TOWARDS A HYBRID APPROACH FOR ADAPTING WEB GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES TO HETEROGENEOUS DEVICES USING CONTEXT

Federal University of São Carlos – Brazil
Graduate Program in Computer Science
Carlos Eduardo Cirilo
Antonio Francisco do Prado
Wanderley Lopes de Souza
Luciana Aparecida Martinez Zaina
José Fernando Rodrigues Junior
TOWARDS A HYBRID APPROACH FOR ADAPTING
WEB GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES TO
HETEROGENEOUS DEVICES USING CONTEXT
Software Engineering
Group
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DMS’10, October 14-16, 2010, Chicago, USA
Available in: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/S0218194012400128

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Agenda
 Motivations and Goals
 Concepts and Tecnhiques
 Interface Adaptation Strategies
Hybrid Adaptation Approach
 Ubiquitous Context Framework (UbiCon)
 Related Work
Final Remarks and Further Work

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Motivation
 Ubiquitous Computing
 It enables users easy access to services and applications anywhere,
anytime, and using any computing device
 Each device has a specific profile, which comprises its particular
features like processing power, graphics capabilities, screen size, etc…
 Need to adapt applications

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Motivation
 Context Sensitivity
 Enables to manage interfaces
adaptation according to the
requirements imposed by the
interaction context (device profile,
user’s preferences, network
characteristics, environment…)
 Context-sensitive systems are able
to automatically adapt their behavior
and content considering the
interaction context

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Motivation
 Interface Adaptation Strategies
 at development time (static adaptation): specific
interface versions are developed separately for each target
device; and
 at execution time (dynamic adaptation): interface’s code
is automatically generated from abstract descriptions when
user accesses the application

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Goals of this Paper
 To present a hybrid approach for adapting rich interfaces of
Web 2.0 applications, by combining:
 static adaptation, by building a few generic versions of the
interface for some device groups
 dynamic adaptation, through the adaptation of snippets of
the code using context information at runtime

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Interface Adaptation Strategies

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Interface Adaptation Strategies

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Hybrid Adaptation Approach
 A few generic interface versions are developed, each being
appropriate for a certain group of devices (static adaptation)
 Dynamic content adapters allow, at runtime, to select the
version that best fits the device profile, and to adapt the code
snippets to meet the characteristics of the access device
retrieved from context (dynamic adaptation)
 Advantages:
 reduction of the number of versions developed
 lower impact on application performance
 greater use of available resources on the device and, as
consequence, a better interface adaptation

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Ubiquitous Context Framework (UbiCon)
 Provides services to manipulate context and adapt user interfaces in a
hybrid fashion
 Structured into four modules [Vieira et al. 2009]:

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 Acquisition Module
 It encompasses the adapters components that access the
context sources (stored profiles, databases, camera and
sensor drivers) for acquiring the contextual elements
 There is an appropriate adapter component for each
context source. It makes UbiCon more extensible, since it
facilitates the inclusion of new context sources or the
removal of the unnecessary ones.
 The XML database called Wireless Universal Resource
File (WURFL) was adopted as main context source in
UbiCon to acquire the devices profiles

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Use of WURFL Java API for
retrieving device profiles
stored inWURFL database
Device profile selection is
based on User-Agent field
of the HTTP request
originated by the current
user’s access device
Method for retrieving the
contextual elements related
to current access device
profile

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 Processing Module
 It includes the aggregators components that process and
group the contextual elements according to the domain
entities that they characterize (device, user, network)
 Each aggregator hides the complexity for handling the
various adapters of the Acquisition Module and provides a
single interface, called IAggregator, for obtaining the
contextual elements of a given domain entity

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 Processing Module
DeviceAggregator represents the access device and interacts
directly with all adapters that access the context sources which
provide the contextual elements related to the device profile

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 Dissemination Module
 It is composed of a single component called
ContextManager that provides the contextual elements
manipulated in the Processing Module through the
ICtxManager interface

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 Content Adaptation Module
 It provides the services for user interface adaptation

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 Content Adaptation Module
Use of ContextManager for
retrieving the contextual
elements related to the
device profile
Use of objects from Java
Document Object Model
(DOM) API, which allows
modify ing Web documents
at runtime
Adaptation according to
retrieved device profile

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 Hybrid Adaptation Operation
Client accesses application
by sending a HTTP request
The application Servlet
invokes the contentAdapt
method of the UbiCon
UbiCon retrieves the access
device profile from WURFL
UbiCon selects the requested
Web page from the most
appropriate generic interface
version according to the
device profile obtained
The code snippets of
interface content that need
to be refined to meet device
profile are identified
The necessary adjustments
are applied
The adapted page is written
in the output stream of
HTTP response, and sent to
the user’s device

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 Case Study
 Web module of the Ambulance Space Positioning System (ASPS) [Bellini et al
2010]
 ASPS emerged from an experimental study which aimed at investigating the
use of the signals from GSM antennas for the location of people or objects
 ASPS allows the fleet management team to monitor the mobility of the
ambulances

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 Case Study

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Related Work
 Extended Internet Content Adaptation Framework (EICAF)
[Forte et al. 2008]
 Framework for content adaptation of Web applications
 It uses ontologies for describing the profiles of devices, users and
other relevant entities and employs Web services for performing
content adaptation
 Semantic Context-aware Ubiquitous Scout (SCOUT) [Woensel
et al. 2009]
 Framework for building context-sensitive applications for mobile
devices
 It allows mapping real world entities (e.g., people, places, objects) into
virtual entities on the Web

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Related Work
 Xmobile [Viana & Andrade 2008]
 Environment for generating adaptive interfaces of form-based
applications for mobile devices
 Framework of abstract user interface components, which allows the
modeling of applications interfaces
 Tool to support the code generation at development time
 Semantic Transformer [Paternò et al 2008]
 Tool for automatic transformation of Web pages originally designed
for desktop platform into Web pages suitable for mobile devices
 Dynamic adaptation

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Conclusions and Further Work
 Main contributions
 Reduction in the complexity of development, because there is no need
to build a specific interface version for each existing device type.
Instead, a few generic versions for some devices groups are developed
 Hiding the issues related to context acquisition and content
adaptation, allowing to keep focus on the functionalities related to the
business requirements of the application
 Future work
 Inclusion of context sources that provide contextual elements which
characterize other entities, such as user and access network
 Extension of UbiCon with the inclusion of modules that provide other
context-sensitive services, like recommendation and location-based
services

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References
Bellini, A., Cirilo, C. E., Ferraz, V. R., Araujo, J. G., Duque, J. L., Annibal, L. P., Durelli, R. S.,
and Marcondes, C. (2010). “A low cost positioning and visualization system using
smartphones for emergency ambulance service”, In: Proc. of the 2010 ICSE Workshop on
Software Engineering in Health Care, pp. 12-18.
Forte, M., Souza, W. L. e Prado, A. F. (2008). “Using Ontologies and Web Services for Content
Adaptation in Ubiquitous Computing”, Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 81, n. 3, pp.
368-381.
Paternò, F., Santoro, C. e Scorcia, A. (2008), “Automatically Adapting Web Sites for Mobile
Access through Logical Descriptions and Dynamic Analysis of Interaction Resources”, In:
Proc. Working Conference on Advanced Visual interfaces, pp. 260-267.
Woensel, W. v., Casteleyn, S. e Troyer, O. (2009), “A Framework for Decentralized, Context-
Aware Mobile Applications using Semantic Web Technology”, In: Proc. Confederated
International Workshops and Posters on On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems, pp.
88-97.
Viana, W. e Andrade, R. M. C. (2008). “XMobile: a MB-UID Environment for Semi-Automatic
Generation of Adaptive Applications for Mobile Devices”, J. of Syst. and Soft., vol. 81, n. 3,
pp. 382-394, Mar.
Vieira, V., Tedesco, P., Salgado, A. C. (2009), “A Process for the Design of Context-Sensitive
Systems”, In: Proc. int. Conf. on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, pp.
143-148.

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Thank you!
Carlos Eduardo Cirilo
carlos_cirilo@dc.ufscar.br
Antonio Francisco do Prado
prado@dc.ufscar.br
Luciana Zaina
lzaina@ufscar.br
http://www.ges.dc.ufscar.br
Wanderley Lopes de Souza
desouza@dc.ufscar.br

TOWARDS A HYBRID APPROACH FOR ADAPTING WEB GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES TO HETEROGENEOUS DEVICES USING CONTEXT

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