There's been a lot of chatter lately in the web community about RIAs, AJAX and Web 2.0 - and for good reasons... We seem to be embarking on a new era where designers and developers will be once again pushing the boundaries to create better web experiences.
One commonly referred to example is Google Maps. As the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and displayed to the user. When a user searches for a business, the location is pin-pointed with a red pin, which is actually a transparent PNG placed over the map. The technique of providing greater user-interactivity by performing asynchronous network requests with Javascript and XML has recently become known as AJAX.
People not only speak to the power of its model, but also love to highlight how its spawned a whole new area of innovative development with Google Map Mashing. Map mashing refers to when someone creates an alternate application using the maps/data provided by google. You can see a ton of examples on this site - Google Map Mashing ...
Make sure you check this one out too, kinda odd that they promote it - Google Stalker.
Comments