The Plain Web

Abstract

The Web has become a popular starting point for many innovations targeting infrastructure, services, and applications. One of the challenges of today's vast Web landscape is to monitor ongoing developments, put them into context, and assess their chances of success. One of the main virtues of a more scientific approach towards the Web landscape would be a clear differentiation between approaches which build on top of the infrastructure of the Web, with little embedding into the landscape itself, and those that are intended to blend into the Web, becoming a part of the Web itself. One of the main challenges in this area is to understand and classify new developments, and a better understanding of various dimensions of Web technology design would make it easier to assess the chances of success of any given development. This paper presents a preliminary classification, and presents arguments how those factors influence the chance for success.