Kalkran.COM

What do you think, when I say Web 2.0? That's right, you're thinking new "flashy" graphics and web layouts. You're thinking 'scanlines' and website badges. But that's not all that's new with Web 2.0... The biggest changes are below the surface, things you have to keep in mind when writing the html-code of the site.

Web standards

If you're using Internet Explorer, please click the little X in the top right of your browser right now. Internet Explorer has long since made it's own rules for showing webpages. It doesn't listen to any of the conventional rules.

Changes to HTML

HTML is no longer seen as a way to markup your site, but rather as a way to structure it. Marking up the layout is what CSS is for. This renders some basic tags, that are being used all around the web, deprecated. Tags, such as: <b>, <i>, <u> & <s>. You may wonder, why they are deprecated. Let me explain.

I just said, HTML is a way to structure your site. Not a way to style it. The tags mentioned above describe the visual change, not the structural change (emphasizing something). So these tags, could and should be avoided, in favor of <strong> (strong emphasis) and <em> (normal emphasis), or bold and italic respectively in most browsers.

DOCTYPE's

Then, there's the !DOCTYPE on the top of each document. Oh, wait.. It's not specified on every page. Not having a DOCTYPE lets the browser render your website in Quirks mode, I personally remember this by thinking Queer mode, since Firefox will, most likely, render your page correctly. But open it up in Internet Explorer and you'll begin to cry.

What the DOCTYPE does, is trigger a standard parsing mode for the browser. Thus, rendering your pages correctly, and flawlessly. Also, it defines what kind of (X)HTML your website is actually using, which is a critical piece of information for every program that tries to process your page.

Usability & Participation

A critical part of Web 2.0 would be participation. Why so? Because since Web 2.0, a lot of people have started blogs, registered to things like Digg, etc. It's all about participation, user interaction, usability. If a site is a nightmare to navigate, or a nightmare to read. What are the odds someone will linger? (the odds that someone will ever read this post are subzero). The new Web 2.0 design is great! It's big buttons, clear and smooth interfaces. Big hyperlinks and so forth.

I had so much more, but this is all I could save. (Or now I can make a second part! Woohoo). You may have noticed that my website has been down yesterday, they had to revert the databases to that morning, so I lost a lot of work :-(.