Since the Web was created in 1989, it has been growing at an astounding rate (the beginning of the trend is detailed in the Post Web creation history (1989-1995) timeline displayed earlier). It is becoming (or already has become) an essential part of many people's lives as a lot of people either have access to the Internet, or will have access in the near future through a variety of devices (such as computers, phone boxes, TVs, cell phones, etc). It is important to use a technology such as the Web that allows a large portion of the potential users to be able to access it, and to communicate with one another. Communication between people is essential for collaboration between them to take place.
A lot of people assume that the Web is all there is to the Internet, because the Web gets so much attention these days. In reality, the Web is just one of the more visible applications that run over the Internet, along with a couple of others such as Email.
Technically the application that is being proposed will run over the Internet, rather than just as an application on the Web. The reason that this research is starting out with the option to create it as an application on the Web is because by using the Web the majority of people will have quick and easy access to it. There is the potential to have more powerful versions that will work beside the Web version and support more advanced features. However they will require some effort on the user's part, whereas the Web version will be wholly server-side because it means that there is practically no installation or set-up required by the user, which will allow it to be readily available to a large number of people. However, the proposed system is not inherently Web-oriented. Later versions, running a more specialised protocol over the Internet could be more powerful, though at the cost of client-side complexity because they will require that the user installs an application on their computer. The reason that it will be more complex is because the application will need to be installed on all the computers that they use to access the system, and they may not be comfortable (or allowed to) install new software on those computers.
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