Future Web Trends

About the Talk

A seminar on Future Web Trends was given by Brian Kelly, UKOLN at the University of Bristol on Tuesday 21st September 2000. The seminar ran from 5.30 pm until 7.00 pm.

The seminar was given to 5 students on the MSc in Library and Information Management.

The talk covered:

• An overview of the Web
• The problems with the Web
• The development of a more robust Web
• New functionality on the Web

Presentation

Slides

[HTML Format] - [Powerpoint 97/2000 Format]

Handout

Future Web Trends: Exercises

[Word 97/2000 Format] - [Adobe PDF Format]

Exercises

Access the following Web sites.

1. Limitations in Searching

Go to the AltaVista search engine and search for digital library.
How many hits did you get? What are the limitations of this type of search facility?
Try the same search using the Google search engine. How do the results compare?

2. Exploring Web Technologies

Go to the Bath Spa University College Home Page
Is the interface different from other interfaces you have seen?
How do you think it was implemented? (Hint view the HTML source of the page)
What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach?

3. The PDF File Format

Go to the Adobe Acrobat Page and select one of the Adobe PDF documents.
What happens when you select an Adobe PDF document?
What are the limitations of using Adobe PDF?
What are the advantages of using a format such as Adobe PDF?

4. Using An Online Book Store

Go to the Amazon Home Page. Find a book and then select the option to order it.
Have you ever ordered goods or services online? If not, why not?
What are the implications of using e-commerce systems such as Amazon?

5. Using A WAP Emulator

Go to the Gelon Home Page. Enter the address http://wap.tees.ac.uk/ into the Wapalizer box.
Click on the Yes button on the mobile phone emulator. Then enter the URL http://wap.tees.ac.uk/news.wml or http://wap.tees.ac.uk/newcourses.wml
Use the scroll down buttons to view the information.
Do you think WAP will take off?
What difficulties do you think there may be in providing a WAP service?

6. Authoring Issues

Go to the CNN Home Page.
View the HTML source. There are a number of ways of viewing the HTML source depending on the browser you are using. For example using the Edit menu and select the View Source option, click with the right mouse button on the page and the View Source option, etc.
How comprehensible is the HTML source? How big is the file?
What are the implications of creating a document like this?

7a. The Size of University Web Sites

Go to the Survey of the Number of UK University Web Servers published in the Ariadne Web magazine.
How many Web servers do the Universities of Bath, Bath Spa, Bristol and UWE have (currently and previously)?
How does this compare with the University of Cambridge?

7b. The Size of University Web Sites

Go to the Survey of the Number of Links to UK University Web Services published in the Ariadne Web magazine.
How many links are there to resources on Web sites at the Universities of Bath, Bath Spa, Bristol and UWE?
How does this compare with the University of Cambridge?
What are the implications of running large-scale Web service?

8. Other Problems

Make a list of other problems which users of the World Wide Web may encounter or other deficiencies of the Web.