Experiences in developing collaborative applications using the World Wide Web “shell”

The World Wide Web is often viewed as the latest and most user friendly way of providing information over the Internet (i.e., server of documents). It is not customarily viewed as a platform for developing and deploying applications. In this tutorial, we introduce and demonstrate how Web technologies can be used in combination with Web browsers to design, create, distribute and execute collaborative applications. We discuss how HTML in combination with. CGI scripts, JavaScript, and Java can be used to develop interactive and collaborative applications. We discuss recent extensions and additions that support sophisticated application development as well as the constraints with the WWW 'Shell' approach. The term World Wide Web 'Shell' is used in a manner analogous to the use of the term Expert System Shell. Specifically, the components of the WWW provide basic functionality and services for developing application in much the same way as an expert system shell provides components for developing expert system applications.

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