HyperTree: a structural approach to web authoring

The expansion of the World Wide Web (WWW) has created an increasing need for tools capable of supporting WWW authors in composing documents using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Currently, most web authors use tools which are basically ordinary text editors and have additional features to facilitate the easy and correct use of HTML tags. This approach places the burden on the web author to design and then create the entire web site in a top-down fashion, without any explicit support for the structural design of the site. In this paper we discuss an alternative structural approach to Web authoring, which is based on the use of the HyperTree hypermedia system as the central authoring tool. The advantages of using HyperTree are two-dimensional. Firstly, web authors can manage a web site as a single complete hypermedia database. For example, HyperTree provides facilities like the automatic creation of indices and the discovery of link inconsistencies. Additionally, it organizes the web pages in an easy to understand hierarchy without using any HTML directly. Secondly, web end-users can benefit from the use of HyperTree, since seeking information in structured web sites is generally less disorientating and develops fewer cognitive overheads. ©1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A grounded theory approach to modelling learnability of hypermedia authoring tools

One potential barrier to the development of educational hypermedia is the design of current hypermedia authoring tools (HATs) that unfortunately require higher knowledge and skills levels than possessed by most academics. Whilst the usability of hypermedia has been extensively researched, the usability of the tools required to build hypermedia has not. Learnability of HATs, an associated factor of usability, has been similarly neglected. Analysing contemporary approaches to the study of human computer interaction, this paper concludes that they do not support the kind of ‘theory building’ required to study and describe the learnability of HATs. Grounded theory (GT) is posited as an alternative approach, which if applied correctly can provide explanatory theory to inform HAT design. The paper describes the application of GT to two studies of the ease-of-learning of HATs. The first study uses quantitative and qualitative data to explore the experiences of 16 subjects learning to use HATs. In the second study, key HATs are demonstrated to a focus group of IT trainers to analyse their observations of users learning HATs. From these studies a causal model of learnability of HATs that is more detailed and complete than that offered by other contemporary theories of learnability was developed. The paper concludes that applying a GT approach can enhance HCI research through the development of explanatory, extensible and evolutionary theory to inform HAT design.     

An expertext system for collaborative authoring

This paper describes the principles behind and the design and implementation of a collaborative expertext authoring tool. The system presented aims to act as an intelligent assistant. It is based on a model of writing as a problem-solving activity, constrained by goal and audience, in which success depends on allowing the user to witch at will between the different phases of the task. Key to achieving this role is its ability to make explicit the implicit semantics of associative links in the hypertext. In order to guide the user, a knowledge base is provided by the system which an author can edit and which determines how the hypertext network is edited and traversed in the course of generating linear documents. In this way, minor modifications of the knowledge base can readily lead to significant reorganization of a document.     

An authoring technology for multidevice Web applications

The rapid proliferation of mobile computing devices has increased the complexity and cost of cross-platform application development. Multidevice authoring technology (MDAT) lets developers build a generic application common to multiple devices and customize it for specific devices. We developed MDAT an end-to-end development methodology and toolset, to reduce the complexity of creating interactive, form-based Web applications that execute on heterogeneous devices. Web application refers to conventional, servlet-based Web applications as well as portlet applications. A portlet is a Web application component that a Web portal server aggregates with other portlets.     

An augmented reality-based authoring tool for E-learning applications

In recent years, augmented reality technologies have been a subject of great interest among the scientific community. However, most studies have focused on hardware and software development without particular emphasis on the authoring phase. As a consequence, the authoring process of augmented reality applications is accomplished today through hard-coding of a specific application. This approach, however, requires operators. In the education applications, the hard-coding methods tend to be retained, despite remarkable technological developments in the industrial area. Textbooks are mainly used in educational systems and many educators are very passive about applying new materials. In this paper, we present an immersive authoring tool for education using augmented reality, where applications authorized by our tool interact with the user in order to increase the learner’s interest and reflect various desires of dynamic environment. Our authoring tool consists of a composing tool that can be used to create educational contents, a viewer that plays the content, and an engine to power the tool and viewer.     

OntoTrack: A semantic approach for ontology authoring

OntoTrackis an ontology authoring tool that combines a graph-based hierarchical layout and instant reasoning feedback within one single view. Currently OntoTrack can handle ontologies with an expressivity almost comparable to OWL Lite. The graphical representation provides an animated and zoomable subsumption graph with context sensitive features such as click-able miniature branches or selective detail views, together with drag-and-drop editing. Each editing step is instantly synchronised with an external reasoner in order to provide appropriate graphical feedback about relevant modeling consequences. A recent extention of OntoTrack provides an on-demand textual explanation for subsumption relationships between classes. This paper describes the key features of the current implementation and discusses future work, as well as some development issues. OntoTrack can be downloaded at http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ki/ontotrack/.     

A narrative metaphor to facilitate educational game authoring

In this paper we present WEEV (Writing Environment for Educational Video games), a methodology for educational point-and-click adventure game authoring. Our approach aims to allow educators to actively collaborate in the educational game development process, using a narrative-based representation. WEEV is based on a pragmatic reinterpretation of previous works on narrativity and video games, enhanced by the use of a novel visual language to represent the flow of the story or narrative. The WEEV methodology has been implemented into an actual tool based on the already established <e-Adventure> platform for educational games. This tool was improved with feedback gathered from formative evaluation, end-users testing (i.e. educators), and actual use in the development of an educational game. The system, still under development, presents some user-interaction problems along with a need for the educational effectiveness of the resulting games to be further analyzed. However, this paper highlights that, according to the qualitative results of evaluations, WEEV can indeed be successfully applied to simplify the game creation process and that by using representations of games that educators can understand, WEEV can help provide educational value to games.     

HM-Card: A new hypermedia authoring system

HM-Card is a novel hypermedia authoring and presentation system for the development and use of a diverse range of hypermedia applications on PCs/MS-Windows. It is the first tool to implement the HM data model, a recent approach to provide a sound theoretical basis for the sophisticated structuring and navigating of hypermedia databases. However, in this paper we only cover the HM data model as the underlying theoretical foundation for the actual authoring system HM-Card. HM-Card offers an extensive set of functional and structural authoring elements, such as animations, question/answer dialogs, transparent import of external documents, and execution of other MS-Windows applications. The user-interface of HM-Card is intended to support rapid prototyping and authoring of complex hypermedia applications. Finished HM-Card applications can be run as stand-alone systems, used in MS-Windows' OLE (Object Linking and Embedding concept) clients, as well as be integrated as modules into large-scale distributed hypermedia systems.     

An alternative approach to fuzzy control charts: Direct fuzzy approach

The major contribution of fuzzy set theory lies in its capability of representing vague data. Fuzzy logic offers a systematic base to deal with situations, which are ambiguous or not well defined. In the literature, there exist few papers on fuzzy control charts, which use defuzziffication methods in the early steps of their algorithms. The use of defuzziffication methods in the early steps of the algorithm makes it too similar to the classical analysis. Linguistic data in those works are transformed into numeric values before control limits are calculated. Thus both control limits as well as sample values become numeric. In this paper, some contributions to fuzzy control charts based on fuzzy transformation methods are made by the use of α-cut to provide the ability of determining the tightness of the inspection: the higher the value of α the tighter inspection. A new alternative approach “Direct Fuzzy Approach (DFA)” is also developed in this paper. In contrast to the existing fuzzy control charts, the proposed approach is quite different in the sense it does not require the use of the defuzziffication. This prevents the loss of information included by the samples. It directly compares the linguistic data in fuzzy space without making any transformation. We use some numeric examples to illustrate the performance of the method and interpret its results.     

An authoring tool for democratizing the creation of high-quality VR experiences

Virtual Reality - The contribution of this paper is toward three directions, namely (a) in identifying the advantages and disadvantages of the current state-of-the-art methods that allow laymen in...     

Contextualized design: Teaching critical approaches to web authoring through redesign projects

Web-based curricula should encourage students to make situated design choices. Rather than simply privileging technological imperatives, instruction should integrate technical proficiencies with rhetorical analysis, medium-specific concerns, and consideration of larger cultural contexts. Redesign projects offer rich opportunities for pursuing these pedagogical principles. Reflecting on student examples, this article explores redesign as a method for teaching critical engagement with technology and contextualized web authoring. Through research and revision of an existing web site, students employ rhetorical approaches and gain more complex understandings of web development. Redesign projects also slow the pace of web instruction and provide students opportunities to develop situated strategies and reflect critically on their authoring choices.     

ADSS: An approach to determining semantic similarity

Determining the semantic similarity is an important issue in the development of semantic search technology. In this paper, we propose an approach to determining the semantic similarity. This approach takes into consideration the similarity between two entities and their similarity reflected in context. Furthermore, the approach provides an efficient Tabu Search algorithm combined with multi-objective programming algorithm to improve the precision.     

Zodiac: A history-based interactive video authoring system

Easy-to-use audio/video authoring tools play a crucial role in moving multimedia software from research curiosity to mainstream applications. However, research in multimedia authoring systems has rarely been documented in the literature. This paper describes the design and implementation of an interactive video authoring system called Zodiac, which employs an innovative edit history abstraction to support several unique editing features not found in existing commercial and research video editing systems. Zodiac provides users a conceptually clean and semantically powerful branching history model of edit operations to organize the authoring process, and to navigate among versions of authored documents. In addition, by analyzing the edit history, Zodiac is able to reliably detect a composed video stream's shot and scene boundaries, which facilitates interactive video browsing. Zodiac also features a video object annotation capability that allows users to associate annotations to moving objects in a video sequence. The annotations themselves could be text, image, audio, or video. Zodiac is built on top of MMFS, a file system specifically designed for interactive multimedia development environments, and implements an internal buffer manager that supports transparent lossless compression/decompression. Shot/scene detection, video object annotation, and buffer management all exploit the edit history information for performance optimization.     

An approach to computational complexity: nondiscrete biomolecularcomputing

Discrete molecular computing devices based on digital device simulation and nondiscrete biomolecular computing devices based on the overall principles of information processing that use molecular-level mechanisms to create simple biomolecular systems are described. It is argued that discrete molecular computing only extends the choice of materials available in modern semiconductor device technology, but does not provide an opportunity to use physical mechanisms of information processing different from those available in conventional materials and devices. Nondiscrete biomolecular information processing devices effectively solve some problems with high computational complexity-for example, image processing operations such as contour enhancement and line extraction. The information processing potential of biomolecular systems is reviewed     

QUBiC: An adaptive approach to query-based recommendation

Search engine users often encounter the difficulty of phrasing the precise query that could lead to satisfactory search results. Query recommendation is considered an effective assistant in enhancing keyword-based queries in search engines and Web search software. In this paper, we present a Query-URL Bipartite based query reCommendation approach, called QUBiC. It utilizes the connectivity of a query-URL bipartite graph to recommend related queries and can significantly improve the accuracy and effectiveness of personalized query recommendation systems comparing with the conventional pairwise similarity based approach. The main contribution of the QUBiC approach is its three-phase framework for personalized query recommendations. The first phase is the preparation of queries and their search results returned by a search engine, which generates a historical query-URL bipartite collection. The second phase is the discovery of similar queries by extracting a query affinity graph from the bipartite graph, instead of operating on the original bipartite graph directly using biclique-based approach or graph clustering. The query affinity graph consists of only queries as its vertices and its edges are weighted according to a query-URL vector based similarity (dissimilarity) measure. The third phase is the ranking of similar queries. We devise a novel rank mechanism for ordering the related queries based on the merging distances of a hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC). By utilizing the query affinity graph and the HAC-based ranking, we are able to capture the propagation of similarity from query to query by inducing an implicit topical relatedness between queries. Furthermore, the flexibility of the HAC strategy makes it possible for users to interactively participate in the query recommendation process, and helps to bridge the gap between the determinacy of actual similarity values and the indeterminacy of users’ information needs, allowing the lists of related queries to be changed from user to user and query to query, thus adaptively recommending related queries on demand. Our experimental evaluation results show that the QUBiC approach is highly efficient and more effective compared to the conventional query recommendation systems, yielding about 13.3 % as the most improvement in terms of precision.     

A transportable authoring system

The technical transfer or CALCHEM material, a blend of laboratory and tutorial CAL in Chemistry, is commonly accomplished by movement from one computer system to another with little or no change (i.e. by transport) even though most of the programs are written in a “non-standard” language. A significant proportion of CAL activity genuinely needs special purpose CAL systems oriented towards the use of computers as an educational aid. Such systems provide facilities not immediately available in standard languages such as FORTRAN and BASIC. They can also aid the transfer of educational material.     

Providing end-user facilities to simplify ontology-driven web application authoring

Generally speaking, emerging web-based technologies are mostly intended for professional developers. They pay poor attention to users who have no programming abilities but need to customize software applications. At some point, such needs force end-users to act as designers in various aspects of software authoring and development. Every day, more new computing-related professionals attempt to create and modify existing applications in order to customize web-based artifacts that will help them carry out their daily tasks. In general they are domain experts rather than skilled software designers, and new authoring mechanisms are needed in order that they can accomplish their tasks properly. The work we present is an effort to supply end-users with easy mechanisms for authoring web-based applications. To complement this effort, we present a user study showing that it is possible to carry out a trade-off between expressiveness and ease of use in order to provide end-users with authoring facilities.     

Dynamic sprites: artistic authoring of interactive animations

Traditional methods for creating dynamic objects and characters from static drawings involve careful tweaking of animation curves and/or simulation parameters. Sprite sheets offer a more drawing‐centric solution, but they do not encode timing information or the logic that determines how objects should transition between poses and cannot generalize outside the given drawings. We present an approach for creating dynamic sprites that leverages sprite sheets while addressing these limitations. In our system, artists create a drawing, deform it to specify a small number of example poses, and indicate which poses can be interpolated. To make the object move, we design a procedural simulation to navigate the pose manifold in response to external or user‐controlled forces. Powerful artistic control is achieved by allowing the artist to specify both the pose manifold and how it is navigated, while physics is leveraged to provide timing and generality. We used our method to create sprites with a range of different dynamic properties. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.