A number of distinct technologies contribute to the dynamic aspects of the Web: CGI scripts are programs that are executed by the server upon request of the browser; server-side includes are extensions tags to HTML detected by the server before transferring a page and substituted with some dynamically generated information (e.g. the current date); application specific MIME-types are data types that cannot be displayed by the browser and that are usually fed to an external application; browser scripting languages are passed along with an HTML page and are executed by enhanced browsers (e.g. Java).
These mechanisms involve a number of protocols and different approaches (CGI protocol, server configurations, MIME setup etc.). In order to overcome such complexities and to add value to the Web as a platform for distributed, open applications, the PageSpace introduces two general issues:
The integration of an active Web by a uniform notion of activity and coordination serves another purpose: as the various distinct technologies listed above are replaced by a single framework, the development of distributed application running on top of the Web becomes easier. It becomes possible to model the World Wide Web itself with all its clients, servers, proxies, and a number of additional tools as an uniform service-based framework.