Experiences in Developing Collaborative Applications Using the World Wide Web “Shell

The components of the World Wide Web, which we call the World Wide Web Shell, provide a framework for collaborative application development in much the same way as an expert system shell does for expert system development. This development is quick enough to support rapid prototyping. Once the collaborative application is developed, the WWW Shell facilitates the distribution of the application and its data to geographically-separated users on diverse computing platforms. We have developed and deployed two collaborative applications, Design Intent and NYNEX Portholes, using the WWW Shell. These applications are described and our experiences developing them with the WWW Shell are detailed. In the process of developing these applications we discovered limitations of the WWW Shell which we present, along with suggested modifications and extensions to address them. KEYWORDS: collaborative application, World Wide Web, rapid prototyping, HTTP server and clients, Portholes, Desig