APRON
This document contains sections on the following topics:
Introduction
Traditional adaptive techniques permit to adjust websites to the user profile with none (a.k.a. adaptive) or minimum (a.k.a adaptable) user intervention. But, these techniques do not preclude the need for a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach where users themselves can locally tune websites for their own purposes. To denote this scenario, the term "modding" is borrowed from hardware and computer-game practices to denote the practice of locally changing an existing website by the layman for the layman's purposes.
 
Problem Statement
Current scripting suffers from a tight coupling with the website. If the page changes, all the scripting can fall apart. The problem is that websites are reckoned to evolve frequently, and this can jeopardize all the scripting efforts.
 
Contribution
This work enriches websites with a "modding interface" in an attempt to decouple layman's script from website upgrades. From the website viewpoint, this interface ensures safe scripting, i.e. scripts that do not break the page. From a scripter perspective, this interface limits tuning but increases change resilience.
 
Publications
Layman Tuning of Websites: Facing Change Resilience (Poster)
Oscar Díaz, Cristóbal Arellano and Jon Iturrioz.
In 17th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2008). Beijing, China. 2008.

Electronic version available online here.
 
Download
APRON development stage - Download here.
APRON execution stage - Download here.
Del.icio.us example - Download here.
Del.icio.us example standalone Works only in Firefox!!! - Enter here. Modding Interface Example Script

Onekin

Copyright Onekin Research Group. All rights reserved.
Revised: Jun 23th, 2008.

Report questions/problems: Cristóbal Arellano