The World Wide Web has a massive and permanent influence on our lives. Economy, industry, education, healthcare, public administration, entertainment – there is hardly any part of our daily lives which has not been pervaded by the Internet. Accordingly, modern Web applications are fully-fledged, complex software systems, and in order to be successful their development must be thorough and systematic.

This book presents a new discipline called Web Engineering taking a rigorous interdisciplinary approach to the development of Web applications, covering Web development concepts, methods, tools and techniques. It highlights the need to examine and re-use the body of knowledge found within software engineering and demonstrates how to use that knowledge within the Web environment, putting emphasize on current practices, experiences and pitfalls.

The book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students on Web-focused or Software Engineering courses, as well as Web software developers, Web designers and project managers.

Gerti Kappel is full professor of Business Informatics at Vienna University of Technology.

Birgit Pröll teaches and researches at Johannes Kepler University (JKU), Linz, Austria.

Siegfried Reich is director of Salzburg Research, the non-profit research organization owned by the County of Salzburg.

Werner Retschitzegger is head of Department of Information Systems at JKU.