The Web is One Version Older, One Version Better!

What is Web 2.0? Talk to different people and you’re likely to get slightly different answers. Web 2.0 is a moniker given to a collection of technologies and ideas that are becoming increasingly popular among web developers and designers. Some better known examples of Web 2.0 technologies include: tagging, wikis, RSS and social networks

Web 2.0 also looks at the web as a platform for application development rather than individual web pages. A Web 2.0 website will often feature ways to actively interact with the content in a way that more closely resembles an application program than a traditional web page. Equally important are the social and participatory aspects of Web 2.0. Networks like MySpace, photo sharing sites like Flickr and the phenomenon of blogging all have user generated content and the sharing of that content as part of their DNA.

Beyond Web 2.0 lies the Semantic Web. Often confused with Web 2.0, the Semantic Web is really something different. At it’s core, the purpose of the Semantic Web is to make data more understandable by machines. When a machine can not just read but understand the meaning of data, it will be possible for web-based programs to carry out intelligent tasks that today cannot be accomplished without human intervention.

topLingo is currently recommending Web 2.0 technologies for many of our clients where it makes sense. A broker application for JP Morgan Chase recently developed by topLingo features extensive use of Web 2.0. Our own project management software is also Web 2.0 based.

Hyper Text Markup Language or More Simply The Base Language of the Net!

The fundamental building block of the web, HTML is a markup language designed to define the structure of text-based information. HTML itself is a series of descriptive tags that are associated with certain words or blocks of text. <p>, for example, is a tag that denotes a paragraph of text. Leading web firms like topLingo now use the latest version of HTML, called XHTML. To achieve a particular look or style for text like bold or underline, another language called CSS is used. CSS is an acronym for Cascading Style Sheets and can be included inside an XHTML document or in a separate document. XHTML and CSS work together to create the typical web pages you see today on the Internet.

topLingo uses XHTML and CSS on all our website projects, giving our customers clean, fast website code that is easy to update and manage. The way we use XHTML and CSS also usually improves SEO (search engine optimization) for our customers.