From choreographed to hybrid user interface mashups: A generic transformation approach

Abstract

Inter-widget communication (IWC) becomes an increasingly important topic in the field of user interface mashups. Recent research has focused on so-called choreographed IWC approaches that enable selforganization of the aggregated components based on their messaging capabilities. Though a manual configuration of communication paths is not required anymore, such solutions bear several problems related to awareness and control of the emerging message flow. This paper presents a systematic approach to tackle these problems in the context of hybrid user interface mashups. We show how users can be made aware of the emerged IWC configuration and how they can adjust it to their needs. A reference architecture for development of hybrid mashup platforms, is derived and one implementation based on the publish-subscribe choreography model is given. We report on the results of a first user study and outline directions for the future research.