Each Conference in the Series has exceeded the previous one in both the number of papers submitted and the quality of the contributions. This makes the task of the International Programme Committee more arduous each time and I am greatly endebted to the authors, the Programme Committee, and the staff at INRIA and RAL who helped to make the refereeing process smooth and efficient. Over 230 papers were submitted to the Conference and from these 58 papers were selected for presentation in parallel sessions at the Conference and these form the contents of this Proceedings. A further 33 papers were selected for presentation as posters, some with associated demonstrations.
All the papers were submitted electronically in HTML format and the reviewing process was also done online using the system made available by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Jason Matthews had refined the system used for the Fourth Conference in Boston and, in consequence, the procedure went more smoothly and we were able to have between 2 and 5 reviews of all the papers in time for the Programme Committee in Paris despite the exceedingly short timescales.
The order of presentation of the papers in this Proceedings coincides with the order of presentation at the Conference. Topics such as caching, authoring, access to databases and navigation continue to be hot issues. The emphasis on mobile code, distributed applications and cooperative working is increasing. The commercial use of the web is more evident at this Conference than earlier ones.
Of the 58 papers accepted, 29 are from the USA and 23 from Europe (7 from France, 5 from Germany, and the remaining 11 from 6 different European countries). This reflects the international flavour of the Conference.
Bob Hopgood
Chairman
International Programme Committee