Web applications such as web-based email, spreadsheets and form filling applications have become ubiquitous. However, many of the tasks that users try to accomplish with such web applications are highly repetitive. In...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781450300834
Web applications such as web-based email, spreadsheets and form filling applications have become ubiquitous. However, many of the tasks that users try to accomplish with such web applications are highly repetitive. In this paper we present the design of a system we have developed that learns and thereafter automates users' repetitive tasks in web applications. Our system infers users' intentions using an ensemble of decision trees. This enables it to handle branching, generalization and recurrent changes of relative and absolute positions. Our evaluation shows that our system converges to the correct solution after 3-8 iterations when the pattern is noise-free, and after 3-14 iterations for a noise level between 5-35%.
We present reform, a step toward write-once apply-anywhere user interface enhancements. The reform system envisions roles for both programmers and end users in enhancing existing websites to support new goals. First, ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781605582467
We present reform, a step toward write-once apply-anywhere user interface enhancements. The reform system envisions roles for both programmers and end users in enhancing existing websites to support new goals. First, a programmer authors a traditional masbup or browser extension, but they do not write a web scraper. Instead they use reform, which allows novice end users to attach the enhancement to their favorite sites with a scraping by-example interface. reform makes enhancements easier to program while also carrying the benefit that end users can apply the enhancements to any number of new websites. We present reform's architecture, user interface, interactive by-example extraction algorithm for novices, and evaluation, along with five example reform enabled enhancements.
Customization of Web-based applications is often considered a designer skill rather than an end-user need. However, there is an ongoing shift to end-user-centred technology, and even users with poor or no skill in Web...
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Customization of Web-based applications is often considered a designer skill rather than an end-user need. However, there is an ongoing shift to end-user-centred technology, and even users with poor or no skill in Web-based languages may feel the need to customize Web applications according to their preferences. Although Web authoring environments have an increasing number of features, the challenge of providing end-users with the ability to easily customize entire Web applications still remains unsolved. In this paper, we propose an intelligent approach to customizing Web-based applications. Customizations rules are automatically inferred by the system from changes that users supply as examples. They remain as long-term knowledge that can be applied to support future interactions, thus minimizing the amount of authoring that end-users need to do for this purpose. In order to better understand the implications of the user's modifications, they are analysed using the logical descriptions of the corresponding Web pages. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Nowadays, while the number of users of interactive software steadily increase, new applications and systems appear and provide further complexity. An example of such systems is represented by multi-device applications...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783540926979
Nowadays, while the number of users of interactive software steadily increase, new applications and systems appear and provide further complexity. An example of such systems is represented by multi-device applications, where the user can interact with the system through different platforms. However, providing end-users;with real capabilities to author user interfaces is still a problematic issue, which is beyond the ability of most end-users today. In this paper, we present an approach intended to enable users to modify Web interfaces easily, considering implicit user intents inferred from example interface modifications carried out by the user. We discuss the design issues involved in the implementation of such all intelligent approach, also reporting on some experimental results obtained from a User test.
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 s...
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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. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
This paper describes a report tool in which report formats are designated by “programming by example”-like operations. Users specify a sample layout of an example row of relational table data on a sheet, and select ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781581131345
This paper describes a report tool in which report formats are designated by “programming by example”-like operations. Users specify a sample layout of an example row of relational table data on a sheet, and select an iteration pattern of the sample layout. The tool extracts a set of general formatting rules from the sample layout. The rules consist of absolute positions of non-iterative data, relative positions of iterative data, the iteration pattern, and the increment of the iteration. The tool interprets the rules and generates new reports of the format for different table data.
The success of a programming system depends as much on the learnability of its language concepts as the usability of its interface. We argue that learnability can be significantly improved by integrating into the prog...
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The success of a programming system depends as much on the learnability of its language concepts as the usability of its interface. We argue that learnability can be significantly improved by integrating into the programming system learning supports that allow individuals to educate themselves about the syntax, semantics and applications of a language. Reflecting on our experience with developing novice programming systems, we identify infrastructural characteristics of such systems that can make the integration of learning supports practical. We focus on five core facilities: annotatability, scriptability monitorability, supplementability and constrainability. Our hope is that our examination of these technical facilities and their tradeoffs can inform the design of future programming systems that better address the educational needs of their users. (C) 2001 Academic Press.
An important function of an agent is to be "on the lookout" for bits of information that are interesting to its user, even if these items appear in the midst of a larger body of unstructured information. But...
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An important function of an agent is to be "on the lookout" for bits of information that are interesting to its user, even if these items appear in the midst of a larger body of unstructured information. But how to tell these agents which patterns are meaningful and what to do with the result? Especially when agents are used to recognize text, they are usually driven by parsers which require input in the form of textual grammar rules. Editing grammars is difficult and error-prone for end users. Grammar ["Grammars by example"] is the first direct manipulation interface designed to allow nonexpert users to define grammars interactively. The user presents concrete examples of text that he or she would like the agent to recognize. Rules are constructed by an iterative process, where Grammex heuristically parses the example, displays a set of hypotheses, and the user critiques the system's suggestions. Actions to take upon recognition are also demonstrated by example.
In most experiments with user interface agents to date, it has been necessary either to implement both the agent and the application from scratch, or to modify the code of an existing application to enable the necessa...
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In most experiments with user interface agents to date, it has been necessary either to implement both the agent and the application from scratch, or to modify the code of an existing application to enable the necessary communication. Instead, we would like to be able to 'attach' an agent to an existing application, while requiring only a minimum of advance planning on the part of the application developer. Commercial applications an increasingly supporting the use of 'application programmers' interfaces' and scripting languages as means of achieving external control of applications. Are these mechanisms sufficient for software agents to achieve communication with applications? This paper reports some preliminary experiments in developing agent software that works with existing, unmodified commercial applications and agents that work across multiple applications. We describe a programming by example agent, ScriptAgent, that uses a scripting language, Applescript, to record example procedures that are generalized by the agent. Another approach is examinability, where the application grants to the agent the right to examine internal data structures. We present another kind of learning agent, Tatlin, that compares successive application states to infer interface operations. Finally, we discuss broader systems issues such as parallelism, interface sharing between agent and application, and access to objects. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
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