Understanding Web 2.0 web designers

Proof that web 2.0 interfaces are everywhere now-from social bookmarking tools, blogs, wiki's, RSS aggregators, search engines, portals, and Application Programming Interface (API). Some of the examples of web 2.0 interface with superior programming application are the Google Maps and Gmail, the personal and social functionality of Technorati, Del.icio.us, and Flickr. Web 2.0 interface has changing the way we share and access information in open-platform web environment.

As web designer, understanding how the web evolves helps us survive and execute our creativity with proper functionality. We begin to understand how web 2.0 interface innovate design, how this new platform has become a significant tool in implementing good user interface.

Let us study these trends and see what impact has with web design/development:

1) The first web development that is evident of web 2.0 is the transition of semantic mark-up. The popular semantic markup languages, HTML and XHTML, and with the help of CSS to display style, accurately describe and display the information of web pages. From this point of view, semantic markup's best application to web is the used of Real Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS is an XML format used for feeding contents in the web in a way that you tell people you have a new content available from your website. This way you can subscribe to any website and check your feed aggregator for new contents from your favorite sites.

2) A different way of providing services in the web. Back to the dot-com bubble era, web pages were developed with many pages and static HTML with interactive animated GIF or Flash animation. Now, every website has semantic meaning. That is, every web service is the program interface instead of the visual design. One of the examples of this web service is eBay.

3) In web 2.0 environment, end-users are in control now. With the help of feed aggregators it is easy to know and be updated to what people are doing now. Also, web experience is now going more interactive and more functional with the use of social bookmarking tools like digg, del.icio.us, bloglines, and Blogdex feeds. With the significant change on how we use the web, we can read content without visiting the domain that it comes from. Navigation will become useless as more feed aggregators and bookmarking tools are changing the way we connect and read information on the web.

4) Building the network information through the use of meta-tags. This kind of web service is apparent to Flickr, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and other social networking tools that enable you to attach tags to digital files. These tags will help you share and organize all your digital files.

5) The programming interface separates the structure and style of web pages. With the powerful approach of XML coding, words and semantic in web environment is now more profound than presentation and layout. This means understanding and knowing a programming language like JavaScript or AJAX is more useful now to build an effective web design than creating a website with top notch visual design. A web designer who understand AJAX is more likely survive in web 2.0 interface than the one who master himself a visual design.