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A walk through cyberspace

How Jini could transform the Web

By Bill Venners, JavaWorld.com, 12/29/99

Web pages are great. I get a lot of information from Web pages, and I use them to deliver articles and other information to readers. Nevertheless, I have always had a nagging feeling that a significant portion of the Web is missing. In this article, I'll explain what I find lacking in the current World Wide Web and suggest a way that Jini technology could help supply the missing functionality.

The document metaphor

Web pages serve as an electronic form of what people have used for a long time to transmit information: paper documents. In the real world, paper documents come in many shapes and sizes. But whether you are looking at a book, a magazine, a grocery list, a modern yellow sticky, or an ancient scroll, the document is likely to be composed primarily of text and graphics. Similarly, although Web pages can sport interactive applets and flashy animations, most Web pages, like their paper counterparts, are composed primarily of text and graphics. Because people use Web pages in many of the same ways they use paper documents, Web pages evoke a document metaphor on the network.

Web pages are extremely well suited for delivering information to people electronically. Because people are used to getting information from documents in the real world, they understand the document metaphor of Web pages.

One kind of information that Web pages are particularly adept at transmitting to people is links to resources. If you click on a hyperlink, the browser loads the referenced page. People quickly learn to use hyperlinks, in part because "point and click" is easy to understand, but also because hyperlinks bear a strong resemblance to references in paper documents. Hyperlinks and Web browsers merely automate the delivery of such external resources.

Another role a Web page can play is that of a form. For example, to subscribe to my newsletter, you can go to a Subscribe page at Artima.com that contains a small text box and a button. You type your e-mail address in the box and click the button. The browser sends your e-mail address back to the Web server, which hands it to a CGI Perl script. The Perl script adds your e-mail address to my mailing list, generates a Web page that says you were successfully added, and hands the Web page back to the Web server. The Web server forwards the Web page to the browser, which displays it for you. This response page informs you that you are now on my list and, just in case you ever change your mind, gives a link to the Unsubscribe page.

Filling in forms on Web pages is reminiscent of filling in forms on paper. The process I go through to subscribe to a print magazine, for example, is similar to the process visitors to my Web site must go through to subscribe to my newsletter. Magazines often include a subscription card that contains a form. To subscribe, I fill in my name, address, credit card number, and so on. Then I mail the card to the magazine. Because people are well versed in filling out paper forms, filling in text boxes on Web pages is a natural and easy-to-understand way for people to submit text-based information to the network.

 

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