A Language-Based Model for Specifying and Staging Mixed-Initiative Dialogs

Specifying and implementing flexible human-computer dialogs, such as those used in kiosks, is complex because of the numerous and varied directions in which each user might steer a dialog. The objective of this research is to improve dialog specification and implementation. To do so we developed a model for specifying and staging mixed-initiative dialogs. The model involves a dialog authoring notation, based on concepts from programming languages, for specifying a variety of unsolicited reporting, mixed-initiative dialogs in a concise representation that serves as a design for dialog implementation. Guided by this foundation, we built a dialog staging engine which operationalizes dialogs specified in this notation. The model, notation, and engine help automate the engineering of mixed-initiative dialog systems. These results also provide a proof-of-concept for dialog specification and implementation from the perspective of theoretical programming languages. The ubiquity of dialogs in domains such as travel, education, and health care with the increased use of interactive voice-response systems and virtual environments provide a fertile landscape for further investigation of these results

CSS Spa: A System for Parsing & Aggregation of Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) represent a powerful means for Web designers to separate HTML content from presentation. CSS solves many design-related issues, but it also creates new ones, including document management issues and "code bloat." The CSS Spa has been created to assist designers with CSS management. After spidering a Web site's CSS content, the CSS Spa follows a series of rules to accomplish this: enforcement of atomic separation; elimination of non-CSS style elements; elimination of inline styles; normalization attributes and values; creation of new CSS "superclasses;" and finally removal of any unused CSS. The CSS Spa tool was developed using PHP and MySQL, then tested on two sets of sites: three simple learning cases and three real-world Web sites. Each of these test sites represents a different CSS challenge: reliance on older HTML styles; heavy use of inline styles; and enhancement of an already-efficient design

Program Transformations for Information Personalization

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms necessary to automatically customize information content, structure, and presentation to the end user to reduce information overload. Unlike traditional approaches to personalization, the central theme of our approach is to model a website as a program and conduct website transformation for personalization by program transformation (e.g., partial evaluation, program slicing). The goal of this paper is study personalization through a program transformation lens and develop a formal model, based on program transformations, for personalized interaction with hierarchical hypermedia. The specific research issues addressed involve identifying and developing program representations and transformations suitable for classes of hierarchical hypermedia and providing supplemental interactions for improving the personalized experience. The primary form of personalization discussed is out-of-turn interaction—a technique that empowers a user navigating a hierarchical website to postpone clicking on any of the hyperlinks presented on the current page and, instead, communicate the label of a hyperlink nested deeper in the hierarchy. When the user supplies out-of-turn input, we personalize the hierarchy to reflect the user\u27s informational need. While viewing a website as a program and site transformation as program transformation is non-traditional, it offers a new way of thinking about personalized interaction, especially with hierarchical hypermedia. Our use of program transformations casts personalization in a formal setting and provides a systematic and implementation-neutral approach to designing systems. Moreover, this approach helped connect our work to human-computer dialog management and, in particular, mixed-initiative interaction. Putting personalized web interaction on a fundamentally different landscape gave birth to this new line of research. Relating concepts in the web domain (e.g., sites, interactions) to notions in the program-theoretic domain (e.g., programs, transformations) constitutes the creativity in this work

Refactoring de los modelos de navegación y presentación en aplicaciones web

Las aplicaciones Web evolucionan constantemente moldeándose al usuario, los procesos de desarrollo por excelencia son los procesos ágiles. Estas metodologías iteran constantemente sobre las fases de desarrollo de la aplicación permitiendo que se introduzcan cambios en cada iteración. En este proceso la aplicación puede sufrir muchos tipos de modificaciones, algunas simples y otras más radicales. Esta necesidad de cambio constante ha llevado a los desarrolladores a utilizar la técnica de refactoring, incrementando la calidad del diseño y del código mientras se preserva el comportamiento. Indistintamente del proceso de desarrollo elegido, la mayoría de las metodologías de diseño para aplicaciones Web coinciden en tres modelos de diseño: de aplicación, de navegación y de presentación. La técnica del refactoring, que en si fue concebida para reestructurar código, ahora se utiliza también a nivel de modelos. En este trabajo me concentré en buscar las modificaciones más comunes que se realizan a aplicaciones Web y documentarlas de manera tal de formar un catálogo con los refactorings de modelo de navegación y presentación. Con el creciente uso de los lenguajes orientados a objetos en el mercado y sobre todo en la tecnología Web, me pareció adecuado utilizar OOHDM para documentar los cambios en estos modelos.Facultad de Informátic

Restructuring Web Applications via Transformation Rules

During the evolution phase, the structure (pages and links) of a Web application tends unavoidably to degrade. A solution to reverse this degradation can be restructuring the Web application, but this work may take a lot of time and effort if conducted without appropriate tools. The theory of rewrite rules has been used with success in many real restructuring works on traditional software. Our idea is trying to apply rewrite rules to Web applications with the aim of restructuring them. The purpose of the paper is threefold: to describe our initial ideas on HTML rewrites to improve the quality of Web applications, to present our approach for implementing a tool, based on transformation rules, that can help designers in Web application restructuring and to define the starting point of the joint project between ITC-irst and Semantic Design

Restructuring Web Applications via Transformation Rules

During the evolution phase, the structure (pages and links) of a Web application tends unavoidably to degrade. A solution to reverse this degradation can be restructuring the Web application, but this work may take a lot of time and effort if conducted without appropriate tools. The theory of rewrite rules has been used with success in many real restructuring works on traditional software. Our idea is trying to apply rewrite rules to Web applications with the aim of restructuring them. The purpose of this paper is threefold: to describe our initial ideas on HTML rewrites to improve the quality of Web applications, to present our approach for implementing a tool, based on transformation rules, that can help designers in Web application restructuring and to define the starting point of the joint project between ITC-irst and Semantic Design