Improving user experience by infusing web technologies into desktops

Abstract

Modern applications are able to adapt their architecture dynamically in order to tackle requirements, correctives and context changes. Such dynamism is often an echo of complexity and is not well supported by traditional client and user software stacks making complex the design, implementation and maintenance of the end user interface. Meanwhile, the web has seen the emergence of user interface technologies (e.g. HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript) widely adopted by developers to create highly flexible user interfaces. However, such clients are intrinsically bound to run on a web browser which is out of the control of the application. In this paper, we present ChameRIA, an application framework where a browser engine is reified as a component within the framework, thus allowing for better control over the rendering engine. We describe how we preserve a clear separation of concerns between the user interface and the application logic while maintaining coherence between them. We discuss how ChameRIA has been successfully used in two projects: a DRM document reader and a valve control application.