Extracting, presenting and browsing of web social information

Abstract

We address the problem that current Web applications present mainly the content-centric information, but lack cues and browsing mechanisms for online social information. After summarizing key concepts of Web social information and analyzing characteristics of various visualization methods, we propose a set of general tools for rapid development social interfaces for interactive Web applications, including a simple but flexible programming language VisMap designed for Web application developers and maintainers to automate the process of extracting social information from the content-centric information, and a set of visualization methods encapsulated as VisModules for social information presentation and browsing. The interface of VisModules to VisMap programs are called visual scheme, which maps key concepts of social information to graphical elements of visual metaphors, and shields programmers from complex details of 3D graphics. Our goal of generalization is in contrast to previous works of creating specific visual metaphor for certain Web interaction. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.