XCML: providing context-aware language extensions for the specification of multi-device web applications

Abstract

There is a vast body of research dealing with the development of contextaware web applications that can adapt to different user, platform and device contexts. However, the range and growing diversity of new devices poses two significant problems to existing approaches. First, many techniques require a number of additional design processes and modelling steps before applications can be adapted. Second, the new generation of platforms and technologies underlying these devices as well as upcoming web standards HTML5 and CSS3 have partly changed the way in which web applications are implemented nowadays and often limit the way in which they can be adapted. In this paper, we present XCML as one example of a domain-specific language that tightly integrates context-aware concepts and adaptivity mechanisms to support developers in the specification and implementation of multi-channel web applications. In contrast to most existing approaches, the objective is to use a more lightweight approach to adaptation that can dynamically evolve and support new requirements as they emerge. Our solution builds on versioning principles in combination with a context matching process based on a declaration of contextdependent variants of content, navigation and presentation in terms of context expressions at different levels of granularity that are specific to the application. To support this, a formally defined context algebra is used to parse and resolve the

Systems and tools for cross-device user interfaces

“…Given the recent proliferation of many new forms of devices, researchers have again started to experiment with better support for distribution of user interfaces across devices. Many different languages [12,16,19], frameworks [1,2,6,7,8,9,10,11,14,15,24] and tools [3,4,5,13] have been proposed to support development of cross-device applications. In 2012, Paternò and Santoro [18] presented a thorough review of multidevice research and the different dimensions that need to be distinguished when categorising existing solutions.…”

A Platform to Support Object Database Research.

“…To take this work further, we re-implemented the approach as a metamodel extension module in OMS Avon and developed a domain-specific language, XCML, for context-aware web applications [NGLN10,NGLN12].…”

Beyond Responsive Design: Adaptation to Touch and Multitouch

“…Given the proliferation of touch devices, web applications in particular are increasingly accessed using input modalities other than mouse and keyboard. However, to date many web sites still do not provide an interface that is optimised for touch input, and multi-touch interaction is generally still limited to gestures for scrolling and zooming content as interpreted by web browsers [1,2]. This paper aims to show how web sites could be adapted and instead provide carefully designed multi-touch features that are tailored to the web interface and therefore of potential benefit when carrying out application-specific tasks.…”

“…Specifically for touch, the key adaptation techniques have not been established, and studies so far have been limited to touch without considering multi-touch [2]. Despite the increasing availability of multitouch web development frameworks such as jQMultiTouch [1], we are still far from an advanced use of multi-touch gestures in web interfaces. Rather, users currently employ simple pinch and pan gestures primarily for scrolling web pages and navigating between them, or as a workaround, and then for dealing with lowlevel issues such as precise selection of hyperlinks and other forms of active web content that are often inappropriately sized and placed for touch.…”