Reusing web application user-interface controls

Abstract

Highly interactive web applications that offer user experience and responsiveness of desktop applications are becoming increasingly popular. They are often composed out of visually distinctive user-interface (UI) elements that encapsulate a certain behavior - the so called UI controls. Similar controls are often used in a large number of web pages, and facilitating their reuse could offer considerable benefits. Unfortunately, because of a very short time-to-market, and a fast pace of technology development, preparing controls for reuse is usually not a primary concern. In this paper we present a semi-automatic method, and the accompanying tool, for extracting and reusing web controls. The developer selects the control and performs a series of interactions that represent the behavior he/she wishes to reuse. In the background, the execution is analyzed and all code and resources necessary for the stand-alone functioning of the control are extracted. Optionally, the user can immediately reuse the extracted control by automatically embedding it in an already existing page. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.