This paper describes an integrated web-based fuzzy expert system for food dryer selection. A modular approach to designing the system was employed. It consists of a number of knowledge sources controlled by a scheduler, which communicate through a common blackboard. The system has been fully implemented to run on the web and provides an excellent example of how a number of heterogeneous tools and applications can be integrated on the www.Java was used as the main programming language, and a new server-side technology, Java servlets, was utilised and found to be very effective in integrating different applications on the web. Rule-based knowledge sources and the inference mechanisms were implemented using Resolver. The system, which also includes 'foreign' programs coded in Fortran, clearly demonstrated the integration of the various tools in a seamless user-friendly environment. The structure of the developed system is presented together with example runs to demonstrate its main functionality. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.