Web Application User Research Articles

Analysis of privacy and security in HTML5 web storage

There is no doubt that the web has evolved from a simple media consumption device to an extremely complex programming platform over the past couple of decades. With the exponential growth of Internet use, web applications are becoming increasingly popular: they are easy to distribute, simple to update, and widely accessible. However, a uniform programming method for developing web applications does not currently exist. Developers must be experts in and juggle a combination of different languages in order to create fully functional web applications. W3C's introduction of HTML5 attempts to alleviate this problem [8]. Their Web Storage specification offers a method for storing client-side data as an alternative to the use of cookies in web applications. In this paper, the Web Storage specification is analyzed through an in-depth discussion of the privacy, security, and performance of current and future web technologies. The advantages and disadvantages of the localStorage and sessionStorage attributes are discussed, with special consideration given to their impact on privacy and security. Analysis is done in the context of a custom web application, offering a suggested framework for applications utilizing HTML5 Web Storage.

Two Algorithms for Web Applications Assessment

The usage of web applications can be measured with the use of metrics. In a LMS, a typical web application, there are no appropriate metrics which would facilitate their qualitative and quantitative measurement. The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of existing techniques with a different way, in order to analyze the log file of a typical LMS and deduce useful conclusions. Three metrics for course usage measurement are used. It also describes two algorithms for course classification and suggestion actions. The metrics and the algorithms and were in Open eClass LMS tracking data of an academic institution. The results from 39 courses presented interest insights. Although the case study concerns a LMS it can also be applied to other web applications such as e-government, e-commerce, e-banking, blogs e.t.c.

Online 3D Terrain Visualization: Implementation and Testing

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and three dimensional (3D) World Wide Web (WWW) applications usage are on the rise.The demand for online 3D terrain visualization has increased not just for cartographers, geographers, geologists and psychologists but also popular among the ordinary people.The aim of study was to determine that how online 3D terrain visualization could be employed using the most appropriate GIS software by finding the applicable web sewer to launch the system.The Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) was used as the file format for visualizing 3D terrain in online environments.For that purpose, two experiments were conducted in these studies. First experiment involved the comparison of VRML output from four different GIS software in terms of terrain visualization quality (bad, acceptable, better) and data file size (VRML original, VRML compress and image).The technique of 3D terrain draped with satellite imageries was involved in these experiments.The Arc GIs 9.2 software was found to be the best GIS software which produced promising results with high quality of terrain visualization.Second experiment involved on finding the best web sewers by comparing four selected web servers at different locations for launching the system online.The Spatial Research Group web sewer which is located close to the testing environment found to be the best.This is because it has the best value and fastest time for most of the tests being done.Therefore, these findings are useful in guiding the developers to choose the most suitable GIS software for developing online 3D terrain visualization.It is also could assists the developers to choose the applicable web sewer for the development of online 3D terrain visualization.

Understanding Blind Users’ Web Accessibility and Usability Problems

Our motivation for this research is the belief that blind users cannot participate effectively in routine Web-based activities due to the lack of Web accessibility and usability for non-visual interaction. We take a cognitive, user-centered, task-oriented approach to develop an understanding of accessibility and usability problems that blind users face in Web interactions. This understanding is critically needed to determine accessibility and usability requirements for non-visual Web interaction. We employ verbal protocol analysis for an in-depth examination of difficulties participants face in completing an online assessment through a course management system. We analyze the problems that hinder accessibility and usability and explain the nature of these problems in terms of design principles. Our study contributes an effective method for qualitative evaluation of Web accessibility and usability. Our findings will guide future research to develop more accessible and usable Web applications for blind users.

Usage of Web Applications for Monitoring of Geothermal Systems

This paper deals with a description of a unique system for borehole temperature measurement, and its consequent Web application for data visualization based on OPC communication and FTP access. There are some short descriptions of the Big Research Polygon (BRP), and the Small Research Polygon (SRP) - main parts of the largest heating system with heat pumps in the Czech Republic. They serve not only for scientific and education purposes, but also for problem of renewable energy resources. Each of these boreholes contains some temperature sensors (analogue, digital) connected to some PLC/PAC systems for data acquisition, data processing, and their saving to a measurement file. A Web application uses possibility of dynamic HTML pages created in PHP programming language. Current version of this application reshapes measurement data (from boreholes and heat pumps) into some general tables in dependence on borehole competency, and heat pump parameters, such as mass-flow, density, or volume-flow. In the future it is planned to use MS SQL database system.

Extraction, integration and analysis of alternative splicing and protein structure distributed information

BackgroundAlternative splicing has been demonstrated to affect most of human genes; different isoforms from the same gene encode for proteins which differ for a limited number of residues, thus yielding similar structures. This suggests possible correlations between alternative splicing and protein structure. In order to support the investigation of such relationships, we have developed the Alternative Splicing and Protein Structure Scrutinizer (PASS), a Web application to automatically extract, integrate and analyze human alternative splicing and protein structure data sparsely available in the Alternative Splicing Database, Ensembl databank and Protein Data Bank. Primary data from these databases have been integrated and analyzed using the Protein Identifier Cross-Reference, BLAST, CLUSTALW and FeatureMap3D software tools.ResultsA database has been developed to store the considered primary data and the results from their analysis; a system of Perl scripts has been implemented to automatically create and update the database and analyze the integrated data; a Web interface has been implemented to make the analyses easily accessible; a database has been created to manage user accesses to the PASS Web application and store user's data and searches.ConclusionPASS automatically integrates data from the Alternative Splicing Database with protein structure data from the Protein Data Bank. Additionally, it comprehensively analyzes the integrated data with publicly available well-known bioinformatics tools in order to generate structural information of isoform pairs. Further analysis of such valuable information might reveal interesting relationships between alternative splicing and protein structure differences, which may be significantly associated with different functions.

A service‐oriented virtual learning environment

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a prototype pluggable service‐oriented virtual learning environment, enabling teachers to create an integrated teaching environment using tools that have been chosen to best meet their academic requirements.Design/methodology/approachThis is an implementation of a WAFFLE Bus. A microkernel software design pattern is used to enable tools to be added and removed from the system. An enterprise service bus is used to provide workflow and message transformation functionality. Tools are managed through web service interfaces and Shibboleth is used to effect interoperability at the web application user interface. The initial services for the prototype were chosen to implement a simple web service teaching workflow.FindingsFirst, Shibboleth is shown to provide a solution to the virtual learning environment tools' interoperability problem. Second, the service‐oriented virtual learning environment naturally leads to the ability to operate with many different types of information channels in and out of the system. This leads to a multiplicity of possible types of context‐dependent user interface. Third, immersive 3D, possibly the most interesting interface, will provide a context amenable to even the smallest development teams for the introduction of artificial intelligence into teaching. Finally, web service workflow is shown to provide a viable option for the implementation of learning designs with advantages and disadvantages compared to existing approaches.Research limitations/implicationsDifferent types of information channels are associated with different security problems. It will be important to determine what the best ways are of establishing secure channels to student personal learning environments. The present web service workflow design tools are of the highest quality and usability, but the design process is still a job for a specialist. It might be possible, however, to modify these open source tools to bring the design process within the grasp of non‐specialists.Originality/valueThe software system presented herein represents one possible path leading away from VLE monolithy using a service‐oriented approach. A new solution to the tools' interoperability problem is presented along with a multi‐faceted approach to the user interface. The enterprise service bus creates a flexible platform for the delivery of web service teaching and learning workflows. It is posited that the use of an immersive 3D user interface will create a context that facilitates the introduction of an artificial intelligence layer into the virtual learning environment that can serve robot teaching avatars.

Towards generic representation of web applications: solutions and trade‐offs

AbstractServer pages (also called dynamic pages) render a generic web page into many similar ones. The technique is commonly used for implementing web application user interfaces (UIs). Yet our previous study found a high rate of repetitions (also called ‘clones’) in web applications, particularly in UIs. The finding raised the question as to why such repetitions had not been averted with the use of server pages. For an answer, we conducted an experiment using PHP server pages to explore how far server pages can be pushed to achieve generic web applications. Our initial findings suggested that generic representation obtained using server pages sometimes compromises certain important system qualities such as run‐time performance. It may also complicate the use of WYSIWYG editors. We have analysed the nature of these trade‐offs, and now propose a mixed‐strategy approach to obtain optimum generic representation of web applications without unnecessary compromise to critical system qualities and user experience. The mixed‐strategy approach applies the generative technique of XVCL to achieve genericity at the meta‐level representation of a web application, leaving repetitions to the actual web application. Our experiments show that the mixed‐strategy approach can achieve a good level of genericity without conflicting with other system qualities. Our findings should open the way for others to better‐informed decisions regarding generic design solutions, which should in turn lead to simpler, more maintainable and more reusable web applications. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Toolbox For Blackboard

SummaryMost users of web applications are aware that they are not as “nice” to use as desktop applications. They are generally slower and clunkier. This is not normally the fault of the application, but rather the browser environment in which such applications execute. Teaching staff at institutions that have deployed an online course management system such as Blackboard may be reluctant to make extensive use of it because of the overhead involved in setting up and maintaining an online presence for each course that they are involved in. This paper describes a “Blackboard Toolbox” that has been developed at the Manukau Institute of Technology. The toolbox provides a desktop interface to Blackboard and simplifies the use of most of its key functional areas. In particular it provides quick and easy access to the content areas, digital dropbox, gradebook, users, assessments and groups. The digital dropbox tool includes an additional user interface where submitted files can be easily marked, returned to individual student's dropboxes, and the grades entered in the gradebook. The toolbox makes use of Blackboard's Building Blocks technology.

Measurement of the achieved performance levels of the web applications with distributed relational database

This paper describes the methods and means used for creating a computer cluster using ordinary PCs. The cluster is running a replicated relational database, and two custom Web applications, used as the database clients. Operating system running all this is Linux 2.4, with Linux Virtual Server (LVS) used as the load-balancing solution, MySQL 4.0 as the replicated database (supporting transactions and referential integrity), and Apache 1.3 as the Web server. PHP4 is used for Web applications development. Additionally, a High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster is implemented using OpenMOSIX. Measurement and comparison of achieved performance levels is done as the final aim, using two custom applications developed for that purpose, acting as clients of two deployed Web applications. Performance-measurement applications are running under Microsoft Windows, and are developed using Borland Delphi 7.

A transformational approach to produce web application prototypes from a web requirements model

There are a significant number of proposals for modelling and developing web applications, but very few of them rigorously deal with how to elicit and represent requirements, and how to go from the Requirements Model to the Conceptual Model with a sound methodological basis. This work presents an approach to capture web application requirements. The main goal of this approach is to provide analysts with techniques that allow them to specify not only the functional and data requirements of a web application but also the navigational ones at early stages. These techniques make it possible to identify, specify and describe every task that must be achieved by web application users. In addition, we introduce a strategy based on graph transformations that allow us to automate the derivation of the navigational model of the OOWS method from early requirements specifications. Finally, by using the OOWS automatic code capabilities, we show how this graph transformations-based strategy allows us to obtain web applications prototypes from early requirements specifications.

What Kind of Verification of Formal Navigation Modelling for Reliable and Usable Web Applications?

In this paper we introduce briefly a notation dedicated to model navigation of Web applications and we discuss some strategies to assess the usability over navigation models built with such as a notation. Our aim with this kind of evaluation is to ensure (prior to implementation) that important users tasks can (or cannot) be performed using the system.

Analyzing clusters of web application user sessions

User sessions provide valuable insight into the dynamic behavior of web applications. They also play a key role in user-session-based testing, which gathers user sessions in the field and replays selected sessions to test an evolving application. To decrease the testing and analysis effort, testers reduce the set of collected user sessions by either clustering user sessions by their shared URL attributes or by program coverage requirements-based reduction techniques. Clustering URL attributes can be considerably less expensive; however, the tradeoff may be that clustering is not representative of dynamic behavior similarities. This paper describes our analysis of user session data to reveal correlations between sessions clustered on the sessions' attributes and the relative dynamic behavior of the program for those sessions. The results of our analysis also motivate other clustering and test suite reduction techniques. Our results can also be used to learn more about how clusters of web application use cases are related in terms of the underlying user session attributes, program coverage, and fault detection.

ELERA: A WWW application for evaluating and developing radiologic skills and knowledge 1

To provide an online facility for evaluating, comparing, and building expertise in radiologic anatomy and clinical radiology. Project participants were recruited from an experienced special interest group of students at the local medical school. A rigid protocol was agreed upon, defining and assigning the tasks of case selection, data entry, test task creation, and peer review. The presentation of test tasks and evaluation of user input was implemented as a custom web application. ELERA, an online assessment and learning resource based on 1,650 pathologic cases and 550 anatomy cases, was created and made publicly accessible as a world wide web application. The project design facilitated the creation of a free, highly accessible and user-friendly resource that offers capabilities for individual longitudinal and intersubject comparative assessment.

Network security and custom Web applications

This article discusses the security issues of custom application development.

Enhancing the Quality-Of-Service for Application Service Providers

The evolution and increased use of business on the Internet has become a driving force in the deployment and management of Internet business applications. Consequently, many Application Service Providers (ASPs) have adopted a server-based model as a new Internet architecture designed to effectively deliver and control these Internet business applications. In this paper, we propose a speculative processing approach for the server-based model that increases the Quality-of-Service (QoS) of Internet applications that utilize this architecture. The Active Server-based Model (ASM) anticipates ASP web-application users' “click” actions to launch processing requests of the application during idle communication intervals as the user views the current screen. The ASP web-application predictor limits action predictions to a particular web-application domain, thus increasing its effectiveness and efficiency. Through a series of trace-driven simulations, we found a 23% increase in the Quality-of-Service associated with ASP web-application clients.

Cohesive design of personalized Web applications

Good software engineering practices, such as separating concerns and identifying patterns, simplify the critical design decisions in building personalized Web applications. The authors use the object-oriented hypermedia design method (OOHDM) for constructing customized Web applications. Incorporating well-known object-oriented design structures and techniques, OOHDM produces flexible Web application models. Designers can add personalized behavior to these models with minimal code manipulation, and reasoning over design objects yields better insight into the personalization process. Although this article casts the discussion in terms of the OOHDM primitives, the ideas presented can be easily applied to other design approaches, such as WebML.

CMU-WEB

With the ubiquitous availability of browsers and internet access, the last few years have seen a tremendous growth in the number of applications being developed on the world wide web (WWW). Models for analyzing and designing these applications are only just beginning to emerge. In this work, we propose a 3-dimensional classification space for WWW applications, consisting of a degree of structure of pages dimension, a degree of support for interrelated events dimension and a location of processing dimension. Next, we propose usability design metrics for WWW applications along the structure of pages dimension. To measure these ,we propose CMU-WEB: a conceptual model that can be used to design WWW applications, such that its schemas provide values for the design metrics. This work represents the first effort, to the best of our knowledge, to provide a conceptual model that measures quantifiable metrics that can be used for the design of more usable web applications, and that can also be used to compare the usability of existing web applications, without empirical testing.