Modern web technologies

Nowadays, World Wide Web is one of the most significant tools that people employ to seek information, locate new sources of knowledge, communicate, share ideas and experiences or even purchase products and make online bookings. The technologies adopted by the modern Web applications are being discussed in this book chapter. We summarize the most fundamental principles employed by the Web such as the client-server model and the http protocol and then we continue by presenting the current trends such as asynchronous communications, distributed applications, cloud computing and mobile Web applications. Finally, we conduct a short discussion regarding the future of the Web and the technologies that are going to play key roles in the deployment of novel applications. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg