Transparently Allowing Multimedia and Advanced Content on Existing Web Based Discussion Systems

Giovanni Tummarello, Christian Morbidoni, Francesco Piazza

Abstract: Most of the web applications used today include discussion systems (forums, guestbooks etc.) supporting textual messages. Although advanced functionalities like including diagrams, formulas, tables, images or sounds into messages are a fundamental features in many discussion typologies, very few of the existing "off the shelf" systems support them. We propose a generalized procedure based on client side programming that will take advantage of mostly any existing discussion system enabling the use of such enhancements without changing anything in the software or in the underlying database. The resulting system poses no additional security threat and works on any modern generation browser.