In this article, I'll explain what I find lacking in the current World Wide Web and suggest a way that Jini technology could help supply the missing functionality. In the real world, paper documents come in many shapes and sizes. But whether you are looking at a book, a magazine, a grocery list, a modern yellow sticky, or an ancient scroll, the document is likely to be composed primarily of text and graphics. Similarly, although Web pages can sport interactive applets and flashy animations, most Web pages, like their paper counterparts, are composed primarily of text and graphics. Because people use Web pages in many of the same ways they use paper documents, Web pages evoke a document metaphor on the network.
Web pages are extremely well suited for delivering information to people electronically.
Because people are used to getting information from documents in the real world, they understand the document metaphor of Web pages. One kind of information that Web pages are particularly adept at transmitting to people is links to resources. If you click on a hyperlink, the browser loads the referenced page. Hyperlinks and Web browsers merely automate the delivery of such external resources. Another role a Web page can play is that of a form.