Browers, platforms, and monitors, Oh My!!! Maintaining compatibility on the Yellow Brick Road of Web Design

This study describes data collected regarding design decisions Web developers make in order to make their interfaces and content compatible across user environments. Qualitative data was gathered through interviews with developers across the United States. Quantitative data was collected through an examination of several Web sites' source code. Web content does not render the same in every environment. A site may have an attractive interface when viewed through one browser while being completely incomprehensible in another browser. Web developers face the complex task of deciding what types of environments to design for. This research explores the current trends and standards that developers implement to achieve compatibility

Location based services for everyone

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

XPL the Extensible Presentation Language

The last decade has witnessed a growing interest in the development of web interfaces enabling both multiple ways to access contents and, at the same time, fruition by multiple modalities of interaction (point-and-click, contents reading, voice commands, gestures, etc.). In this paper we describe a framework aimed at streamlining the design process of multi-channel, multimodal interfaces enabling full reuse of software components. This framework is called the eXtensible Presentation architecture and Language (XPL), a presentation language based on design pattern paradigm that keeps separated the presentation layer from the underlying programming logic. The language supplies a methodology to expedite multimodal interface development and to reduce the effort to implement interfaces for multiple access devices, by means of using the same code. This paper describes a methodology approach based on Visual Design Pattern (ViDP) and Verbal Design Pattern (VeDP), offering examples of multimodal and multichannel interfaces created with the XPL Editor

MapMyVTA

Transportation is a very important part of our day-to-day life. Generally, it includes use of public transportation services like those provided by Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to Santa Clara County. VTA has reported total combined boarding of light rails and buses as more than a million on yearly basis. This fact clearly indicates the importance of public transportation in a society. Obviously trip planning and schedule matching are two very decisive factors to improve transit experiences. Information related to services makes it easy for users to plan their journey ahead. Still manual planning and information discovery is time consuming, tedious, and prone to human errors. Therefore need of a better, user-friendly transit information system has been long felt. MapMyVTA is a web application that provides detailed information about VTA services to its users. MapMyVTA keeps the users updated about the timings of the buses, positions of the buses at a given time, and expected time of arrival of a bus at a given stop in a route. These features help users to match their timings with expected timings of the buses at the stop, to see their options about the number of buses en-route, to look up their connecting lines by a simple click at the connecting stops, and to plan their journey quickly with all system supported routes. Additional features, such as stop locator is useful to find more information about a particular stop with a near around attractions list with addresses, and view lines information feature make it easy to view a very detailed information about the bus lines

Performance of Ajax Applications on Mobile Devices

The Ajax approach has outgrown its origin as shorthand for 'Asynchronous JavaScript + XML'. Three years after its naming, Ajax has become widely adopted by web applications. Therefore, there exists a growing interest in using those applications with mobile devices. This thesis evaluates the presentational capability and measures the performance of five mobile browsers on the Apple iPhone and Nokia models N95 and N800. Performance is benchmarked through user-experienced response times as measured with a stopwatch. 12 Ajax toolkit examples and 8 production-quality applications are targeted, all except one in their real environments. In total, over 1750 observations are analyzed and included in the appendix. Communication delays are not considered; the network connection type is WLAN. Results indicate that the initial loading time of an Ajax application can often exceed 20 seconds. Content reordering may be used to partially overcome this limitation. Proper testing is the key for success: the selected browsers are capable of presenting Ajax applications if their differing implementations are overcome, perhaps using a suitable toolkit