COMPUTER NETWORKING:THE ROLE OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB IN COMMUNICATION, INTEGRATION, AND COLLABORATION

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THE ROLE OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB IN COMMUNICATION, INTEGRATION, AND COLLABORATION

The following subsections provide an insight into the role of the World Wide Web in information access, communication, exchanging information, collaboration, and integration.

The World Wide Web as a Means for Universal Information Access In the past few years the World Wide Web has become an essential tool of common application in many areas of human life. Today it is a universal, global, and widely used information system that makes it possible for every user of the Internet to access a vast amount of information from every segment of human activity, including science, business, education, and entertainment.

The World Wide Web is universal because it can easily be adapted to almost any kind of infor- mation publishing needs. It can substitute for traditional paper-based publications like books, news- papers, newsletters, magazines, catalogs, and leaflets. But it is much more. It can be dynamic, multimedia based, and interactive.

The World Wide Web is global because using the transport provided by the Internet, it can be used worldwide. It allows any kind of information to flow freely to any destination, regardless of physical distance.

The available human interfaces (editors, browsers, etc.) of the Web are friendly and easy to use, making it open for everyone. The Web technology supports different national languages and character sets and thus helps to eliminate language barriers.

The World Wide Web as a Tool for Communicating and Exchanging Information The basic role of the Web is to allow users to share (exchange) information. Accessing a particular set of web pages can be free to anybody or restricted only to a group of users.

However, the Web is also a technology for communication. There are Web-based applications for online and offline communication between users, for teleconferencing, for telephoning (Voice over IP [VoIP]), for using collective whiteboards, and so on.

Because the Web integrates almost all other Internet applications (including e-mail), it is an excellent tool for personal and group communication.

Collaboration and Integration Supported by the World Wide Web An increasing amount of Web-based applications are available in the market for supporting collab- orative and collective work (see the titles related to the World Wide Web and applications in the References). This evolution is based on the fact that the Web technology (including formats and protocols) is standardized, widespread, inexpensive, and platform independent.

Any network user can have access to the Web, regardless of the type of machine he or she works with or the way that machine is connected to the network. Thus, distributing information among collaborating partners is made easier by using the Web.

The Web can also be used for cooperative preparation of documents and / or software by collab- orating network users, even if they are far away from each other. That is why Web technology is becoming increasingly popular in intranets and extranets as well. Companies and organizations can thus increase the efficiency of collective work within their staff by using Web-based tools.

Web technology can also be integrated in many different applications or products where there is a need for or a function of sharing or distributing information and / or communicating between dif- ferent parties and users.

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