12 Feb, 2006
Web 2.0
There appears to be a lot of hype about web 2.0 flying about at the moment. As every much of it doesn't live up to expectations but some of it does.
I have taken to using http://del.icio.us/bgidley for my bookmarks and from there have found a range other web 2.0 sites.
The key things that web 2.0 appears to be is a slick GUI (usually using AJAX). This in itself seems like a good thing.
From a technology perspective I find the web 2.0 frames works all a bit worrying. Moving to the web from thick clients programmers lives got so much simpler - they didn't have to worry in the main about GUI events and instead just put the page back.
Web 2.0 is going to result in some really awful application bugs of the sort when you can fill in A then B then C but if you go back to A and edit it you will 'break' the page. This sort of thing was a common problem in the Visual Basic GUI's of a few years ago.
Hopefully component frameworks like Tapestry can keep all the Web2.0 coolness locked away and thus reduce the screw up likelyhood.
The other thing that worries me is the security aspect - unchecked input and cross site scripting are the most common sorts of security bugs and with Web 2.0 the opportunity for mistakes is going to be increased.