A Radical New Internet
- Category: Internet/Computers/Software
- Posted On: 3/3/2006
- Views: 3,806
We're all going to see a radical shift in the way most websites look and function in the next few years... The concepts of personalizing a website to meet your own needs is no longer a desired feature that only major website portals can afford to implement. Both the experience of people involved coupled with the evolution of web technologies is going to allow people like me to build websites unlike those regular internet visitors have ever experienced.
A Technical Evolution
In the beginning I could build a simple HTML web page and share it with a small group of people. "Common Gateway Interface", or CGI, programming became popular as more people tried to make their web pages more interactive, accepting input from others to control the display as well as the collection of information. Server-side scripting technologies quickly followed, including most-notably "JSP", "ASP", and "PHP". Macromedia Flash (now Adobe Flash) was also introduced into the mix to enable more interactive media to the web. The languages for interactive web-page programming grew to support fully compiled solutions, making the delivery of information faster and more secure. (Compiled web applications actually existed for a long time, but I'm referring to the shift from scripting languages to compiled versions that have gotten better and better.) Because languages like "JSP", "PHP", and "ASP" have evolved for so long, they have each developed their own implementations of higher-level programming. Microsoft's most notable upgrade from "ASP" to "ASP.NET" was a huge paradigm shift for all Windows-based programming and their relatively recent move to "ASP.NET 2.0" was also a huge step forward. I've completely stopped watching JSP because of my involvement with "ASP" and some dabbling in "PHP", but I like to read the book titles on the shelves for everything and both JSP and PHP continue to grow by leaps and bounds.
Serious Interaction
The explosion of Forums, Blogs, free website portal software, Web Services, XML implementations, AJAX, ... and on and on is building toward what some are referring to "Web 2.0"; a bright future for internet interaction. After getting familiar with Microsoft's ASP.NET 2.0, I can certainly say that what used to be difficult or next-to-impossible web programming tasks are becoming simple drag-and-drop operations for novice web developers.
What's It All Mean?!
I've probably been talking over the heads of most people reading this. Basically, websites on the internet will continue to become more and more "usable". The websites that caused you to cock your head to one side and scratch your head *should* become more intuitive and even more "personal". More and more websites will enable you to drag elements on a web page around to where you want want them to appear EVERY time you visit! More will allow you to add elements to the website that apply only to you. You will be able to change colors, styles, add elements of a website from other websites, etc. all without requiring any additional work on the part of the website's owner(s). Websites will talk to each other more to exchange information. Websites will remember you better. You're biggest hurdle will be to limit the inputs to your brain that only apply to the desired outputs, which is already a problem with the amount of information available on the internet.
Next Steps
Many websites will seem to shift backwards in appearance over this time as they shift radically forward in features and functionality. A perfect example is Microsoft's "Live" website. They are sticking to their guns with the "Keep It Simple" approach to style. To give them some credit, they are pushing the envelope of interaction further than most and probably simply haven't had time for style and flair. I, on the other hand, always have to provide some balance of style with my functionality, which always almost results in missing website features. :)
- Category: Internet/Computers/Software
- Posted On: 3/3/2006
- Views: 3,806