Editing Web 2.0 (section)

==Technologies==
The [[client-side]] ([[Web browser]]) technologies used in Web 2.0 development include [[Ajax (programming)|Ajax]] and [[JavaScript library|JavaScript frameworks]]. Ajax programming uses [[JavaScript]] and the [[Document Object Model]] (DOM) to update selected regions of the page area without undergoing a full page reload. To allow users to continue interacting with the page, communications such as data requests going to the server are separated from data coming back to the page ([[Asynchronous communication|asynchronously]]).

Otherwise, the user would have to routinely wait for the data to come back before they can do anything else on that page, just as a user has to wait for a page to complete the reload. This also increases the overall performance of the site, as the sending of requests can complete quicker independent of blocking and queueing required to send data back to the client. The data fetched by an Ajax request is typically formatted in [[XML]] or [[JSON]] (JavaScript Object Notation) format, two widely used [[structured data]] formats. Since both of these formats are natively understood by JavaScript, a programmer can easily use them to transmit structured data in their Web application.

When this data is received via Ajax, the JavaScript program then uses the Document Object Model to dynamically update the Web page based on the new data, allowing for rapid and interactive user experience. In short, using these techniques, web designers can make their pages function like desktop applications. For example, [[Google Docs]] uses this technique to create a Web-based word processor.

As a widely available plug-in independent of [[W3C]] standards (the World Wide Web Consortium is the governing body of Web standards and protocols), [[Adobe Flash]] was capable of doing many things that were not possible pre-[[HTML5]]. Of Flash's many capabilities, the most commonly used was its ability to integrate streaming multimedia into HTML pages. With the introduction of HTML5 in 2010 and the growing concerns with Flash's security, the role of Flash became obsolete, with browser support ending on December 31, 2020.

In addition to Flash and Ajax, JavaScript/Ajax frameworks have recently become a very popular means of creating Web 2.0 sites. At their core, these frameworks use the same technology as JavaScript, Ajax, and the DOM. However, frameworks smooth over inconsistencies between Web browsers and extend the functionality available to developers. Many of them also come with customizable, prefabricated '[[Software widget|widgets]]' that accomplish such common tasks as picking a date from a calendar, displaying a data chart, or making a tabbed panel.

On the [[Server side|server-side]], Web 2.0 uses many of the same technologies as Web 1.0. Languages such as [[Perl]], [[PHP]], [[Python (programming language)|Python]], [[Ruby (programming language)|Ruby]], as well as [[J2EE|Enterprise Java (J2EE)]] and [[.NET Framework|Microsoft.NET Framework]], are used by developers to output data dynamically using information from files and databases. This allows websites and web services to share [[Machine-readable data|machine readable]] formats such as [[XML]] ([[Atom (standard)|Atom]], [[RSS]], etc.) and [[JSON]]. When data is available in one of these formats, another website can use it to [[Mashup (web application hybrid)|integrate a portion of that site's functionality]].