Introduction

The computer revolution of the second half of the 20th century brought the world to an information era, where gathered data is stored by computer systems [Ślusarski 2012a]. The Internet has relatively quickly become the fourth mass communication medium. Quickly widespread, cheap, open-access — the Internet is in the majority of households, both in the city and the countryside [Król, Wojewodzic 2006]. The Internet has become a fact [Barrow 2006].

The Internet has come into many parts of our lives. We are more mobile and we get more things done thanks to the Internet connection. The Internet evolution is used not only to fulfil different needs, like fast access to information, entertainment, education etc. Along with the Internet development, new trends in science are emerging [Paszotta, Szumiło 2012]. Rural development is conditioned on, among other things, substantial field actions — environmental protection and development with the consideration of spatial order. Rural development is also connected with social development understood as growth in the level of education, awareness and responsibility for the environment surrounding us. Both these aspects of the rural development are supported by computer techniques and tools, that serve different purposes and have endless usage possibilities. A special kind of computer techniques and tools are the ones which are used to create interactive applications, which then can be made public to a wide group of users through the Internet or use in the internal network — intranet. All of this is used in the environmental protection and development as well as in rural development.

There are many types of web applications, whose usage is reflected in rural development. Their most popular form is map portals of different purposes and degree of advancement. Some of them are published on the Internet, others, cooperating with GIS data base are accessible only in local internal networks. A big diversity of map portals used in environment protection and development is the result of — among other things — diversity of tools and techniques available for creating them.