Towards more mature web maintenance practices for accessibility.

This paper proposes a need to differentiate Web maintenance from traditional software maintenance. The maintenance of a Web site is different than that of software as it is under constant maintenance and works by default in "modified environments". Building on the authors' previous work of automated quality measurement, a case study of large scale Web maintenance activity is described which focuses on a change to ensure that Web pages are accessible to users with disabilities. The results of the study show that organisations which have a clear and committed maintenance strategy and provide their staff with appropriate tools and training have better quality Web sites

Relative and Absolute Mappings for Rotating Remote 3D Objects on Multi-Touch Tabletops

The use of human fingers as an object selection and manipulation tool has raised significant challenges when interacting with direct-touch tabletop displays. This is particularly an issue when manipulating remote objects in 3D environments as finger presses can obscure objects at a distance that are rendered very small. Techniques to support remote manipulation either provide absolute mappings between finger presses and object transformation or rely on tools that support relative mappings t o selected objects. This paper explores techniques to manipulate remote 3D objects on direct-touch tabletops using absolute and relative mapping modes. A user study was conducted to compare absolute and relative mappings in support of a rotation task. Overall results did not show a statistically significant difference between these two mapping modes on both task completion time and the number of touches. However, the absolute mapping mode was found to be less efficient than the relative mapping mode when rotating a small object. Also participants preferred relative mapping for small objects. Four mapping techniques were then compared for perceived ease of use and learnability. Touchpad, voodoo doll and telescope techniques were found to be comparable for manipulating remote objects in a 3D scene. A flying camera technique was considered too complex and required increased effort by participants. Participants preferred an absolute mapping technique augmented to support small object manipulation, e.g. the voodoo doll technique

Reuse with risk management A decision support approach

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN032661 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Tree-map visualization for web accessibility

Ensuring a Website is accessible for diverse sets of users is a crucial and in some circumstances a legal requirement. It can also be a time consuming and frustrating fire fighting exercise. This research paper describes a visual evaluation of the accessibility of a Website using Tree-Maps. Its goal is to highlight areas of a site that need attention. This is achieved by generating accessibility metrics and then plotting these onto a visualisation. The research identified that tree-maps can efficiently represent the accessibility of a Website. Further work on the visualisation of changes in accessibility is suggested and discussed

Evaluating clone detection tools for use during preventative maintenance

This paper describes the results of a process whereby the detection capability of 5 code replication detection tools for large software application are evaluated. Specifically this work focuses on the benefits of identification for preventative maintenance that is with the aim to remove some of the identified clones from the source code. A number of requirements are therefore identified upon which the tools are evaluated. The results of the analysis processes show that each tool has its own strengths and weaknesses and no single tool is able to identify all clones within the code. The paper proposes that it may be possible to use a combination of tools to perform the analysis process providing that adequate means of efficiently identifying false matches is found

Supporting program comprehension using dominance trees

This paper will address how program comprehension can be aided within software maintenance through the use of high level representations of code, specifically the use of dominance trees. The paper proposes that dominance trees should be used as a standard approach within the program comprehension process. A number of ways in which the dominance trees are supportive of the comprehension process are highlighted. The evaluation considers if dominance trees are supportive of standard program comprehension strategies such as an as‐needed strategy, whether they provide an early identification of the consequences of changes and highlight areas where preventative maintenance is necessary. Their actual usefulness in achieving these goals is evaluated through the use of a number of case studies. The results have shown that there are a number of specific tasks performed during program comprehension that can be aided through the use of dominance trees

Evaluating using animation to improve understanding of sequence diagrams

This paper describes an experiment whereby the benefit of using animation to improve thecomprehensibility of UML sequence diagrams is assessed. The paper hypothesizes that through animation the control flow of sequence diagram will become more evident. The development a system that seeks to enable stakeholders to better interpret UML modeling behaviour is described. This system aims to provide dynamic visualization through the use ofanimation techniques. A study to evaluate the extent to which the animation of a diagram can aid its interpretation is then described. The results of the study show that the animation system did improve the comprehensibility of the sequence diagram control flow thus improving the comprehensibility when compared to the comprehensibility of a traditional static representation. Finally, this paper discusses the reasoning for these results

Building project management communities: exploring the contribution of patterns supported by web 2.0 technologies

This article describes an approach whereby patterns are used to describe management issues and solutions to be used during the project management of team-based software development. The work describes how web 2.0 technologies have been employed to support the use and development of such patterns. To evaluate the success of patterns and the technologies supporting their dissemination the work of 12 software development teams over 2 years is explored. The results of the research describe how students find access to the experiences of their predecessors useful to guide their actions and how they find patterns particularly useful as a way of expressing social issues concerned with the management of student groups

Towards More Mature Web Maintenance Practices for Accessibility

This paper proposes a need to differentiate Web maintenance from traditional software maintenance. The maintenance of a Web site is different than that of software as it is under constant maintenance and works by default in "modified environments". Building on the authors' previous work of automated quality measurement, a case study of large scale Web maintenance activity is described which focuses on a change to ensure that Web pages are accessible to users with disabilities. The results of the study show that organisations which have a clear and committed maintenance strategy and provide their staff with appropriate tools and training have better quality Web sites