Title: Tasklets: enabling end user programming of web widgets

Authors: Geetha Manjunath; M. Narasimha Murty; Dinkar Sitaram

Addresses: Hewlett Packard Labs and Indian Institute of Science, A7-506, Elita Promenade, JP Nagar 7th Phase, Bangalore-560078, India ' Computer Science and Automation Department, IISc, Bangalore-560012, India ' Computer Science Department, PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore-560085, India

Abstract: Mobile widgets are now popular and form a new paradigm of simplified web. Probably, the best experience of the web is when a user has a widget for every frequently executed task, and can execute it anytime, anywhere on any device. However, creating a widget today requires knowledge of programming, web technologies and protocols. In this paper, we propose a new method of web simplification that enables an end-user to create simple 'single-click' widgets for a personal task - without any programming. For this, we introduce a new concept called Tasklet to represent a user's personal interaction and model it using an instruction set over websites. These Tasklets can be programmed by demonstration and are executed using a Web Virtual Machine that virtualises changes to web pages. We believe our approach opens up a different perspective of WWW as not just 'web of pages' but 'web of tasks'.

Keywords: programming-by-demonstration; PBD; tasklets; Web Virtual Machine; WVM; end user programming; mobile widgets; web interaction language; web widgets; single-click widgets; personal tasks; instruction sets; websites; web of tasks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWET.2013.057228

International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 2013 Vol.8 No.3, pp.264 - 290

Published online: 31 Mar 2014 *

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