Web 2.0: A Pattern Library: “What Web 2.0 is”
I like webmonkey, and this is a nice article. And the blurb about the author says “Tim Ziegler builds websites in Texas with d2p. He wants to fabricate a giant bicycle-powered gyroscope. He hopes he’s around when the robots all break free. “
I love this bit:
In the old days, you had to code every separate web page, and even code each section of each page with information like what font to use. This is an awful, time-consuming and painful way to make websites.
The trend over the last several years is to make the pieces of websites more and more modular, so you have:
- An external and linked stylesheet that defines all fonts, colors, and other visual elements.
- A handful of display templates, one for each kind of page design.
- A database of information that includes the content of each page as well as meta information about each piece of content (which can be author, “post-on” dates, notes, location on maps, anything).
- A system for throwing all this stuff together on the fly.
The beauty of this kind of system is that the user sees a web “page,” but the page itself reflects the latest content, the latest design, and even can pull in information from other websites or services. Goodbye web page, hello pull-it-together-on-the-fly thing-that-I-don’t-know-what-to-call-yet.
John Otter 