professional web 2.0 programming (2006)

[...]... what this book covers without defining what Web 2.0 is If you search around for definitions of the term Web 2.0, you’ll find a number of apparently unrelated types of definitions: Web 2.0 is either a collaborative web where the content is created by the users (this aspect is often called the social layer of Web 2.0) , or a web where the network is the platform or web that uses funky technologies such as... technologies that characterize most of Web 2.0 applications are needed to lower the barrier to entry in the circle of web publisher that Web 2.0 applications try to enlarge Note that without this social layer, a web application can’t always pretend to be Web 2.0, even if it has all its technical characteristics My Internet service provider has recently redeveloped the organization’s website In the documentation... technical layer of Web 2.0) The coexistence of these definitions together with a number of other less popular ones can give the feeling that the term Web 2.0 is nothing more than a buzz word to designate anything somewhat new in web development This isn’t totally true, and these definitions are more closely tied together than you might think Before the burst of new ideas that we call Web 2.0, the Web seemed... after years of relative stagnation, web development is moving on and has become fun again Web 2.0 is before everything else about finding new ways to make a number of existing technologies work together There is no single Web 2.0 technology and for professional developers, this represents a new challenge In recent years, there has been a tendency to specialize in Web development I know a number of experts... of experts in some of the technologies that are the technical foundation of Web 2.0 (HTML, CSS, HTTP, JavaScript, XML, server side programming, and so on) who have a very limited knowledge of the other technologies that make a successful Web 2.0 application, and sometimes don’t even see why they should care Of course, Web 2.0 applications may often need such highly specialized experts, but more than... layer of Web 2.0 is about making the Web a read/write web again For some, this goal is motivated by philanthropic or political reasons: everyone should be able to express his or her ideas For others, the motivation is financial: if the growth of the number of web readers is deemed to slow down, the growth of the Web can only be fueled by the growth of the number of people that create content on the Web. .. that create content on the Web The business models of Web 2.0 sites differ on the way to convert content into actual revenues, but they share the fact that their content is created by their users, and this is the most distinctive characteristic of a Web 2.0 site The ability of using the Web as a platform can be seen as the architectural layer of Web 2.0 This architectural layer is a consequence of the... xxiii Introduction prerequisite for Web 2.0 applications to a relatively recent version of a web browser Furthermore, due to most needed security constraints, web applications have very limited access to files and data stored on their users’ computers That means that Web 2.0 applications have not much alternative to considering that the platform on which they run is the Web! The technical layer is also... are developed Who This Book Is For This book is for professional developers involved in Web 2.0 projects (the next section offers criteria to check if a Web project is Web 2.0) No specific technical knowledge is required, but we assume a basic familiarity, if not detailed knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and XML We won’t explain either what a programming language is, how an if/then/else statement... 1, “Hello Web 2.0 World,” follows a simple Web 2.0 sample application to present the sequence of exchanges between a web server and a browser and show examples of code implementing these exchanges After this chapter, you should have a better understanding of the roles of the technologies covered by this book ❑ Part I, “Client Side,” presents the technologies used client side to create Web 2.0 applications .