World Wide Web Journal, Issue One

Author: The World Wide Web Consortium

Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates

ISBN: 1-56592-169-0

Price: $39.95

Reviewer: Danny Yee

I usually only review periodicals after reading a year's worth of issues, but the first issue of World Wide Web Journal looks more like a book than a journal (and it has both an ISBN and an ISSN). Also, the journal is a quarterly, but the first issue consists of the proceedings of an annual conference (the Fourth International World Wide Web Conference, held in Boston in December 1995), so the next three issues may be rather different.

Issue one of the World Wide Web Journal contains fifty-nine papers, fifty-seven from the conference mentioned and two from regional conferences. The range of topics covered is immense. To list just a few (in no particular order): why the GIF and JPEG formats aren't good enough for really high quality graphics; low level security in Java; the results from the third WWW Survey; an analysis of Metacrawler use; caching systems; a filtering system to provide restricted access to the Web; a PGP/CCI system for Web security; the Millicent system for financial transactions involving small sums; smart tokens; and better support for real-time video and audio. There are also several papers on the use of the Web in education, on cooperative authoring tools, on Web interfaces to various database and software systems, and a whole pile of other things.

Though none of them assume specialized knowledge, the papers are mostly technical presentations of new ideas for systems and protocols: not everyone who runs a Web server or authors HTML will find them of interest. But anyone interested in the future of Web technology—either because they are involved in its development or out of curiosity—should find enough in the World Wide Web Journal to make it worth seeking out a copy.

Disclaimer: I requested and received a review copy of Issue One of the World Wide Web Journal from O'Reilly & Associates, but I have no stake, financial or otherwise, in its success.