There is a trend towards replacing monolithic general-purpose Web browsers by more finely-tuned Web applications enhanced with user-specific functionality, such as for example applets that allow for user-interaction or the display of dynamic information.
This raises the issue of what support should be
provided for developing such applications.
So a workshop was organized for the WWW5
entitled Programming the Web - a search for APIs
with the goal of
defining requirements for high-level APIs
and frameworks for Web programming,
and characterizing suitable components
for Web-aware applications.