Dynamically adaptable user interface generation for heterogeneous computing devices

Abstract

The increasing number of personal computing devices today available for accessing online services and information is making more difficult and time-consuming to develop and maintain several versions of user interfaces for a single application. Moreover, users want to access services they have subscribed, no matter the device they are using, always maintaining their preferences. These issues demand for new software development models, able to easily adapt the application to the client's execution context, while keeping the application logic separated from its presentation. In this work we present a framework that allows to specify the user's interaction with the application, in an independent manner with respect to the specific execution's context, by using an XML-based language. Starting from such a specification, the system will subsequently "render" the actual user's application interface on a specific execution environment, adapting it to the end user's device characteristics. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.