Web 2.0 is a new trend in World Wide Web technology, web design and a second generation of web-based communities. The term became famous after the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. It is not an update of any technical specifications, but a change in the ways of using webs by software developers and end users. The idea behind Web 2.0 is to convert websites from mere isolated information silos to interlinked computing platforms that work more like locally available software in the perception of the user.

Websites that adopt Web 2.0 have more things to offer to their users than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive features of “Web 1.0″ to provide network as a platform computing, allowing users to run software-applications entirely through a browser. Users will have complete control over their data on these sites. Web 2.0 sites also encourage participation from users to add value to the applications they use. So they are very different from traditional websites which offer limited viewing to their users and the contents of which can only be modified by the site owners. The sites have a feature-rich and user-friendly interface based on Ajax, Flex or similar rich media and social-networking aspects.

Web 2.0 websites include several techniques and features like Cascading Style Sheets that separates content from presentation and Folksonomies that involves collaborative tagging, social classification, social tagging and social indexing. Apart from these two, the websites also have Microformats, Rich Internet application techniques which are often Ajax-based, semantically valid XHTML and HTML markup, weblog-publishing tools and wiki or forum software etc. to support user-generated content.

The analysis of economic aspects of Web 2.0 applications has received specific attention. Extensive research has taken place to investigate the economic implications of Web 2.0 and the principles behind the economy of Web 2.0. Organizations can make use of these principles and models to grow with the help of Web 2.0 applications. One of the important steps in realizing Web 2.0 is its transition to semantic markup or markup that precisely defines the content it’s applied to. The popular markup languages like HTML and XML can be used for display purposes and CSS is used to apply styles to these contents.

However, these markup languages are not semantically dead. Designers can describe content, but only to the extent that it fits within the (X) HTML tag set. For example, designers can mark up content as headers, paragraphs, list items, citations and definition lists using the <h1>, <p>, <li> , <cite> and <dl> tags in that order. For some simple documents, these tags are ample to describe content effectively. For most documents, there is no way to correctly describe the content with the (X) HTML tags available. In Web 2.0, this description is not only possible, but also decisive.

The effects of Web 2.0 are broad. Like all pattern shifts, it affects the people who use it socially, culturally and even politically. So there are six main themes covering design in the Web 2.0 world. These include transition to XML, providing web services, remixing content, complete control by users, adding metadata over time and shift to programming that is separation of structure and style.

Tags: Web 2.0 – Changing Web World Scenario