System Evaluation

Through the previous chapters and the demo of this chapter, we should be able to clearly understand the contribution of this thesis. In addition to cross-platform and easy maintenance features, we can through the following table to compare the differences with other platforms. As we use the widget engine Apache Shindig is implemented by server-side, so the action to render Widget does not use the mobile device's resources, in other word, we can save the mobile CPU's utility. In addition, in such a situation, if the Widgets have used External API, we can use some way to make offline information be presented in the future. In addition, widget engine is

implemented by server-side can has the portable ability; we can get our information from anywhere, the server will store what widget we use and what data we store.

Although, igoogle itself has many similar characteristics with us, but it has one of the most deadly shortcoming is the lack of off-line use, this shortcoming is not conducive to mobile device; that is our greatest intention quoted Google gears mechanism.

Window

mobile Widget Yahoo! Go Opera

Widget igoogle Our System

Table 5-1 Comparison table of different platform

5.5 Usability test

When this system is completed, we have considered the works of “Jakob Nielsen” [32]

and do a Usability test for users to see if our system can be accepted by general users or not. In addition, the content of these questions is referred to Benbunan-Fich’s thesis [31]. The thesis referred to what the establishment of commercial web content

should be aware. Therefore, we use these issues as our guideline. From the result of Figure 5.2, except some users were dissatisfied for the repetitive message to present on-line status, on the whole, ours system was favorably reviewed.

Table 5-2 Means and standard deviations from the “Usability Score”

Chapter 6 Conclusion and Future Work

In our system, we create a Widget engine environment to achieve cross-platform &

cross-browser feature and let the applications allow off-line operation. And we provide Sync service to maintain mobility property. Moreover, we add Mobilize service to enforce the possibility of off-line use. But, this system is just proposed a prototype, and does not complete all of the widget functions that we can use, such as:

The widget includes Google Translate API can [30] not be used in offline state, because this kind of API is another type of web service, unless we can complete the same function in client-side, or this service is difficult to use in our system. But there is a way to try in the future is that we just store the content we have been indexed (or searched), then rewrite the API. It still provides the original service in on-line state.

But when offline, we can use some simple way corresponds to the on-line behavior.

For example: when we use Google Translate API in off-line state, the web application will first check whether this has been the search terms, and the existence of this record stored in the local database. If do so, the web application can be just shown the result from local machine. The same way are equally available in the Google Maps API, etc.

A difficulty of development we encountered is that our system is used by JavaScript to write the program, although there is “Script Debugger for Windows” or “JavaScript debugger for Firefox” as a debug tool. However, when it executes on mobile device or desktop sometimes still be different or the debugger cannot determine the behavior of errors. So, we really need a good debug tool for mobile environment to develop the off-line web application. It will be easier for engineer to develop such applications as

we made. And some problems like browser cache, etc. We also need some good mechanism to remind the system developers the related errors may occur.

In addition to the above mentioned that we need to reinforce the integrity of the widget. Google in this year (2010) has also been announced that it won’t develop Google gears in the future. The reason is the HTML5 coming of the future. The spec for HTML5 have offline storage and will be implemented the related issues including in the new generation of browser. However, as HTML5 is not universal, and there is no mobile browser that supports. Therefore, the implementation of our system still uses Google Gears to finish off-line operation. Although the future HTML5 will be replaced Google Gears. But, the overall structure and operation of the system won’t be compared too far with us. The implementation of the system and the problems we faced also can be a reference to create the new off-line web application.

Reference and Bibliography

[1] Web applications, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/Main_Page [2] Java ME, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://java.sun.com/javame/technology/index.jsp [3] Windows Mobile, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/help/default.mspx [4] Symbian, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://developer.symbian.org/

[5] BREW, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://brew.qualcomm.com/brew/en/developer/overview.html [6] Mobile Linux, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/mobile-linux/mobile_p latform_guidelines_summary

[7] Android, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://code.google.com/intl/zh-TW/events/io/2010/sessions/beginners-guide-an droid.html

[8] Android market, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://www.android.com/market/#app=com.epocrates [9] Iphone App, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://developer.apple.com/programs/iphone/develop.html [10] Windows Mobile Widgets, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd721906.aspx

[11] Yahoo! GO, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://mobile.yahoo.com/go [12] JavaScript & AJAX, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/script.html

[13] XML, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/

[14] Widgets, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/

[15] Google Gears, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://gears.google.com/

[16] RSS, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html [17] Yahoo Widget, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://widgets.yahoo.com/

[18] Dynamic Web Content, "The Information Revolution", J. R. Okin. ISBN 0976385740. Ed. Ironbound Press, 2005. 350 pp

[19] Same Origin Policy, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://taossa.com/index.php/2007/02/08/same-origin-policy/

[20] Html 5, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-html5-20100304/

[21] Chi-Yang Tsai, Shyan-Ming Yuan, “Web Page Tailoring Tool for Mobile Devices”, 國立交通大學，電資學院碩士班論文，民國 95 年 6 月 [22] Dom tree, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://www.w3.org/DOM/

[23] Muffin server, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://muffin.doit.org/

[24] Silverlight, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://www.silverlight.net/

[25] Sun JavaFX, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://java.sun.com/javafx/

[26] SiteShoter, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/web_site_screenshot.html

[27] D. Crockford. The application/json media type for javascript object notation (JSON). Request for Comments 4627, The Internet Society, July 2006.

[28] Firebug, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from http://getfirebug.com/whatisfirebug [29] Tung-Hing Chow, Shyan-Ming Yuan, “An Offline Browsing Mechanism for

Mobile Devices”, 國立交通大學，電資學院碩士班論文，民國 98 年 6 月

[30] Google Translate API, Retrieved July 16, 2010, from

http://code.google.com/intl/zh-TW/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/

[31] Benbunan-Fich, R. "Using protocol analysis to evaluate the usability of a commercial Web site." Information & Management (39) 2001, pp 151-163.

[32] Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1995

Appendix A: