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Introduction
When creating web applications the web browser and web server provides a framework for the application. Development becomes a lot easier than creating client based GUI applications, since the programmer can take advantage of this framework. Any web application becomes truly platform independent, it can be accessed from any computer or appliance containing a web browser. The web gives the programmer freedom to choose any programming language and environment. To the end user the application appears as a web page, what lies behind the scenes doesn't matter. This freedom means that almost every existing programming language have been used to make web applications, and that some scripting languages has been invented for the sole purpose of making web applications. Roxen Challenger is of course an example of this, being written in Pike. Challenger is written to be extended, the modules that make up Challenger do not differ from modules made by third parties. But Challenger is not limited to be extended by modules; it supports standards like CGI and Java Servlets, to ensure that the programmer can chose the most suitable programming environment. In fact Challenger makes it possible to integrate applications written in several languages and environments. Its own scripting language, RXML, is designed to make it possible to combine output from several applications or databases on each HTML page. This programmers manual will describe the different ways to make web applications, and how they can be integrated to take full advantage of the power of Challenger.
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