TITLE: The Evolution of an Organizational Web Site: Moving from HTML to XML/XSL

AUTHORS(s) & AFFILIATION(s): Engin Kirda, Clemens Kerer, Mehdi Jazayeri, Harald Gall, Roman Kurmanowytsch, Technical University of Vienna, Distributed Systems Group, Vienna, Austria

KEYWORD(s): XML, XSL, Web site evolution

PRESENTER / CONTACT PERSON: Engin Kirda

CONTACT EMAIL:

ABSTRACT:

With the advent of the World Wide Web, many organizational Web sites were initially created by a group of individuals who were interested in this new technology. These people were (and still are) often referred to as webmasters and designed the pages according to their taste and picked the information that they found important. Many sites were built without a systematic approach or consideration for future requirements. As the World Wide Web increased in importance, many of these Web sites grew in an ad-hoc fashion and they became increasingly difficult to manage. Today, Web site design and management are further complicated by new emerging requirements such as multilingual and mobile device support. In this paper, we discuss the evolution of an organizational Web site, give a brief overview of the site's history, discuss the problems the organization faced and present some of our experiences in re-engineering the site from HTML to XML/XSL. Many Web sites will have to make similar transitions once the XML/XSL standards firmly establish themselves increasing the importance of Web site re-engineering. Other organizations can benefit from our experiences.

Last modified October 29, 2001 by .