Framework and authoring tool for an extension of the UIML language

This paper presents a framework for the design of User Interfaces (UIs). By applying model transformations, the framework allows different UIs to be generated for different computing platforms. The tool presented in this work helps designers to build an abstract user interface which is later transformed into a concrete user interface by means of transformation techniques based on graph grammars. These techniques can be used to generate implementation code for several UI platforms including desktop applications, dynamic websites and mobile applications. The generated user interfaces are integrated with a multi-tier application by referencing external services and communicating with the application core over Web Service protocols. Our tool also allows the concrete interfaces to be enhanced before generating the final UI. The approach uses an adaptation of UIML (User Interface Markup Language). The adaptation focuses on defining a data model and a services model, and it also introduces a navigation model that allows data communication from one UI to another. The obtained UIs together with Web Services can conform complete applications instead of just being prototypes.