Models and Tools for Distributed User Interface Development

Sammanfattning: The way we interact with computers and computer systems are constantly changing as technology evolves. A current trend is that users interact with multiple andinterconnected devices on a daily basis. They are beginning to request ways and means of dividing and spreading their applications acrossthese devices.Distributed user interfaces (DUIs) have been proposed as a means ofdistributing programs over multiple interconnected devices through theuser interface (UI). DUIs represent a fundamental change foruser-interface design, enabling new ways of developing distributedsystems that, for instance, support runtime reorganization ofUIs. However developing DUIs presents a far more complex task compared totraditional UI development, due to the inherent complexity thatarises from combining UI development with distributed systems. Thetraditional approach in software engineering and computer science toovercoming complexity is to build tools and frameworks, to allowfor good code reuse and higher level of abstraction for applicationprogramers.Conventional GUI programming tools and frameworks are not developedto support DUIs specifically. In this thesis we explore key issues increating new programming tools and frameworks (APIs) for DUI-based UIdevelopment. We also present and discuss the DUI framework Marve,which adds DUI support to Java Swing.A unique feature of Marve is that it is designedfor industrial-scale development, extending a standard UIframework. The framework has beentested and evaluated in a project where an operator control stationsystem was developed.