things that really got it moving was AJAX interfaces.

What I'm starting to notice is that a lot of 'concept' apps or whatever you want to call it are just trying to ape what regular desktop apps do. Now that there is the new idea of making http requests asynchronously which don't require page refreshes, people are going crazy using it as a hammer and seeing everything as a nail. From the few I've seen - they suck. Sure they are all jazzy making full use of dhtml, now with xmlhttprequests behind the scene. But they are a usability nightmare. They are slow as hell. AJAX is a new concept and with people trying to take it to the limits they are abusing the browser. When you want to use a web app you expect it to work in some 'preconcieved' way - through so many years of surfing the web we've become comfortable with certain conventions. AJAX apps go against it. Plus who the hell wants to use a windows type app through a browser? Adam Bosworth - a big shot at Google - the 'father' of AJAX apps - even posted problems he see a while back.

I'm not saying AJAX sucks. I think it's superb. Really. I feel it should be used to enhance the web experience and accepted paradigms. Not just try to rehash Windows type apps.

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