We’ve been looking at it our end too… and it’s principally met with shaking of heads of dismay from the tech-heads. What’s even more alarming is that the people who are the triggers for change within the organisations wanting to bring about the change (ie. client tech-heads) think that Web2.0 is purely about AJAX and nice graphics. Sure it’s part of it but it’s not what it’s all about.

I recently conducted an evaluation into the dev of a portal (one of my parting biggie projects) which was to be Web 2.0. Sure I kept all the collaboration and democratic content contribution stuff in there but most of the AJAX popuppy window nice wee jumpy stuff was all papped… you know why? Because given a bit of consideration there was a simpler, less code intensive and more elegant way to do it.

That said… some of it was kept in… I think there’s value in a wee popup login tab (keeps you on the same page) without the worry of backtracking and for adding comments to the ends of content articles. Nothing drastically wonderfully interactive but nice ‘wee’ touches nontheless. You’ll see that wee is highlighted as I think it’s the wee things that are best done this way – not the whole UI.

Another interesting point too… Google advocates of that whole pageless application setup still run their analytics platform in yep – Flash. So your argument with Flash may well be valid… it definitely does seem to be a good platform for these webapp types of things – up to a point. I recently dusted off a few data driven Flash apps I had done back in the days of long ago… and they still felt as clean and easy to use as they ever did.

Anyways, as for the webdev stuff – aye I understand you completely. That’s why I am fcuking off to live in the world of – oh look there’s a (person/riot/mountain/car/plane), I think I’ll point my (Nikon/35mm Minolta/Russian Camera) at it and take a picture.

The money might be awful – I might even go bankrupt – but at least it doesn’t involve the numbers 9 and 5 and the Monday morning phrase – ‘Good weekend? Shit I’m 50!’

Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

as I was reading this and nodding my head in agreement, I also couldn’t help to wonder about Win, KDE, GNOME, et al users.

While the Mac desktop certainly appears to be undergoing some kind of renaisance where form is rising dramatically in its importance vis a vis function, potentially resulting in a much richer user experience, is the same happening anywhere else?

Not that I expect that you should have the answer for the evolution on other platforms but I thought I’d just put this out there to see what other viewers might add..

It’s kinda interesting, the NeXTSTEP look was some pure Bauhausian concepts incarnate: functional, clean, inexpensive – Gropius would have approved. And now, upon that essentially self-same platform there appears to be an emergence of software as art, at a level above the code itself. UIs are looking pretty swanky: brushed metal, polished metal, glassy buttons, glossy buttons, burnished high contrast woodgrains – appointments I’d like in my next touring car.

Or maybe.. just maybe.. everyone that is producing these ‘pretty’ apps are doing it because of the void in the HIGs and that thru some amazing amount of effort John Geleynse and company will release “something wonderful” as part of the “secret stuff” yet to be disclosed in Leopard. Or maybe not.

-jeff