Generic extensions of WWW browsers

Current WWW browsers provide two main services: communication and information rendering. While this is sufficient for some purposes, many future applications will need more sophisticated processing on the user side before server-data can be presented to the user or before the user input can be transferred to the servers. For example, electronic payments ought to be seamlessly integrated into a customer's browser to enable him to shop via the Web. This paper proposes two pragmatic approaches to fulfill these requirements without altering current browser technology. We conclude with the proposal of a generalized extension framework for WWW browsers.