On the challenges of building a web-based ubiquitous application platform

Abstract

People use an increasing number of consumer electronic devices to access their mobile apps. To enhance the applications' immersive user experience, these devices often expose APIs for accessing a wide array of sensors and domainspecific capabilities. Existing mobile application environments, however, only provide limited support for cross-device access of such APIs. To address this limitation, the Webinos platform was designed. Webinos is a virtualized Web-based application platform, aiming to support the collaboration of multiple devices within a single mobile application. In this paper we elaborate on the Webinos platform design. We discuss the encountered design challenges regarding portability, scalability, and privacy, and how these were mitigated.

Accessible user interface support for multi-device ubiquitous applications: architectural modifiability considerations

“…Despite their clear benefits, these runtimes still focus on supporting localized application execution rather than enabling cross-device user experiences (e.g., multi-screen applications, remote service invocation.) [10].…”

“…8 and 9, the presentation of this application's navigation component can be optimized based on various parameters such as the device's operating system, input modalities, screen size, screen orientation, available sensors, also based on the user's profile and preferences. Taking these contextual characteristics into account is necessary in order to ensure the adaptive usability requirements of a multi-device ubiquitous application, but, e.g., for meeting existing safety recommendations and regulations regarding user distraction by vehicular applications [10].…”

“…The evolution toward large-scale distributed service access and sensor usage is often not supported [10]. In result, the true immersive nature of ubiquitous web applications is mostly left behind.…”

Context-Driven Progressive Enhancement of Mobile Web Applications: A Multicriteria Decision-Making Approach

“…Thousands of different mobile devices are currently available, each with their specific characteristics and capabilities, ranging from various operating systems, to different screen sizes, interaction modalities, available APIs, etc. Consequently, the absence of a single mobile application platform makes it mainly the developer's responsibility to resolve fragmentation handling within their application's code [3].…”

Multi-device application middleware: leveraging the ubiquity of the Web with webinos

“…The evolution towards large-scale distributed service access and sensor usage is often not supported [16]. In result, the true immersive nature of ubiquitous web applications is mostly left behind.…”