Web2.0 seen from a Flash Developer

Ollie was telling me about someone who was in his referer list. That person linked to a javascript script Ollie wrote and tagged that as “Ajax”, although it’s all just good old javascript.

There is definitely some confusion about Ajax, and in particular Web2.0.

I’m a Flash developer. Hi. Yes I fought Web2.0 as any new dumb buzzword that comes around. I have to admit, there is definitely something in Web2.0. However, It’s got nothing to do with technology really. The technology has been around for a long time and yet now it’s a big boom.

Let me tell you how Flash people feel about the Web2.0 boom.

It’s exactly like when you were in class, working on a problem. Long ago, you had the solution to that problem but today, some idiot does the show and waves around the class, congratulated by the teacher and all the hot chicks looking at him “Waww”. Yes, we have the same feeling.

“Duuuuuuuuude, we do that for years”.

True, we connect to databases with flash and remoting for years. We pull data dynamically and we display it on the fly, we can even stream stuff coming straight from the server right to your face. We can also let users fill forms and push that to a database, make tricks with it and login the user. All done before, with no reload of your page. Flash also does animations and fade in/out or zoom effects in a much more elegant fashion.

So what really is Web2.0. As I said, there is definitely something behind it.

What Web2.0 is: it’s a mind opener, it’s a break through where a few people realised that simplicity, consistency and a certain way of doing things were definitely improving the user experience.

Web2.0 is the transformation of web Pages into web Applications.
Reaction, interactive, woot-damn pages.

Web2.0 has nothing to do with “look, my form is shaking when the user is entering wrong data”. No. That’s just for kicks, a red line below the form element would do the trick and might actually bring less confusion to your 50 year old mother. It’s only a javascript function anyway.

What we have today is RIA vs. IA. (aeh more buzzwords).

I am confident about the future of Flash. I think flash inspired a lot what web2.0 provides today. Flash helped Web2.0 avoid the years of cheesy and bad uses to lead to what we have today. A bit of credits should be given to it as people still remember and think of Flash as a way of bugging down pages, while it actually is the big brother.

Flash has indeed a great future. We’ve seen it with the use of Video in websites, interactive video, uses of web cams and live interaction between people and socket servers.

In the end, Flash used to provide Internet applications. Today it provides Rich Internet applications with rich content while html stays damn html. Positioning data on a web page is still trickery and code. I won’t even get into the topic that you get different results based on different platforms or browsers (while Flash does consistent results in statistically 98% of computers surfing the web).

Also, have you found some good documentation about Web2.0 stuff? Heck, people can barely agree on what Web2.0 is. I’m trying to develop a Web2.0 application without the use of Flash, and damn, it feels like going way back in time, and flying blind.