General Interface Description of Websites using CLICK and UIML

This paper explores the domain of programming paradigm for Multi-Platform User Interfaces using XML based languages. The main focus of this work is User Interface Markup Language (UIML), an XML based language for describing user interfaces in a platform-independent manner. We have explored the capabilities of UIML as an interface description language for describing interactive websites. We have selected an end-user web programming tool called CLICK, which also uses an XML based interface description for the websites created through it. We have analyzed both the representations and devised a conversion process from CLICK XML to UIML. We have found that UIML is expressive enough to represent applications built using CLICK. UIML provides various benefits over the interface description generated by CLICK especially that of facilitating the development of web based interfaces for multiple platforms through CLICK

Dynamically generated multi-modal application interfaces

This work introduces a new UIMS (User Interface Management System), which aims to solve numerous problems in the field of user-interface development arising from hard-coded use of user interface toolkits. The presented solution is a concrete system architecture based on the abstract ARCH model consisting of an interface abstraction-layer, a dialog definition language called GIML (Generalized Interface Markup Language) and pluggable interface rendering modules. These components form an interface toolkit called GITK (Generalized Interface ToolKit). With the aid of GITK (Generalized Interface ToolKit) one can build an application, without explicitly creating a concrete end-user interface. At runtime GITK can create these interfaces as needed from the abstract specification and run them. Thereby GITK is equipping one application with many interfaces, even kinds of interfaces that did not exist when the application was written. It should be noted that this work will concentrate on providing the base infrastructure for adaptive/adaptable system, and does not aim to deliver a complete solution. This work shows that the proposed solution is a fundamental concept needed to create interfaces for everyone, which can be used everywhere and at any time. This text further discusses the impact of such technology for users and on the various aspects of software systems and their development. The targeted main audience of this work are software developers or people with strong interest in software development

Semi-automated creation of converged iTV services: From macromedia director simulations to services ready for broadcast

While sound and video may capture viewers’ attention, interaction can captivate them. This has not been available prior to the advent of Digital Television. In fact, what lies at the heart of the Digital Television revolution is this new type of interactive content, offered in the form of interactive Television (iTV) services. On top of that, the new world of converged networks has created a demand for a new type of converged services on a range of mobile terminals (Tablet PCs, PDAs and mobile phones). This paper aims at presenting a new approach to service creation that allows for the semi-automatic translation of simulations and rapid prototypes created in the accessible desktop multimedia authoring package Macromedia Director into services ready for broadcast. This is achieved by a series of tools that de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces (UI) and applications for mobile terminals. The benefits of rapid prototyping are essential for the production of these new types of services, and are therefore discussed in the first section of this paper. In the following sections, an overview of the operation of content, service, creation and management sub-systems is presented, which illustrates why these tools compose an important and integral part of a system responsible of creating, delivering and managing converged broadcast and telecommunications services. The next section examines a number of metadata languages candidates for describing the iTV services user interface and the schema language adopted in this project. A detailed description of the operation of the two tools is provided to offer an insight of how they can be used to de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces and applications for mobile terminals. Finally, representative broadcast oriented and telecommunication oriented converged service components are also introduced, demonstrating how these tools have been used to generate different types of services

User interfaces for multimodal systems

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-69).As computer systems become more powerful and complex, efforts to make computer interfaces more simple and natural become increasingly important. Natural interfaces should be designed to facilitate communication in ways people are already accustomed to using. Such interfaces allow users to concentrate on the tasks they are trying to accomplish, not worry about what they must do to control the interface. Multimodal systems process combined natural input modes- such as speech, pen, touch, manual gestures, gaze, and head and body movements- in a coordinated manner with multimedia system output. The initiative at W3C is to make the development of interfaces simple and easy to distribute applications across the Internet in an XML development environment. The languages so far such as HTML designed at W3C are for a particular platform and are not portable to other platforms. User Interface Markup Language (UIML) has been designed to develop cross-platform interfaces. It will be shown in this thesis that UIML can be used not only to develop multi-platform interfaces but also for creating multimodal interfaces. A survey of existing multimodal applications is performed and an efficient and easy-to-develop methodology is proposed. Later it will be also shown that the methodology proposed satisfies a major set of requirements laid down by W3C for multimodal dialogs.by Sumanth Lingam.M.Eng

An Adaptive User Interface Framework for eHealth Services based on UIML

New sensory technologies and smaller, more capable mobile devices open opportunities for pervasive computing in the healthcare sector. Patients as well as medical professionals are, from a information and communication technology (ICT) point of view, better equipped than ever before. Despite this, many hospitals and other healthcare service providers have yet to exploit the potential unleashed by these technologies. In this paper, we present a framework for adaptive user interfaces for home care and smart hospital services. The framework uses the current context to provide healthcare professionals or patients with simpler, more efficient user interfaces. In a home care environment, user interface adaption is needed to tailor user interfaces to patients needs and impairments. In a smart hospital, user interface adaption considers medical professionals’ preferences and priorities. In addition, by using context to make input suggestions simplifies the input and limits the scope for errors. Our frameworks uses a modelbased approach and includes the current context in the interface generation process

UIML: an appliance-independent xml user interface language

Abstract Today's Internet appliances feature user interface technologies almost unknown a few years ago: touch screens, styli, handwriting and voice recognition, speech synthesis, tiny screens, and more. This richness creates problems. First, different appliances use different languages: WML for cell phones; SpeechML, JSML, and VoxML for voice enabled devices such as phones; HTML and XUL for desktop computers, and so on. Thus, developers must maintain multiple source code families to deploy interfaces to one information system on multiple appliances. Second, user interfaces differ dramatically in complexity (e.g, PC versus cell phone interfaces). Thus, developers must also manage interface content. Third, developers risk writing appliance-specific interfaces for an appliance that might not be on the market tomorrow. A solution is to build interfaces with a single, universal language free of assumptions about appliances and interface technology. This paper introduces such a language, the User Interface Markup Language (UIML), an XML-compliant language. UIML insulates the interface designer from the peculiarities of different appliances through style sheets. A measure of the power of UIML is that it can replace hand-coding of Java AWT or Swing user interfaces

Dynamic Distributed User Interfaces: Supporting Mobile Interaction Spaces.

As the possibilities and popularity of mobile computing devices increases, there is an opportunity to accomplish more and more desktop-related tasks with them. Most tasks require a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows users to tap buttons, make selections, fill in forms, etc. Because of the diversity in mobile devices, it is difficult to develop a single GUI that runs on all of these devices. One of the difficulties is the lack of a common platform and/or GUI toolkit. The heterogeneity of platforms and toolkits can be masked by using markup languages to describe an interface on a high level. The use of these description languages is one of the core ideas in this dissertation. Another concern is the adaptation of the GUI to the context of use. Our goals are to clarify what adaptation of an interface involves and why it is important. Since mobile devices have limited screen space and varying input methods, it may be appropriate to split up a GUI and distribute parts to several devices. This poses new challenges such as an efficient distribution mechanism and wireless communication techniques to let the distributed parts talk with each other and the application logic. We present a framework that is able to generate and distribute GUI descriptions for custom applications, tha