Emanuel Schuetze has written a thesis on:
"Current state of technology and potential of Smart Map Browsing in web browsers
using the example of the Free web mapping application OpenLayers"
Looks like this will be a very interesting review of the current state of the art in map browsing in the web environment.
http://www.smartmapbrowsing.org/index_en.html
Keywords: openlayers, thesis, webgis