Using Constraints to Enable Flexible Access and Interaction on the Web

构建和维护网站比人们想象的要困难得多，而且浏览工具往往不够灵活。PI将研究使用约束，使作者能够捕获布局的基本属性，以允许灵活显示各种浏览器类型和输出媒体的方式。 查看器也将能够施加约束，例如所需的浏览器宽度或最小字体大小。 这些约束中的一些可能是要求，而另一些可能是偏好。 最终文档的外观实际上是作者和查看者之间协商的结果，协商是通过解决来自每个人的组合约束集来执行的。 调查的第二个领域将是使用约束来描述动态信息，例如用于过程可视化的动画;同样，最终的动画将是解决作者和观众的组合约束的结果。这项研究将由一组现实世界的例子驱动，这些例子来自一个正在进行的关于土地利用、交通和环境建模的跨学科研究项目。 除了具有内在利益之外，该应用程序还旨在成为使用复杂信息源的不同利益相关者利用互联网进一步公民参与的典型例子。 这个项目将产生一个质的飞跃的权力和灵活性的万维网的复杂和多样化的创作和查看任务。 Web作者应该能够专注于文档的语义内容，而不是视觉格式;查看者将能够从更广泛的设备和查看偏好中进行选择，同时仍然看到格式良好的信息

Constructing and maintaining web sites is more difficult than one would like, and the tools for browsing are often not flexible enough. The PI will investigate the use of constraints to enable authors to capture the essential properties of the layout, in a way that allows flexible display for a variety of browser types and output media. The viewer will be able to impose constraints as well, for example on desired browser width or minimum font size. Some of these constraints may be requirements, and others preferences. The appearance of the final document will in effect be the result of a negotiation between author and viewer that is carried out by solving the combined sets of constraints from each. A second area of investigation will be the use of constraints to describe dynamic information, for example animations for process visualization; again, the final animation will be the result of solving the combined constraints from author and viewer. This research will be driven by a set of real-world examples arising from an ongoing interdisciplinary research project on land use, transportation, and environmental modeling. In addition to being of intrinsic interest, this application is intended to be an archetypal example of using the internet to further civic participation by diverse stakeholders using complex information sources. This project will yield a qualitative leap in the power and flexibility of the world wide web for complex and varied authoring and viewing tasks. Web authors should be able to focus on the semantic content of their documents rather than on visual formatting; viewers will be able to choose from a wider range of devices and viewing preferences, while still seeing well-formatted information