Designing Web-Based Hypermedia Systems

Author(s):  
Michael Lang

Although its conceptual origins can be traced back a few decades (Bush, 1945), it is only recently that hypermedia has become popularized, principally through its ubiquitous incarnation as the World Wide Web (WWW). In its earlier forms, the Web could only properly be regarded a primitive, constrained hypermedia implementation (Bieber & Vitali, 1997). Through the emergence in recent years of standards such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML), XLink, Document Object Model (DOM), Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) and WebDAV, as well as additional functionality provided by the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Java, plug-ins and middleware applications, the Web is now moving closer to an idealized hypermedia environment. Of course, not all hypermedia systems are Web based, nor can all Web-based systems be classified as hypermedia (see Figure 1). See the terms and definitions at the end of this article for clarification of intended meanings. The focus here shall be on hypermedia systems that are delivered and used via the platform of the WWW; that is, Web-based hypermedia systems.

Author(s):  
Adélia Gouveia ◽  
Jorge Cardoso

The World Wide Web (WWW) emerged in 1989, developed by Tim Berners-Lee who proposed to build a system for sharing information among physicists of the CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), the world’s largest particle physics laboratory. Currently, the WWW is primarily composed of documents written in HTML (hyper text markup language), a language that is useful for visual presentation (Cardoso & Sheth, 2005). HTML is a set of “markup” symbols contained in a Web page intended for display on a Web browser. Most of the information on the Web is designed only for human consumption. Humans can read Web pages and understand them, but their inherent meaning is not shown in a way that allows their interpretation by computers (Cardoso & Sheth, 2006). Since the visual Web does not allow computers to understand the meaning of Web pages (Cardoso, 2007), the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) started to work on a concept of the Semantic Web with the objective of developing approaches and solutions for data integration and interoperability purpose. The goal was to develop ways to allow computers to understand Web information. The aim of this chapter is to present the Web ontology language (OWL) which can be used to develop Semantic Web applications that understand information and data on the Web. This language was proposed by the W3C and was designed for publishing, sharing data and automating data understood by computers using ontologies. To fully comprehend OWL we need first to study its origin and the basic blocks of the language. Therefore, we will start by briefly introducing XML (extensible markup language), RDF (resource description framework), and RDF Schema (RDFS). These concepts are important since OWL is written in XML and is an extension of RDF and RDFS.


Last decade observed the exponential growth of World Wide Web (WWW) due to the growing trend of migration of each & every information on the web. In order to design the User Interface (UI) of web based application, a number of frameworks are used such as Bootstrap, WordPress, and Joomla etc. But sometimes the use of Dynamic HyperText Markup Language (DHTML) to design from scratch is preferred over frameworks. In this paper, research was carried out to compare the performance with respect to UI on different parameters of web-portals designed using frameworks viz-a-viz use of DHTML technology. Performance was compared using the tools, GTMetrix and Pingdom. Results can be used to facilitate the decision to select the framework or not, while designing the UI of webpages.


2009 ◽  
pp. 2389-2412
Author(s):  
Ying Liang

Web-based information systems (WBIS) aim to support e-business using IT, the World Wide Web, and the Internet. This chapter focuses on the Web site part of WBIS and argues why an easy-to-use and interactive Web site is critical to the success of WBIS. A dialogue act modeling approach is presented for capturing and specifying user needs for easy-to-use Web site of WBIS by WBIS analysis; for example, what users want to see on the computer screen and in which way they want to work with the system interactively. It calls such needs communicational requirements, in addition to functional and nonfunctional requirements, and builds a dialogue act model to specify them. The author hopes that development of the Web site of WBIS will be considered not only an issue in WBIS design but also an issue in WBIS analysis in WBIS development.


Author(s):  
Ying Liang

Web-based information systems (WBIS) aim to support e-business using IT, the World Wide Web, and the Internet. This chapter focuses on the Web site part of WBIS and argues why an easy-to-use and interactive Web site is critical to the success of WBIS. A dialogue act modeling approach is presented for capturing and specifying user needs for easy-to-use Web site of WBIS by WBIS analysis; for example, what users want to see on the computer screen and in which way they want to work with the system interactively. It calls such needs communicational requirements, in addition to functional and nonfunctional requirements, and builds a dialogue act model to specify them. The author hopes that development of the Web site of WBIS will be considered not only an issue in WBIS design but also an issue in WBIS analysis in WBIS development.


Author(s):  
Curtis J. Bonk ◽  
Jack A. Cummings ◽  
Norika Hara ◽  
Robert B. Fischler ◽  
Sun Myung Lee

Owston (1997, p. 27) pointed out that, “Nothing before has captured the imagination and interests of educators simultaneously around the globe more than the World Wide Web.” Other scholars claim that the Web is converging with other technologies to dramatically alter most conceptions of the teaching and learning process (Bonk & Cunningham, 1998; Duffy, Dueber, & Hawley, 1998; Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, & Turoff, 1995). From every corner of one’s instruction there lurk pedagogical opportunities—new resources, partners, courses, and markets—to employ the World Wide Web as an instructional device. Nevertheless, teaching on the Web is not a simple decision since most instructors typically lack vital information about the effects of various Web tools and approaches on student learning. Of course, the dearth of such information negatively impacts the extent faculty are willing to embed Web-based learning components in their classes. What Web-related decisions do college instructors face? Dozens. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands! There are decisions about the class size, forms of assessments, amount and type of feedback, location of students, and the particular Web courseware system used. Whereas some instructors will want to start using the Web with minor adaptations to their teaching, others will feel comfortable taking extensive risks in building entire courses or programs on the Web. Where you fall in terms of your comfort level as an instructor or student will likely shift in the next few years as Web courseware stabilizes and is more widely accepted in teaching. Of course, significant changes in the Web-based instruction will require advancements in both pedagogy and technology (Bonk & Dennen, 1999). Detailed below is a ten level Web integration continuum of the pedagogical choices faculty must consider in developing Web-based course components.


1994 ◽  
Vol 05 (05) ◽  
pp. 805-809 ◽  
Author(s):  
SALIM G. ANSARI ◽  
PAOLO GIOMMI ◽  
ALBERTO MICOL

On 3rd November, 1993, ESIS announced its Homepage on the World Wide Web (WWW) to the user community. Ever since then, ESIS has steadily increased its Web support to the astronomical community to include a bibliographic service, the ESIS catalogue documentation and the ESIS Data Browser. More functionality will be added in the near future. All these services share a common ESIS structure that is used by other ESIS user paradigms such as the ESIS Graphical User Interface (Giommi and Ansari, 1993), and the ESIS Command Line Interface. A forms-based paradigm, each ESIS-Web application interfaces to the hypertext transfer protocol (http) translating queries from/to the hypertext markup language (html) format understood by the NCSA Mosaic interface. In this paper, we discuss the ESIS system and show how each ESIS service works on the World Wide Web client.


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