Web 2.0 issues and workarounds

This article is the last in our series on Web 2.0 applications. If you’ve been reading the earlier articles, you’ll realise that Web 2.0 is a major new approach to building Web applications that mimic the responsiveness of desktop applications. Throughout the series, I’ve focused on Ajax-style applications and Flash/Flex rich internet applications.

In this article, I want to finish the series by looking at some of the issues that arise when developers start working with Web 2.0 applications. I’d also like to present solutions, where possible, to each of these issues.

There aren’t any resources to download with this article as we won’t be working through any examples. Rather, the article discusses some of the issues applying in the Web 2.0 approach. In particular, I want to cover the following issues:

• Bookmarking
• Use of the back button
• Search engine indexing
• Reliance on JavaScript
• Reliance on the Flash Player plug-in
• Reliance on XSLT

Some of these issues arise because of the way Web applications use a “single page” application model. Others arise because of Web 2.0’s heavy reliance on client-side scripting and plug-ins. Whatever their source, these issues have been addressed fully on a range of Web sites. Rather than reproduce the content from these Web sites, I’m going to provide a summary of the issue with some general observations. Then I’ll point you to some of the useful resources I’ve found to deal with them.

I’ll start with a look at issues relating to bookmarking a position within a Web 2.0 application.