The beauty of Web 2.0
Apart from all of the AJAX crazyness, shading, refusal to using pastel colors and Google AdSense, what truly defines Web 2.0 is how Flash is now handled.
Before the risen of the Web 2.0, we had terrible websites completely made out using Flash. Navigation was terrible and you couldn’t keep a bookmark. Also, stream buffering was made using several non-interopable protocols and technologies, namely Windows Media, RealPlayer and QuickTime.
Nowadays, the number of sites fully made in Flash is way less than before. I pray for that. On the other hand, video and music streaming is now much easier since it relies only on Flash, which has a client for almost every desktop operating system, from Linux to Mac OS X, Windows (NT/CE), BSD, etc and so on. No more pain in installing a bunch of different players just to comply with that site requirements!
And what do you think that were the greatest changes the Web 2.0 brought up?
The (so mentioned) social side of the web. Of course, this already existed (as actual people made and surfed the web), but all these new services and concepts helped aggregate consciousnesses. As for flash, i agree it served us good in video and in stepping back from overcoming (x)html and reserving itself to multimedia and other less semantic uses.
One of the things that makes me laugh about web 2.0 is the fact that now pink isn’t a gay color anymore … (nothing against gays).
Now seriously, i also like that you mentioned about flash … No more full flash sites. Fully integrated and functional “snippets” of flash code here and there is the new way.
Just a correction: Flash’s license doesn’t allow you to use it on BSD.
Mind booster Noori,
Thank you for that info. I was not aware of that since I’ve user a *BSD as a desktop system.