Applications of XML and customizable components in building virtual places on the Web

The demand for the systems that facilitate human interactions over the World Wide Web is growing. Shared Place is a technology for building collaboration environments tightly integrated with the Web and customized for specific user needs. XML-based Shared Place Definition Language, designed to describe collaboration functionality of the configurable components, can be merged with ordinary Web page content to create specifications of virtual places. This paper discusses basic concepts of the Shared Placed technology, the model developed to describe functionality of virtual places, Shared Place documents and the architecture of the system. The discussion is illustrated with the examples of the applications