Supporting Development of Synchronous Collaboration Tools on the Web with GroCo

The system support needed to implement even prototypical Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS) or, more generally, synchronous collaboration tools is not commonly provided by today’s programming environments. New ideas in user interface design or application-level concurrency control in EMS should be incorporated into reasonably reliable prototype systems in order to gain valuable practical experiences. To facilitate the experimental design and realisation of EMS, the GroCo project aims at the definition and integration of an appropriate group communications basis into an environment flexibly supporting all aspects of implementing EMS. The GroCo prototype realises programming support for developers of synchronous collaboration tools following a generic design model. Using the Java language, these tools are integrated into pages on the World-Wide Web allowing for easy access and smooth integration into existing technologies. GroCo has been used to implement a text-based, floor-controlled multi-user chat and a shared whiteboard.