Getting Started With Web 2.0

Tony Stubblebine — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 19:34:28 +0000

This is a list of resources for getting started with Web 2.0, how to understand it, where to find examples of people practicing it, where to learn the technologies behind it, and where to obtain the software that powers it. Originally prepared for my talk on Web 2.0 Opportunities at the Sonoma County Web Developers SIG, so that we could have a discussion about opportunities without getting too bogged down in learning the techniques.

What is Web 2.0?

What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software

O’Reilly Media first popularized the term Web 2.0. This is Tim O’Reilly’s essay on the trends and companies defining the second generation of web development.

Wikipedia Entry on Web 2.0

Wikipedia’s entry on Web 2.0 with links to major resources. Wikipedia is itself an example of the Web 2.0 idea, “architecture of participation,” where the entire content of the encyclopedia is voluntarily contributed, editited and maintained by its readers. For example, the history page for their entry on Web 2.0 shows hundreds of updates from scores of users over the course of the last 16 months.

All Things Web 2.0 – The List

Need examples? This page lists several hundred companies that are built around the ideas of Web 2.0.

Design

Current Style in Web Design

Overview and examples of the designs that define web 2.0, like simplicity and effective use of whitespace, color, and big text.

Yahoo’s User Interface Design Patterns

Solutions to the most common design problems with descriptions. Great starting place for the fundamentals of web design. Includes when, why and how to use auto-complete, breadcrumbs, tabs, pagination, and ratings.

Yahoo’s UI Components

Downloadable UI Widgets and Ajax libraries including a calendar, slider, and tree view.

A List Apart

Articles on web design, graphic design, and user interface design.

Digital Web Design Articles
More articles on web design.

Programming

Ruby on Rails
Plenty of people are still building websites with Java, PHP, Perl, Python, and .NET. But plenty of other people are finding Ruby on Rails to be a platform that makes the common things trivial while staying out of your way when you want to do the hard things. This is the official Rails site with links to tutorials and documentation.

Rolling with Ruby on Rails

Great tutorial on how to get started with Rails. Takes you from installation to a simple cookbook application

Javascript Tutorial
Before you get too far with AJAX you’re going to have to learn some basic javascript. This is a decent tutorial along with very good documentation.

Getting Started with AJAX

Tutorial that takes you from beginning to end of a simple AJAX page.

script.aculo.us and Dojo
Getting AJAX to work correctly across browsers is hard. So it’s always better to start with somebody elses code. These are two of the best AJAX libraries.

Markup

Learning XHTML

Short and simple explanatioin of the differences between HTML and XHTML.

Learning CSS

Great starting point for learning CSS.

Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML
Great book for learning HTML and CSS.

What is RSS?

RSS is a formt for sharing and subscribing to feeds of site updates. Blogs are the most common sites to produce RSS feeds for their sites.

Bloglines

Even if you’re not producing RSS, subscribing to other people’s feeds can be very convenient. Signup for bloglines, a website that specializes in managing subscriptions, put a subscription link on your browser toolbar, and start subscribing.

Microformats
These are easy ways for you to provide semantic information about the data in your pages so that other people can programmatically parse and process the information. These are just starting to get mainstream traction.

Software

Blogger

Blogger is a blog hosting company. They let you create your own blog and start blogging in a matter of minutes. Odeo’s blog is run by bloggger.

MovableType

They offer free blog software (the paid versions are for extra support) and have an active community of developers creating add on products. Also their comment spam blocking is very good. That’ll come in handy if you become popular.

Word Press

Offers both blog hosting and free blog software.
MediaWiki

Software for collaborative writing where any visitor can add or edit content. This is the software that runs Wikipedia. There’s lots of other software that you could choose from, but I think this is the most polished.

PBwiki

Hosted Wiki. You can signup and get started in a matter of minutes.