Building collaboration software for the Internet
Dah Ming Chiu, D. Griffin · Digital technical journal · 1996
have changed the scope of network computing. As the Internet user population has grown, so has the demand for better ways to collaborate on the Internet. Some examples include the ability to share and discuss issues of common interest, coauthor documents, and track project status. Although today’s WWW is ideal for publishing information, it requires considerable customized programming to support collaboration. The AltaVista Forum version 2.0 product is both a set of collaborative applications and a toolkit (platform) that facilitates easy, efficient, and rapid development of collaborative applications for the Internet for both UNIX and Windows NT systems. In this paper, we describe our experiences in building collaboration software for the Internet. We begin with a brief discussion of WWW technology and groupware applications. Then we present our design philosophy and the framework of the software and discuss the applications supplied by AltaVista Forum. Following that, we discuss the various experiences gained in developing software for the new Internet paradigm. We conclude the paper by discussing our plans for future development efforts.