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，而且浏览工具往往不够灵活。 PI 将研究约束的使用，使作者能够捕获布局的基本属性，从而允许灵活显示各种浏览器类型和输出媒体。 查看者还能够施加限制，例如所需的浏览器宽度或最小字体大小。 其中一些约束可能是要求，而另一些则是偏好。 最终文档的外观实际上是作者和查看者之间通过解决各自的组合约束集来进行协商的结果。 第二个研究领域是使用约束来描述动态信息，例如过程可视化的动画；同样，最终的动画将是解决作者和观众的综合约束的结果。这项研究将由一系列来自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的现实例子来推动。 除了具有内在兴趣之外，该应用程序还旨在成为利用互联网促进不同利益相关者利用复杂信息源进一步公民参与的典型示例。 该项目将在万维网处理复杂多样的创作和查看任务的能力和灵活性方面产生质的飞跃。 网络作者应该能够关注文档的语义内容，而不是视觉格式；观众将能够从更广泛的设备和观看偏好中进行选择，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