Innovations associated with "Web 2.0"

The richer user-experience afforded by Ajax has prompted the development of web-sites that mimic personal computer applications, such as word processing, the spreadsheet, and slide-show presentation. WYSIWYG wiki sites replicate many features of PC authoring applications. Still other sites perform collaboration and project management functions. Java enables sites that provide computation-intensive video capability. Google, Inc. acquired one of the best-known sites of this broad class, Writely, in early 2006.

Several browser-based "operating systems" or "online desktops" have also appeared. They essentially function as application platforms, not as operating systems per se. These services mimic the user experience of desktop operating-systems, offering features and applications similar to a PC environment. They have as their distinguishing characteristic the ability to run within any modern browser.

Numerous web-based application services appeared during the dot.com bubble of 1997–2001 and then vanished, having failed to gain a critical mass of customers. In 2005 WebEx acquired one of the better-known of these, Intranets.com, for slightly more than the total it had raised in venture capital after six years of trading.

Rich Internet applications

Recently, rich-Internet application techniques such as Ajax, Adobe Flash, Flex and OpenLaszlo have evolved that can improve the user-experience in browser-based applications. Flash/Flex involves a web-page requesting an update for some part of its content, and altering that part in the browser, without refreshing the whole page at the same time.

Server-side software

The functionality of Web 2.0 rich Internet applications builds on the existing Web server architecture, but puts much greater emphasis on back-end software. Syndication differs only nominally from the methods of publishing using dynamic content management, but web services typically require much more robust database and workflow support, and become very similar to the traditional intranet functionality of an application server. Vendor approaches to date fall under either a universal server approach, which bundles most of the necessary functionality in a single server platform, or a web-server plugin approach, which uses standard publishing tools enhanced with API interfaces and other tools..

Client-side software

The extra functionality provided by Web 2.0 depends on the ability of users to work with the data stored on servers. This can come about through forms in an HTML page, through a scripting language such as Javascript, or through Flash or Java. These methods all make use of the client computer to reduce the server workload.

RSS

The first and the most important step (according to one point of view) of evolution towards Web 2.0 involves the syndication of site content, using standardized protocols which permit end-users to make use of a site's data in another context, ranging from another web-site, to a browser plugin, or to a separate desktop application. Protocols which permit syndication include RSS (Really Simple Syndication — also known as "web syndication"), RDF (as in RSS 1.1), and Atom, all of them flavors of XML. Specialized protocols such as FOAF and XFN (both for social networking) extend functionality of sites or permit end-users to interact without centralized web-sites. (See microformats for more specialized data formats.)

Due to the recent development of these trends, many of these protocols remain de facto (rather than formal) standards.

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