Chapter 1. What is the intelligent web?
This chapter covers:
- Leveraging intelligent web applications
- Using web applications in the real world
- Building intelligence in your web
So, what’s this book about? First, let’s say what it’s not. This book isn’t about building a sleek UI, or about using JSON or XPath, or even about RESTful architectures. There are several good books for Web 2.0 applications that describe how to deliver AJAX-based designs and an overall rich UI experience. There are also many books about other web-enabling technologies such as XSL Transformations (XSLT) and XML Path Language (XPath), Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XForms, XML User Interface Language (XUL), and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).
The starting point of this book is the observation that most traditional web applications are obtuse, in the sense that the response of the system doesn’t take into account the user’s prior input and behavior. We refer not to issues related to bad UI but rather to a fixed response of the system to a given input. Our main interest is building web applications that do take into account the input and behavior of every user in the system, over time, as well as any other potentially useful information that may be available.