Patent ID: 7882174

Claim:
A method for providing multiple versions of a web application, the method comprising: storing, on a computer-readable storage medium accessible to a computing device, a hierarchical directory system that contains a set of subdirectories, each having a subdirectory name; storing, on the computer-readable storage medium, within each of the subdirectories, resources associated with a different version of a web application in a set of versions of the web application, wherein each of the versions of the web application provides a different user experience; receiving, at the computing device, a request that specifies a pathname of a resource associated with the web application from a client device via an electronic communications network; determining whether the request specifies an applicable version of the web application; in response to determining that the request does not specify the applicable version of the web application, automatically identifying, at the computing device, the applicable version of the web application from among the set of versions of the web application; rewriting, at the computing device, the request such that the pathname includes the subdirectory name of the subdirectory that stores the resources associated with the applicable version of the web application; and after rewriting the request, dereferencing, at the computing device, a resource identified by the pathname in the rewritten request.