1 ok, so what's your point?

that the marketing types get ahold of a technical concept and spin it their advantage? yeah? welcome to 1999.

no, scratch that. welcome to 2000. to 2001. to 2002. to 2003. to 2004. to 2005. to 2006. to the web in the real world.

posted at 12:42 am on January 17, 2006 by tom sherman

2 Will somebody please enlighten me?

Thanks to Zeldman’s influence, I completely abandoned DHTML and Flash in favor of web standards. (Against my will, mind you. I wanted to like these things—but they very quickly revealed themselves to be baroque, convoluted solutions to simple problems.)

So now, I’ve justed started a new job, and my team leader is already throwing around the buzzword “AJAX,” which is new to me. Before I get too deeply entrenched in learning this new technology, can someone please explain why Zeldman refers to it with such implied disdain?

posted at 01:08 am on January 17, 2006 by Everett Lindsay

3 Web 1.0b2

I’ve stopped reading when I hit on the first ever use of “Web 2.0”. I think Jeffrey wrote down very well why I feel such disinterest.

To me, most of the time the web feels like 1.0 beta 2 still; the website of the national railway services has a simple form where you key in you departure point, your arrival point and it gives you the next 4 train departures.

Thanks to some stupid javascript, it does not work on my Sony Ericsson K700 mobile phone, when I need that service most when confronted with yet another delay or reroute.

As long as most companies still “don’t get it”, I couldn’t care less about Flickr, Google maps or any other hyped thing.

posted at 01:41 am on January 17, 2006 by Martijn ten Napel

4 Don't blink

I must have blinked for too long, web 2.0 and ajax were on my do-to-list…ok, so I scrap them and go for web 3.0? I agree with Martijn’s comments above, it would be nice if there more than a few companies making useful, working sites.

posted at 02:02 am on January 17, 2006 by Louise Gorrie

5 Wire-Framing Ajax 'is' a bitch!

Screaming out of the top of my lungs, this is what I’ve been trying to tell everyone in my department. Now that I have some backup, I will most definitely use this article as proof that wire-framing a web application means twice the work.

This also goes to further proof that traditional interaction designers are going to have beef up on their JavaScript and learn some progressive enhancement to make sure each web app has a fallback.

Lastly, the bit on “But if Steven used AJAX and Ruby on Rails, Yahoo will pay millions”. Sorry, that just ain’t true. Using Ruby for production would put us in the pit mainly because it can’t touch PHP when it comes to speed.

Aside from that, where do I sign up for the 3.0 conference? Can I be a speaker ;)

posted at 02:29 am on January 17, 2006 by Dustin Diaz

6 Wonderful article

With the greatest of respect to this site and the authors, I’d been worried by the quality of articles lately, lots of hot-air and very little of genuine interest or use to the experienced professional. But this (and it’s companion) is a gem.

You express many of the things that have been getting me frustrated over the last year or so; Particularly the ‘web agency founders like celebrities’ line. The general cult of css-celebrity and sycophantic review sites like stylegala, css import, web standards awards, etc. wind me up no end.

I’ve spent much of the last eighteen months rediscovering Javascript and playing with AJAX-like components and sites, and I find it all very promising and interesting; but there’s so much hype and so little quality (relatively) that we do risk generating anothor bubble, ready for bursting. When all of the VCs and big clients involved realise that all the spiel they’ve been getting from developers/designers (who, frankly, should know better) is a load of hot air with very little deliverable, they’ll be queuing up to deride and discredit us once again.

And I’ll be first in line to kick those responsible.

P.S. AJAX is a bitch to wireframe.

posted at 05:47 am on January 17, 2006 by Jordan Harper

7 Doing

For me the important aspect of Web 2.0 is the concentration on what users of a site might be visiting for. Designing interfaces and metaphors that make functionality simple and easy to access is hard.

Design is planning, and planning for interaction is hard. When it works well, like Flickr, it’s very good. I’m genuinely excited about the sites I’ve found that offer lots of functionality with very low learning curves.

If we are all on the Web 2.0 bandwagon maybe we should enjoy the ride, and hopefully none of the wheels will fall off!

posted at 07:25 am on January 17, 2006 by Kev Mears

8 the fashion-sense of technology

This reminds me of the stupidity (not your article, very nice actually)of the fashion industry, only with design and development technologies, there is supposed to be a practical side to the tech-flavor of the time. Give up Flash? Hell no. I love Flash, and I also love xhtml & css that doesn’t need a thousand hacks to make it work across the major modern browsers (even IE 6!). As Rick Nelson sang, “ya can’t please everyone so ya, got ta please yourself. Hmmm…Think I’ll save the rest for my blog.

posted at 07:54 am on January 17, 2006 by Rick Resnick

9 Web 3.0 Is So Yesterday

I’m already on to Web 4.0, where it’s all plain text and SVG.

Web 2.0 is the biggest gimmick and joke that I’ve seen in a long time. It reminds me of higher ed, where professors pat themselves on the back, and build each other up. In this case, it’s the industry superstars capitalizing on their b.s., and it’s the wanna-bes that are yucking it up.

posted at 08:17 am on January 17, 2006 by Jon Henshaw

10 Messianic apprehension

20% of the passion we feel for a particular utopian possibility is responsible for 80% of the anxiety we feel about it’s reception by the great unwashed;-) Experience seems to suggest that a messiah (fan, believer, advocate, etc.) can expect 2 possible responses. And they both suck.

If the idea is shunned, that’s obviously not good. If the idea is embraced, that’s often not good either, for it seems that according to some law of linguistic impotence, the idea that is embraced will have little to nothing in common with the original vision. Often, in the worst cases, it becomes the antithesis of the idea. If you are a messiah of peace, expect a lot of killing in your name.

I’ve felt this apprehension for a number of ideas: the web, cinema, art, hip hop. It seems the same cultural process operates on any idea, at least for the people who care about it. (Imagine how Richard Dawkins feels.REF) When you have two options for reception and one is the antithesis of the original idea, then obscurity becomes much more attractive. Better the original art form remain largely invisible than it get confused with rap. Better Post Modernism remain academic than it be embraced (or rejected) as a form of totalitarianism.

On the other hand, Jeffery’s Web 3.0 maneuver seems like a cool move, at least for as long as it can remain undefined. As long as no one figures out what Web 3.0 is, our world is safe. Otherwise, expect more of the same: show me a communications medium and I’ll show you a marketer who will render it 99% useless and see the remaining 1% as a very respectable response rate.

REF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

posted at 08:38 am on January 17, 2006 by Brad Bell

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