---
title: "New Web Development and Design Techniques"
date: 2006-02-11
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2006"
    url: "/tag/2006.md"
---

# New Web Development and Design Techniques

Came across two great articles today that nicely summarize recent web development and design trends.

Marc Hedlund from O’Reilly wrote a post entitled [Web Development 2.0](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811180853/http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/02/web_development_20.html). Despite the **YA2.0N** title (Yet Another 2.0 Name, pronounced “YAWN”), the article is a useful overview of software development practices that Marc has been seeing in the current era of Web startups.

This extract is quite ironic — and Marc agrees with me:

> “**Ship timestamps, not versions**: Gone are the days of 1.0, 1.1, and 1.3.17b6. They have been replaced by the ‘20060210-1808:32 push’. For nearly all of these companies, a version number above 1.0 just isn’t meaningful any more. If you are making revisions to your site and pushing them live, then doing it again a half hour later, what does a version number really mean?”

Another great post is [The Agile Web Design Manifesto](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811180853/http://www.emilychang.com/go/weblog/comments/the-agile-web-design-manifesto-an-introduction/), by Emily Chang and Max Kiesler of Ideacodes. They have come up with some core principles for this:

> – Design the system not the surface – Design as evolutionary and user-driven – There is no page, only pathways – Rapid and iterative over final – Simplicity over complexity – Collaborative and open design

The first and third principles – ‘Design the system not the surface’ and ‘There is no page, only pathways’ – are especially relevant to me right now. I’m currently writing a chapter about my [Design for Data](https://web.archive.org/web/20110811180853/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/branding_microc.php) theory, in the O’Reilly book I’m co-writing with Josh Porter, and it’s very much about going beyond the Page metaphor on the Web. More on that soon, because I have a feeling I’m going to need feedback on this chapter from my blog readers…

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_web_develop.php))*