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The purpose of this research is to facilitate the full potential of the web for the people with disabilities. People with disabilities may fail to make full use of the potentials offered by the web even if they have the right hardware (computer and assistive technologies) as well as access to the internet because of the lack of accessibility.

This research outlines the guidelines that provide the foundation for building an accessibility-aware framework approach, where people with disabilities can access most of the electronic contents based on their disability levels.

The framework helps web engineers in developing accessible web pages for all types of users. Disability profile examples (blindness, low vision, deafness and hard of hearing) were taken to determine the performance of the framework approach.

The validation and testing was carried out on the Sultan Qaboos University website. The framework approach could be further validated by performing the tests on various other public and private websites.

The guidelines can be used as a road map to overcome accessibility challenges during any web application development life cycle. A proper testing and evaluation is carried out on the framework to test its usability.

Although people with disabilities are perhaps the segment of society which are expected to gain the most from these technologies, they are facing barriers to access the contents of the web because of the way it is presented. This proposed framework could assist all the people with the disability of blindness and hearing impairment to have a better experience with the internet, making the technology more beneficial and usable to them. In the future, this approach can be extended for the people with other disabilities.

This research provides a pioneering concept for accessibility-aware framework approach. This approach could be utilized for developing accessible web applications and electronic services for people with disabilities. The proposed framework can be used as a road map to overcome accessibility challenges during any web application development life cycle.

The World Wide Web has undergone a rapid transition from the originally static hypertext to an ubiquitous hypermedia system. Today, the Web is not only used as a basis for distributed applications (Web applications), moreover it serves as a generic architecture for autonomous applications and services. Many research work has been done regarding the modeling and engineering process of Web applications and various platforms, frameworks and development kits exist for the efficient implementation of such systems. Concerning the modeling process, many of the published concepts try to merge traditional hypermedia modeling with techniques from the software engineering domain. Unfortunately, those concepts which capture all facets of the Web’s architecture become rather bulky and are eventually not applicable for a model‐driven Web application development. Moreover, there is a need for frameworks which address both, the modeling process and the implementation task and allow a model driven, semi‐automatic engineering process using CASE tools. This paper outlines the DaVinci Web Engineering Framework which supports the modeling as well as the semi‐automated implementation of Web applications. The DaVinci Architectural Layer specifies a persistent, hierarchical GUI model and a generic interaction scheme. This allows the elimination of the hypermedia paradigm, which turned out to be rather practical when building Web applications.

The World Wide Web (WWW) or the Web has been recognized as a powerful new information exchange channel in recent years. Today, an ever‐increasing number of businesses have set up Web sites to publicize their products and services. However, careful planning and preparation is needed to achieve the intended purpose of this new information exchange channel. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for effective commercial Web application development based on prior research in hypermedia and human‐computer interfaces. The framework regards Web application development as a special type of software development project. At the onset of the project, its social acceptability is investigated. Next, economic, technical, operational, and organizational viability are examined. For Web page design, both the functionality and usability of Web pages are thoroughly considered. The use of the framework should result in more effective commercial Web application development.

In this paper we present a model‐based approach for the development of physical hypermedia applications, i.e. those mobile (Web) applications in which physical and digital objects are related and explored using the hypermedia paradigm. We describe an extension of the Object‐Oriented Hypermedia Design Method (OOHDM) and present an improvement of the popular Model‐View‐Controller (MVC) metaphor to incorporate the concept of located object we illustrate the idea with a framework implementation using Jakarta Struts. We first review the state of the art of this kind of software systems, stressing the need of a systematic design and implementation approach we briefly present a light extension to the OOHDM design approach, incorporating physical objects and “walkable” links. We next present a Web application framework for deploying physical hypermedia software and show an example of use. We evaluate our approach and finally we discuss some further work we are pursuing.

Many libraries have a need to develop their own data-driven web applications, but their technical staff often lacks the required specialized training – which includes knowledge of SQL, a web application language like PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and jQuery. The web2py framework greatly reduces the learning curve for creating data-driven websites by focussing on three main goals: ease of use; rapid development; and security. web2py follows a strict MVC framework where the controls and web templates are all written in pure Python. No additional templating language is required. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

There are many frameworks available for creating database-driven web applications. The author had used ColdFusion for many years but wanted to move to a more complete web framework which was also open source.

After evaluating a number of Python frameworks, web2py was found to provide the best combination of functionality and ease of use. This paper focusses on the strengths of web2py and not the specifics of evaluating the different frameworks.

Librarians who feel that they do not have the skills to create data-driven websites in other frameworks might find that they can develop them in web2py. It is a good web application framework to start with, which might also provide a gateway to other frameworks.

web2py is an open source framework that could have great benefit for those who may have struggled to create database-driven websites in other frameworks or languages.

With the rapid spread of smartphones and tablets, it is becoming necessary for web developers to create responsive web pages which are visually appealing on devices of various sizes. However, building responsive UIs is a very challenging task, requiring deep knowledge of HTML and CSS. This paper aims to propose an approach to generate responsive web pages using SuperSQL, which is an extension of SQL that can format data retrieved from a database into various kinds of structured documents.

By incorporating the methodology of bootstrap, a grid-based framework for front-end development, the authors have made it possible to create responsive web pages from simple SuperSQL queries. In addition, by utilizing SuperSQL’s unique feature that can describe the structure of the output web page, the authors have proposed and implemented a mechanism to automatically optimize the web content’s size and position.

In the evaluation, the authors created some actual web applications with and without the use of SuperSQL and compared the code amount (number of lines). As a result, when using the proposed system, the amount of code was reduced to about 1/5. The authors also compared the layout generated by the proposed automatic layout generation mechanism with the responsive layout that was generated manually. As a result, the automatic layout generation mechanism created the same layout as the manually created layout 74.8 per cent of the time, and the user satisfaction level turned out to be 85.8 per cent.

The way to generate a responsive HTML by using a single SuperSQL query, and the mechanism for automatic responsive layout generation.

This study aims to develop a synthetic knowledge repository consisted of interrelated Web Ontology Language.

The ontology composes the main framework to categorize data of product life cycle with eco-design mode (PLC-EDM) and automatically infer specialists’ knowledge for data confirmation, eventually assisting the utilizations and generation of strategies toward decision-making

(i) utilization of a novel model with ontology mode for information reuse cross the different eco-design applications; (ii) generation of a sound platform toward life cycle evaluation; and (iii) implementation of the PLC-EDM model along the product generation process.

It cannot substitute an evaluation tool of life cycle. Certainly, this model does not predict the “target and range” and/or the depiction of the “utility module” that are basic activities in life cycle assessments as characterized through the international organization for standardization regulations.

As portion of this framework, a prototype Web application is presented which is applied to produce, reuse and verify knowledge of product life cycle.

By counting upon the ontology, the information conducted by the utilization is certainly semantically represented to promote the data sharing among various participants and tools. Besides, the data can be verified against possible faults by inferring over the ontology. Hence, a feasible way to a popular topic in the domain of eco-design applications extension in the industry.

The goals are: to lean on rigid modeling principles; and to promote the interoperability and diffusion of the ontology toward particular utilization demands.

Modern information systems are increasingly built on Web‐based and component‐based platforms. This raises the need for a service‐oriented infrastructure to simplify the management and procurement of corresponding components. Special focus lies on the deployment and distribution of such software artifacts within the context of the World Wide Web to promote their reuse and there‐fore to save development costs. At the same time, the integrity of the overall system must not be neglected. The use of components from third‐party vendors poses a potential security threat requiring additional care. Furthermore remains the issue of usage rights for the components and the data they provide. Flexible mechanisms can offer a huge range of different licensing models to be enforced on the runtime process. This paper presents an approach to deal with these challenges together with an implementation of a software system supporting component‐based Web portals.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit a decade after its conception the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style and analyzes its relevance to address current challenges from the Library and Information Science (LIS) discipline.

Conceptual aspects of REST are reviewed and a generic architecture to support REST is presented. The relevance of the architecture is demonstrated with the help of a case study based on the collection registration database of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

The authors argue that the “resources and representations” model of REST is a sustainable way for the management of web resources in a context of constant technological evolutions.

When making information resources available on the web, a resource-oriented publishing model can avoid the costs associated with the creation of multiple interfaces.

This paper re-examines the conceptual merits of REST and translates the architecture into actionable recommendations for institutions that publish resources.

The purpose of this paper is to describe Beehive, a new web application framework for designing and supporting synchronous collaborative learning.

Our web engineering approach integrates educational design expertise into a technology for building tools for collaborative learning activities. Beehive simplifies the development of the collaboration tools required to implement proven educational design strategies. The methodology consists of a framework model that has three abstraction layers: pedagogical techniques, patterns, and computer supported collaborative learning components.

Building eLearning systems that are informed by the educational research in design patterns, can lead to a better, richer and more flexible, infrastructure. Beehive's design enables teachers to design and use synchronous collaborative learning activities, either by using well tested research‐based learning designs or by creating their own.

The system will need to be used by a large number of teachers and learners before evaluation and usability tests are possible.

The paper presents an integrated solution application that enables teachers and students to design and carry out synchronous collaborative learning activities in a very simple manner.