Technology Demonstrator


Version 2.1 of the Web is now available, featuring significant improvements over the older 2.0 version.

The most significant upgrade is that there is now support for the server-side blink tag.

That's right, instead of relying on the frustrating <blink> tag - which is non-standard and not compatible with all web browsers - blinking text can now be achieved in a fully standards-compliant manner.

The server-side blink tag works by using a timed AJAX request, to let a Web 2.1 compatible server update the client document so that the blinking text is turned invisible. This request also triggers another timed AJAX request, which allows the server to restore the blinking text after the requested delay.

As well as being standards-compliant, this approach also allows the web page to benefit from all the back-end maintenance advantages of server-side processing. A live server can be easily upgraded to implement more sophisticated blinking capability, and any client sessions will immediately benefit from the improved functionality.

Encourage all your web developers to adopt Web 2.1 coding as soon as possible.

Note: if you did not see the blinking text above, it means that your browser is not compliant with the Web 2.1 standards. An easy way of checking whether your browser is standards compliant is to check whether the installation files for your browser were smaller than 50MB, or the run-time memory usage is less than 300MB. If this is the case, you should download a more recent browser to get the full Web 2.1 experience.

Another note: there are some known bugs in Web 2.1. For example, a heavily-loaded web server may not be able to respond to blink requests efficiently, which will slow down the perceived blink rate. One work-around to this would be to use a high-capacity blink server farm. Hopefully Web 2.2 will address this sort of issue, by layering AJAX on BEEP over SCTP.

Further information about the commercial aspects of Web 2.1 can be found at this informative web-site.

(View source to see how it all works.)

(ps. many thanks to Wired's Michael Calore for the Web 2.1 logo!)

(Yay! It's good to see that there is now a Web 2.1 version of the <marquee> tag!)