Introduction to Web 2.0

Anyone who wants to understand Web 2.0 design must first be
familiar with what Web 2.0 means. The phrase stands for the
supposed second generation of the web that focuses on
collaboration and sharing of information among users.

What used to be one-way highways of the old web is now
replaced by a community-driven world of Web 2.0.

The term Web 2.0 was first used in 2004 during the O’Reilly
Media Web 2.0 conference. This suggested a change on how
developers and users use the web.

Some of the things related to Web 2.0 include blogs, RSS
(really simple syndication) feeds, social bookmarking
websites and the like.

All of them share the common factors of having
interactivity and communication between the website owner
and the visitors, as well as among the visitors themselves.

The so-called Web 2.0 encompasses the back and front end of
websites. However, to the average users, the changes are
most evident on what they actually see and use on the
websites that they visit.

For example, for Ajax-based applications, what they see are
the updating of data on the page without actually
refreshing the entire page, which was the technique before.

Web 2.0 has made it possible to create a desktop
environment to websites. For example, users of the past can
only type their documents on their computers and were only
able to share them to others by sending it through e-mail.

But with Web 2.0, users can now create their documents on
websites which offer that service and are able to share
them to others by merely adding the e-mail addresses of
their friends. Such is the case with Google Documents,
formerly known as Writely, until Google acquired the
company.

All in all, Web 2.0 has further enriched the internet by
letting people collaborate, making the web into a true
community.