All of this Web 2.0 revolution has gotten a few people confused. The new revolution isn’t really all that revolutionary after all it would seem after I built this site.

I’m never normally one who will knock the current technologies and standards out there but come on people, this is just silly. The new "in with the crowd" sort of thing seems to be all these technologies such as AJAX, and erm, erm, well that’s all I can see that’s changed to be completely honest. There are a few things which fall under the Web 2.0 name such as tagspaces, vCard enabled sites, and other such things but they aren’t new at all.

I have noticed a large amount of websites popping up all over the web which just make such silly heavy use of AJAX it actually slows the site down. Facebook is a prime example of this, and I have actually been sad enough to tell them so. Facebook seem to think that to make their site better and more user friendly, they will make everything fade away, and use tabs inside the website just like on IE or Firefox. This just seems extremely pointless to me, being a big user of Facebook I was very interested to see what improvements they had made to the UI, but now everything fades away, drops down, slides across, or if your lucky goes to a new page.

There is also the new hotmail, which has been renamed "Windows Live Mail" if you didn’t know. Those who love and worship Microsoft should probably stop reading here and skip the the next 3 paragraphs. This new system built by Microsoft should have been called "Windows Incompatible With Nearly Every Browser Except Internet Explorer Mail". Microsoft is the biggest operating system builder, the biggest office suite builder, and the biggest waste of space ever to have been put on this planet. I used to like Microsoft but ever since they started to reinvent the wheel with sub standard coding practices, and languages they have just become a laughing stock.

Why oh why did they build Atlas. Javascript could do everything Atlas could and more before the boffins in MS had even thought of Atlas, I mean come on the reason they developed the useless thing was to combat Google with their extensive use of AJAX. If you want to use AJAX use AJAX it’s there and it works, why bother to waste thousands on the development of a new technology when it already exists? While I am on the subject of reinventing something that’s been around a long time, lets just look at Silverlight for a second.

&quot;<strong>Microsoft Silverlight</strong> is a <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_program”>programmable</a> <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser”>web browser</a> <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plugin”>plugin</a> that provides support for <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_internet_application”>rich internet applications</a> such as <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation”>animation</a>, <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics”>vector graphics</a> and <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia”>audio-video playback</a>.&quot;, that was taken from the MS Silverlight Wikipedia page. So let me get this right, it’s Adobe Flash with a different name and much less development time? Come on for the love of God why do these people find it needed to reinvent a technology which has been around for absolutely years, and that has a HUGE user base? I don’t get it I really don’t.

Here endeth the MS bash for now.

Please don’t get me wrong by all this bashing, I am an avid believer that technology should move on and Web 2.0 is a good thing, when it is used in moderation. The sites I mentioned just seem to make an over use of technologies that they really don’t have to, and it actually slows down the user experience because they make such heavy use of Web 2.0 techs. As for the MS bash, well that is because that company really does just irritate me. Bill Gates just seems to have to have a MS product for any OpenSource thing out there, or any comercial product that’s making money and that people love, little tip for Bill, if people love it they won’t change to your version, especially ASP, good god!!

Anyway, I’m off for now to get a beer, and to look more into the proper use of Web 2.0 technologies. Check back for more info on this as time passes by.

Adam

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