Web Development Projects Research Articles

Legal Aspects of Intellectual Property Protection in Web Development: Analysis of Contractual Obligations and Parties' Liability

This study examines the intricate legal landscape surrounding intellectual property (IP) protection in web development, focusing on contractual obligations and liability issues among involved parties. The research explores the various forms of IP relevant to web development, including copyrights, trademarks, and patents, while analyzing common contractual provisions used to safeguard IP rights, such as ownership clauses, confidentiality agreements, and licensing terms. Additionally, the study investigates the allocation of liability between developers, clients, and third-party service providers in cases of IP infringement. Through an examination of case studies and legal precedents, this research aims to provide insights into best practices for IP protection in web development projects and highlight potential legal pitfalls. The findings emphasize the importance of clear contractual language, due diligence in IP clearance, and proactive risk management strategies to mitigate liability concerns in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Design & Development of Satellite Portal to Support Adaptive E-Learning

Abstract: Web development is referred to as website designingas well as publishing with respect to fulfilling the requirements of project objectives. It includes project modules of functionalities in the website with proper passion. Web development projects having front-end, back-end, APIs, database, micro services, UI- UX designs, etc. Satellite portal to support adaptive e-learning for those who are interested to learn about satellite technology. Currently, satellite technology and space technology are trending technologies in the market. Learning Satellite technology makes students to make themselves skilful for jobs as well as for innovative start-ups.

A Delphi-based expert judgment method applied to the validation of a mature Agile framework for Web development projects

The validation of any new methodological proposal demands several real-life implementations. However, organizations are reluctant to invest without the firm guarantee that they will be returned the entire expended amount of money. For this purpose, expert judgment techniques are very useful to provide a less-costly initial validation that, when positive, may encourage organizations to use these new proposals. Therefore, the primary goal of the paper will be to assess how expert judgment techniques based on the Delphi method can be applied to Web Engineering field and, more in particular, to assess the validity of the NDT-Agile framework. NDT-Agile is a framework that combines Agile and Web Engineering techniques to meet Capability Maturity Model Integration development goals. The paper presents a real example of an application of a Delphi-based expert judgment method to assess NDT-Agile framework validity, explaining the design as well as the selection and usage of the different techniques it involves. The application of the method will allow assessing benefits and limitations of use in Web Engineering. As a main conclusion, we will state the utility of the proposed methods to obtain a low-resource initial validation of a certain proposal. Finally, we will identify further lines of research related to the analyzed topics.

Determinants of client satisfaction in web development projects from freelance marketplaces

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the major factors of client satisfaction (CS) that are critical for web development projects in freelance marketplaces. This quantitative study is done from the point of view of the web development services clients. Five major dimensions were proposed as determinants of CS from the literature review: ease of use, user interface, information, security and privacy.Design/methodology/approachA web-based survey methodology is used as the main data collection instrument. Statistical techniques such as confirmatory factor analysis and multiple linear regressions are used to analyze 162 responses of questionnaires.FindingsThe findings suggest that all factors do influence CS. In terms of strength, security had the highest level of impact on CS, so it is the strongest determinant among all factors. After security, ease of use and information are considered as strong determinants. So, this study concludes that the five major determinates do affect CS in web development projects from freelance marketplaces.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is limited only to the top freelance marketplaces, such as Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, Guru, Envato Studio, etc. The sample size is relatively small and this study is focused on web development projects only. Moreover, this research is focused only on the characteristics or attributes of the projects final outcome, i.e. website.Practical implicationsThis study attempts to identify the important factors that have a relation with CS, thus giving freelancers an indication of what to look for when working on any web development project posted by any client in a freelance marketplace. Understanding the determinants of CS will also help Pakistani information technology freelancers involved in web development projects and services to increase their project performance, improve their CS rate and increment client following.Originality/valueThis presents the first study on the determinants of CS in web development projects from freelance marketplaces.

A Portable Virtual LAB for Informatics Education using Open Source Software

The need for students to have hands-on experience is very important in many disciplines to match the requirements of today’s dynamic job market. Informatics, which is the science of information engineering, has been recently integrated into many academic programs. Teaching students the main skills in modern software and web development is essential for them to be successful informatics professionals. For any informatics program, students engage in working on projects as essential parts for some courses in their academic programs. This paper presents the development and evaluation of MiLAB (My Mobile Informatics Lab), a portable virtual lab environment for the teaching and learning of modern web development skills. MiLAB has been integrated into an undergraduate health informatics academic program to improve the teaching and learning of essential web development skills, such as databases management and customization of modern content management systems. The evaluation of MiLAB indicated that it served as an interactive personal environment for students to implement, collaborate, and present their web development projects. Strengths, weaknesses and possible improvements are also discussed.

Robula+: an algorithm for generating robust XPath locators for web testing

Automated test scripts are used with success in many web development projects, so as to automatically verify key functionalities of the web application under test, reveal possible regressions and run a large number of tests in short time. However, the adoption of automated web testing brings advantages but also novel problems, among which the test code fragility problem. During the evolution of the web application, existing test code may easily break and testers have to correct it. In the context of automated DOM-based web testing, one of the major costs for evolving the test code is the manual effort necessary to repair broken web page element locators - lines of source code identifying the web elements e.g. form fields and buttons to interact with.

Tipificación de Dominios de Requerimientos para la Aplicación de Patrones Arquitectónicos

This article describes the results of a research developed to support the design phase of software architecture of a project, as the main product a domain requirement that groups the common elements in web development projects that promote the integration of platforms was obtained and digital ecosystems. This domain was used as an input to relate architectural patterns that are currently used and thus define a resource that could be useful in any development project for the selection of the most suitable pattern. For project implementation activities were carried out: selection of software development projects; identifying functional and nonfunctional requirements; selection of architectural benchmarks and domain validation requirements to substantiate that the architectural patterns associated, represented an appropriate option for the requirement.

Methodologies for Model-Driven Development of Adaptive Web Applications: An Analytical Survey

Due to the rapid expansion of web applications, the information and services provided on the web have proliferated, leading to ever-increasing complexity. This has not only resulted in the utmost significance of information quality and accuracy on the web, but has also necessitated that access to information be improved. Hence, adaptive web systems have emerged, which focus on adapting web content, presentation, and navigation to meet the needs of the users according to their individual circumstances and preferences. In this field, focus has gradually shifted from creation of new adaptive techniques to solving the problems of analysis and design of adaptive applications; in other words, it has become important to handle the dynamism of the runtime environment and the complexity involved in developing these applications. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is considered a promising approach for overcoming these problems, mainly due to its modeling features: Models are created at different levels of abstraction (thus enhancing complexity management), and the process can potentially be automated through the use of transformation rules. We provide a review of several prominent methodologies that utilize MDE for developing adaptive web applications, and propose a criteria-based evaluation approach that highlights their strengths and weaknesses. Evaluation results can be used for comparing and selecting methodologies for use in web development projects; they can also be used for constructing a new methodology that exploits the strengths and addresses the shortcomings of existing methodologies.

Between Worlds: Securing Mixed JavaScript/ActionScript Multi-Party Web Content

Mixed Flash and JavaScript content has become increasingly prevalent; its purveyance of dynamic features unique to each platform has popularized it for myriad web development projects. Although Flash and JavaScript security has been examined extensively, the security of untrusted content that combines both has received considerably less attention. This article considers this fusion in detail, outlining several practical scenarios that threaten the security of web applications. The severity of these attacks warrants the development of new techniques that address the security of Flash-JavaScript content considered as a whole, in contrast to prior solutions that have examined Flash or JavaScript security individually. Toward this end, the article presents FlashJaX, a cross-platform solution that enforces fine-grained, history-based policies that span both Flash and JavaScript. Using in-lined reference monitoring, FlashJaX safely embeds untrusted JavaScript and Flash content in web pages without modifying browser clients or using special plug-ins. The architecture of FlashJaX, its design and implementation, and a detailed security analysis are exposited. Experiments with advertisements from popular ad networks demonstrate that FlashJaX is transparent to policy-compliant advertisement content, yet blocks many common attack vectors that exploit the fusion of these web platforms.

Estimating, planning and managing Agile Web development projects under a value-based perspective

ContextThe processes of estimating, planning and managing are crucial for software development projects, since the results must be related to several business strategies. The broad expansion of the Internet and the global and interconnected economy make Web development projects be often characterized by expressions like delivering as soon as possible, reducing time to market and adapting to undefined requirements. In this kind of environment, traditional methodologies based on predictive techniques sometimes do not offer very satisfactory results. The rise of Agile methodologies and practices has provided some useful tools that, combined with Web Engineering techniques, can help to establish a framework to estimate, manage and plan Web development projects. ObjectiveThis paper presents a proposal for estimating, planning and managing Web projects, by combining some existing Agile techniques with Web Engineering principles, presenting them as an unified framework which uses the business value to guide the delivery of features. MethodThe proposal is analyzed by means of a case study, including a real-life project, in order to obtain relevant conclusions. ResultsThe results achieved after using the framework in a development project are presented, including interesting results on project planning and estimation, as well as on team productivity throughout the project. ConclusionIt is concluded that the framework can be useful in order to better manage Web-based projects, through a continuous value-based estimation and management process.

Textual and Content-Based Search in Repositories of Web Application Models

Model-driven engineering relies on collections of models, which are the primary artifacts for software development. To enable knowledge sharing and reuse, models need to be managed within repositories, where they can be retrieved upon users’ queries. This article examines two different techniques for indexing and searching model repositories, with a focus on Web development projects encoded in a domain-specific language. Keyword-based and content-based search (also known as query-by-example) are contrasted with respect to the architecture of the system, the processing of models and queries, and the way in which metamodel knowledge can be exploited to improve search. A thorough experimental evaluation is conducted to examine what parameter configurations lead to better accuracy and to offer an insight in what queries are addressed best by each system.

Plat_Forms: A Web Development Platform Comparison by an Exploratory Experiment Searching for Emergent Platform Properties

Background: For developing Web-based applications, there exist several competing and widely used technological platforms (consisting of a programming language, framework(s), components, and tools), each with an accompanying development culture and style. Research question: Do Web development projects exhibit emergent process or product properties that are characteristic and consistent within a platform, but show relevant substantial differences across platforms or do team-to-team individual differences outweigh such differences, if any? Such a property could be positive (i.e., a platform advantage), negative, or neutral, and it might be unobvious which is which. Method: In a nonrandomized, controlled experiment, framed as a public contest called “Plat_Forms,” top-class teams of three professional programmers competed to implement the same requirements for a Web-based application within 30 hours. Three different platforms (Java EE, PHP, or Perl) were used by three teams each. We compare the resulting nine products and process records along many dimensions, both external (usability, functionality, reliability, security, etc.) and internal (size, structure, modifiability, etc.). Results: The various results obtained cover a wide spectrum: First, there are results that many people would have called “obvious” or “well known,” say, that Perl solutions tend to be more compact than Java solutions. Second, there are results that contradict conventional wisdom, say, that our PHP solutions appear in some (but not all) respects to be actually at least as secure as the others. Finally, one result makes a statement we have not seen discussed previously: Along several dimensions, the amount of within-platform variation between the teams tends to be smaller for PHP than for the other platforms. Conclusion: The results suggest that substantial characteristic platform differences do indeed exist in some dimensions, but possibly not in others.

Two novel effort estimation models based on quality metrics in web projects

Web development projects are certainly different from traditional software development projects and, hence, require differently tailored measures for accurate effort estimation. Effort estimation accuracy will affect the availability of resource allocation and task scheduling. In this paper, we investigate the suitability of a newly proposed quality metrics and models to estimate the effort and duration for small or medium-size Web development projects. It then describes a new size metrics, presents two novel methods (WEBMO+ and VPM+), based on WEB model (WEBMO) using Web objects instead of SLOC and Vector Prediction Model (VPM), to fast estimate the development effort of Web-based information systems. We also empirically validate the approach with a four projects study. The results indicate that the approach provides a mechanism to measure the size of software systems, classify software systems, and estimate development effort early in the software life cycle to within +/-20 percent across a range of application types. In contrast with other existing methods, WEBMO+ and VPM+ uses raw historical information about development capability and high granularity information about the system to be developed, in order to carry out such estimations. This method is simple and specially suited for small or medium-size Web based information systems.

An evaluation of the utility of web development methods

Although many web development methods exist, they are rarely used by practitioners. The work reported here, seeks to explain why this might be so, and suggests that, for many, the perceived benefits may be outweighed by the difficulty or effort required to learn the method. In attempting to gauge the utility of methods the authors undertook a 2-year study of 23 small web development projects, attempting to use a range of published (academic) methods. Of the 23 projects we found only one case where the developer continued to use an academic web development method throughout the lifecycle. The ability to understand a method and/or its techniques was repeatedly cited as the reason for its abandonment. Our findings also indicate a number of key areas, relating to terminology, completeness, and guidance, where existing methods may be failing their intended users. In attempting to further our understanding of web development methods we completed a comprehensive survey of web development methods; covering 52 web development methods, encompassing a range of different research communities, and drawing upon 63 different sources. Our findings here shed some light upon the confusion of methods for the would-be user. In summary, the findings are that, although there is much of value in a variety of methods, method choice is somewhat bewildering for the newcomer to the field, and many methods are incomplete in some dimension. By providing this work we hope to go some way towards supporting the software engineering community, in both academia and industry, in their understanding of the quality issues that exist with the take up and use of web development methods.

ScanGrants: A Case Study of the Creation of a Free Online Database of Current Grants, Scholarships, and Other Sources of Funding in the Health Sciences

ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of the genesis, development, and features of ScanGrants, <http://www.scangrants.com/>, the free online resource, and discusses how librarians can develop inexpensive Web development projects that take advantage of the searching and categorizing skills they possess. This paper also touches on matters of copyright and the marketing of Web services outside of one's own institution and the importance for medical librarians to forge alliances with other institutional colleagues.

The impacts of non-functional requirements in web system projects

In web system development, the Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) are typically considered only briefly during the requirements elicitation stage and not rigorously articulated by either web developers or the client. This paper reports on an investigation into this issue involving interviews with web developers who were engaged in commercial web development projects. The results from this qualitative research highlight that web developers commonly do not pay sufficient attention to NFRs. This arises due to uncertainty, lack of time, lack of knowledge in the importance of NFRs and partly because NFRs are not readily available and documented from previous similar projects. Web developers also do not elicit NFR at the same time and at the same level of details as Functional Requirements (FRs). This study highlights that exploring the domain at an early stage of development will help developers to better understand NFR. A lack of rigour in articulating NFRs may significantly impact on the development effectiveness and the quality of the resulting web system. An evaluation of NFRs may also lead to discovering new FRs.

Expert Estimation of Web-Development Projects: Are Software Professionals in Technical Roles More Optimistic Than Those in Non-Technical Roles?

Estimating the effort required to complete web-development projects involves input from people in both technical (e.g., programming), and non-technical (e.g., user interaction design) roles. This paper examines how the employees' role and type of competence may affect their estimation strategy and performance. An analysis of actual web-development project data and results from an experiment suggest that people with technical competence provided less realistic project effort estimates than those with less technical competence. This means that more knowledge about how to implement a requirement specification does not always lead to better estimation performance. We discuss, amongst others, two possible reasons for this observation: (1) Technical competence induces a bottom-up, construction-based estimation strategy, while lack of this competence induces a more “outside” view of the project, using a top-down estimation strategy. An “outside” view may encourage greater use of the history of previous projects and reduce the bias towards over-optimism. (2) Software professionals in technical roles perceive that they are evaluated as more skilled when providing low effort estimates. A consequence of our findings is that the choice of estimation strategy, estimation evaluation criteria and feedback are important aspects to consider when seeking to improve estimation accuracy.

Managing Web Development Projects

This article presents a comprehensive flexible workflow that is transferable to any Web project and can be easily modified to the needs of a specific environment. The article approaches the matter from both theoretical and hands-on perspectives: it presents fundamentals for building products based on user-centered design principles and guides readers through a real-life Web development project. Three major project milestones are covered—preliminary analysis; design and development; deployment and maintenance—with pertaining objectives, methodologies, and deliverables for each step. A complete redesign of the Stony Brook University Libraries Website illustrates how conceptual precepts (stages, strategies, methodologies) get implemented in an actual Web development cycle.

Investigating Web size metrics for early Web cost estimation

This paper’s aim is to bring light to this issue by identifying size metrics and cost drivers for early Web cost estimation based on current practices of several Web Companies worldwide. This is achieved using two surveys and a case study. The first survey (S1) used a search engine to obtain Web project quote forms employed by Web companies worldwide to provide initial quotes on Web development projects. The 133 Web project quote forms gathered data on size metrics, cost factors, contingency and possibly profit metrics. These metrics were organised into categories and ranked. Results indicated that the two most common size metrics used for Web cost estimation were “total number of Web pages” (70%) and “which features/functionality to be provided by the application” (66%). The results of S1 were then validated by a mature Web company that has more than 12 years of experience in Web development and a portfolio of more than 50 Web applications. The analysis was conducted using an interview. Finally, once the case study was finished, a second validation was conducted using a survey (S2) involving local New Zealand Web companies. The results of both validations were used to prepare Web project data entry forms to gather data on Web projects worldwide. After gathering data on 67 real Web projects worldwide, multivariate regression applied to the data confirmed that the number of Web pages and features/functionality provided by the application to be developed were the two most influential effort predictors.

Which Web development tool is right for you?

Before selecting your next project's Web development tool, you need to know which functions the tool must perform and which tool can best accomplish those functions. The article might not settle dogmatic developer arguments, but it offers objectivity and technical detail to help you assess the strengths, weaknesses, and appropriateness of some popular Web development tools. Selecting the right tool for Web development projects is becoming more important as enterprises move from static Web sites to more sophisticated interactive, secure, database-backed Web sites. The need to develop and deploy new Web applications in Internet time feeds the need to select the right tool for the project. In writing the article, each of the authors, as Web developers, began by picking their favorite tool and presenting its strengths and weaknesses. The tools presented were: Dreamweaver; Active Server Pages (ASP); Domino; Practical Extraction and Report Language (Perl). Then they challenged one another's lists of strengths and weaknesses. The sessions were sometimes passionate, but the authors managed to keep the discussions collegial and objective. The article reflects the best from those sessions.