User interface programming I

The Web 2.0 sees once static pages evolve into hybrid applications, and content that was previously simple, now becoming increasingly complicated due to the many updating components located throughout the page. While beneficial for some users, these components (widgets) are often complex and will lead to confusion and frustration for others, notably those for whom accessibility is already an issue. While users and developers often perceive widgets as complete components (a Slideshow, or an Auto Suggest List), they are in-fact heterogeneous collections of code, and are therefore hard to computationally identify. Identification is critical if we wish to reverse engineer inaccessible widgets or ‘inject’ missing ‘WAI-ARIA’ into ‘RIAs’. In this case, we introduce a technique that analyses the code associated with a Web page to identify widgets using combinations of code constructs which enable uniquely identification. We go on to technically evaluate our approach with the most difficult widgets to distinguish between—Slideshows and Carousels—and then describe two prototype applications for visually impaired and older users by means of example.

Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on research in adaptive and convergent systems - RACS, 2015

Adapting graphical user interface is extremely important to streamline interaction and to meet changing requirement of the context of use. This shortcoming is common and repetitive for GUI and necessitates further considerations with the growing complexity of interactive systems. However most of works addressing adaptation capitalize on design-time and predefined rules, which do not always meet real users preferences and expectations during use. WiSel is a tool-supported approach based on our framework for supporting Intelligent Agile Runtime Adaptation. It consists on a mixing of both knowledge-based (adaptive) and user-drived (adaptable) UI customization. Both adaptation behaviors work together on considering runtime end-users preferences to improve adaptation of interaction object at runtime. We investigated how end-users involvement can improve widget selection and enhance the user satisfaction. A preliminary pilot study was conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach and its impact on usability in term of controllability, transparency and predictability.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2013

Recently, widget-based Web applications, i. e., mashups have gained momentum, as they make it possible to address the "long tail" of software needs. By enabling data and control flow among widgets -interwidget communication (IWC) -integration of data and functionality can be defined by the end users themselves. However, IWC entails several problems that may reduce the overall user confidence in a system. Based on the results of user studies on the OMELETTE mashup platform, this paper analyzes the problem space and evaluates possible solutions to improve user perception of IWC. Further, a discussion of promising techniques is offered and pending challenges are identified.

In the last decade user interface mashups have gained much interest both in academia and in industry. Their development paradigm enables end users to develop applications without dealing with complexities of the underlying technologies by using so-called widgets. However, user interface mashups haven't reached their full potential yet. Widgets are currently implemented in an isolated manner hindering seamless user-mashup interaction due to the need of manual state synchronization between widgets. Even though mashup run-time environments often enable inter-widget communication, current widget implementations surprisingly make use of it seldom. In this paper, we present a generic approach to semi-automatically extend widgets with dedicated interwidget communication functionality. Thus, facilitating many cumbersome tasks of the end users when combining different widgets to a single application.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005

We introduce the concept of identity-differentiating widgets (iDwidgets), widgets parameterized by the identity of their user. Although multi-user applications have become more common, most support only traditionalsingle-userẅidgets. By adding user-identity information we allow interactions with todayś widgets to be dynamically customized on a per-user basis in a group usage setting. The concept has inspired the design of new widgets as well. In this paper we describe example iDwidgets and define a conceptual framework based on what is being customized in the widget. iDwidgets can support novel interaction techniques in collaborative settings.

ACM Sigaccess Accessibility and Computing, 2010

Rich Internet Applications (RIA) encourage World Wide Web (Web) content to be extracted and remixed from dif-ferent sources, so that presented content can be updated in small chunks, rather than reloading the entire Web page. These concepts change the way Web pages are created and how users interact with them. Hence, these changes will require assistive technologies to adapt to them. We intro-duce the concept of identifying and modifying embedded code within a Web page (widget) during development, so that widgets that are not in an accessible form, and which produce inaccessible content can be modi ed. Our concept can be also applied as an enhancement for screen readers, so that they can provide a preview facility of the types of features provided by the widgets. Currently, we are investi-gating di erent methods for detecting widgets from the Web page's source code. An evaluation of our detection methods has been carried out; this was an attempt to search for two types of widgets from the top twenty Websites. The evalu-ation successfully detected all widgets, suggesting that our identi cation methods are successful, although some false positives were also detected. Since we are in our initial stage, further investigations will be required to re ne our methods, and pursue the observation and modi cation phases required by the project.

2001

Abstract Physical widgets or phidgets are to physical user interfaces what widgets are to graphical user interfaces. Similar to widgets, phidgets abstract and package input and output devices: they hide implementation and construction details, they expose functionality through a well-defined API, and they have an (optional) on-screen interactive interface for displaying and controlling device state.

2017

We live in a post-WIMP world. The traditional Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers of the PC graphical user interface are no longer present in many hand-held devices. There has been a dramatic rise in the use of smart phones in particular, with Apple selling their billionth iPhone in 2016. This trend in devices and the shift to touch interfaces has caused concern with regards to usability and has been described by some as a “usability crisis”. This alleged crisis is born out of a proliferation of product features combined with a trend towards minimalisation in user interface style. This means that user interface functions are potentially becoming less visible. The challenge is to try and quantify and understand what is happening with regards to UI visibility, which is deemed to be a critical component creating a usable interface. This paper demonstrates an approach to determining a “visibility score” for a product’s user interface. The approach is applied to the home screen of an iPho...

2016

Widget is kind of application that provides a single service such as a map, news feed, simple clock, and battery-life indicators. It is developed to facilitate user interface (UI) design. A user interface function may be implemented using different widgets developed on different UI platforms. This article presents a comprehensive review on Java Swing as a platform to develop widgets. It is a platform that is generally used in various applications, such as in desktop, web browser, and mobile phone. Furthermore, we also describe UI elements of Java Swing’s components used to establish widgets. At the end, this article discusses comparison between Java Swing and several commonly used UI platforms.

IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 2000

W idgets-standard reusable GUI elements-are a staple of user-interface development. The use of widget toolkits, such as Java's Swing, X Window System's Motif, or Microsoft's MFC, allows programmers to quickly incorporate a number of standard interactions (such as clicking buttons, selecting check boxes, or scrolling through lists) into their software. To date, most widgets have been designed for use by one person at a time. Within a single session, a widget will behave the same regardless of who uses it.