No abstract

Web augmentation has emerged as a technique for customizing Web applications beyond the personalization mechanisms natively included in them. This technique usually manipulates existing Web sites on the client-side via scripts (commonly referred as userscripts) that can change its presentation and behavior. Large communities have surfaced around this technique and two main roles have been established. On the one hand there are userscripters, users with programming skills who create new scripts and share them with the community. On the other hand, there are users who download and install in their own Web Browsers some of those scripts that satisfy their customization requirements, adding features that the applications do not support out-of-the-box. It means that Web augmentation requirements are not formally specified and they are decided according to particular userscripters needs. In this paper we propose CrowdMock, a platform for managing requirements and scripts. The platform allows users to perform two activities: (i) specify their own scripts requirements by augmenting Web sites with high-fidelity mockups and (ii) upload these requirements into an online repository. Then, the platform allows the whole community (users and userscripters) to collaborate improving the definition of the augmentation requirements and building a concrete script that implements them. Two main tools have been developed and evaluated in this context. A client-side plugin called MockPlug used for augmenting Web sites with UI prototype widgets and UserRequirements, a repository enabling sharing and managing the requirements.

The use of Web augmentation techniques has an impact on tasks of owners and developers of Web sites, developers of scripts and end users. Because the Web site can be modified by external scripts, Web site's owners might lose control about how Web site contents are delivered. To prevent this, they might be tempted to modify the DOM structure of Web pages thus making harder to execute external scripts. However, communities of Web augmentation scripters are increasing since end-users still have needs not yet covered by original Web sites. In this paper we analyze the trade-offs of the introduction of Web augmentation scripts. In order to mitigate some negative effects, such as the loss of control, we propose an approach based on negotiation and coordination between actors involved in the process. We present a set of tools to facilitate the integration of scripts and to foster the dissemination of Web augmentation scripts for the benefit of all actors involved.