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The organisation has published Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One which seeks to describe how the Web operates, what happens between you typing in a URI and receiving the finished page.

As the document's abstract says, 'The World Wide Web uses relatively simple technologies with sufficient scalability, efficiency and utility that they have resulted in a remarkable information space of interrelated resources, growing across languages, cultures, and media. In an effort to preserve these properties of the information

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space as the technologies evolve, this architecture document discusses the core design components of the Web. They are identification of resources, representation of resource state, and the protocols that support the interaction between agents and resources in the space. We relate core design components, constraints, and good practices to the principles and properties they support.'

W3C established the Technical Architecture Group in November 2001, in response to 'clear demand from the Web community'.

'All TAG participants, past and present, have had a hand in many parts of the design of the Web," explains Tim Berners-Lee, W3C director, co-chair of the TAG and Web inventor. 'In the Architecture document, they emphasise what characteristics of the Web must be preserved when inventing new technology. They notice where the current systems don't work well, and as a result show weakness. This document is a pithy summary of the wisdom of the community.'

Future TAG publications will build on Volume One with lessons learned from integrating Web services, the Semantic Web, and mobile Web.

'A single shared Web space is of global benefit,' the group said. 'This goal can only be achieved if all the parts work together harmoniously.'