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We propose a method of a virtual Web browser that enables safer Web-browsing environment. The method uses an HTML5 compliant Web browser as client environment and JavaScript-related technologies in server environment. The idea of the method is that (1) the server works as the HTTP/WebSocket proxy, (2) it transforms requested Web pages from clients into equivalent images, and (3) it returns the images to the clients, thereby making Web pages that contain malicious software (e.g., viruses, worms, and so on) harmless and protecting the clients against being infected with such malware. The virtual Web browser also supports other features such as keyboard events, mouse events, Cookies, and so on. The evaluation shows that the method provides a safer way of browsing Web pages without increasing network traffic. Finally, we conclude that the method is useful to realize safer Web-browsing environment.

The World Wide Web has led to a new kind of software, web systems, which are based on web technologies. Just like software in other domains, web systems have evolution challenges. This chapter discusses evolution of web systems on three dimensions: architecture, (conceptual) design, and technology. For each of these dimensions we introduce the state-of-the-art in the techniques and tools that are currently available. In order to place current evolution techniques into context, we also provide a survey of the different kinds of web systems as they have emerged, tracing the most important achievements of web systems evolution research from static web sites over dynamic web applications and web services to Ajax-based Rich Internet Applications.

We have created a web-based system for multi-user collaborative interactive visualization of large data sets (on the order of terabytes) that allows users in different locations to simultaneously and collectively perform visualizations over the Internet. By leveraging an asynchronous java and XML (AJAX) web development pattern via the Google Web Toolkit (http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/), we are able to provide remote users a web portal to the University of Minnesota’s Laboratory for Computational Sciences and Engineering’s large-scale interactive visualization system that provides high resolution visualizations to the order of 15 million pixels. Our web application, known as WebViz (for Web-based Visualization System), provides visualization services “in the cloud” and is accessible via a range of devices including netbooks, smartphones, and other web-and JavaScript-enabled mobile devices. This paper will detail the history of the project as well as the current version of WebViz including a discussion of its implementation and system architecture. We will also discuss features, future goals, and our plans for increasing scalability of the system, which includes a discussion of the benefits potentially, afforded us by a migration of server-side components to the Google Application Engine (http://code.google.com/appengine/).

This paper presents studies of modeling operation of Web service containing Web and database servers. The first part of the paper describes the method to obtain parameters of real servers. Additionally, detailed description of experiments and the results are presented. In the second part of the paper the Web and database servers models are introduced. In both of the presented models it is taken into account that the server processors are multi-core. Presented models can be used to evaluate proposed Web systems via simulation experiments.

This paper outlines the potential problem of information leakage between programs running inside a web browser. A program to which user’s information is voluntarily provided can leak it to other malicious programs; likewise, a program may steal information from another program. A number of ways through which such leakage may take place using the operating system’s inter process communication mechanism is listed. The proposed solution includes a ’controller’ that monitors all processes running in a browser for their access to the kernel’s services through system calls, intercepts and thwarts an attempt at communication with another process.

Exploratory data analysis can be used to uncover several hidden but interesting patterns that may not be obvious otherwise. Spatio-temporal data offer numerous challenges for such analyses and several approaches have been proposed to address them. In this paper, we present an interactive web based system that can visualize large spatio-temporal data set on a standard web browser. This approach is applied to visualize a large spatio-temporal data set with 2.5 million records and several key patterns of the data are revealed in this process.

Current web browsers are complex, have enormous trusted computing bases, and provide attackers with easy access to computer systems. This makes web browser security a difficult issue that increases in importance as more and more applications move to the web. Our approach for this challenge is to design and build a correct-by-construction web browser, called IBOS, that consists of multiple concurrent components, with a small required trusted computing base. We give a formal specification of the design of this secure-by-construction web browser in rewriting logic. We use formal verification of that specification to prove the desired security properties of the IBOS design, including the address bar correctness and the same-origin policy.

The web browser has become one of the most important and frequently used computer programs that people use. The web browser has effectively assumed the role of an operating system. Yet there have been predictions that the web browser and the Web itself will effectively die. More specifically, it has been argued that the web browser will lose the battle against native, custom built web apps. In this paper we predict that the web browser may indeed disappear but for entirely different reasons. We present a concept and implementation of a cloud browser that moves the users’ browser sessions and the user interface chrome of the web browser to the cloud. The benefits of a cloud browser are especially valuable to those people who use a plethora of web-connected devices, allowing the same web pages and applications to be used flexibly – and even simultaneously – from different devices.

We define an abstract standards-compliant web browser model. The model focuses on those parts of the browser behaviour which are most relevant for the deployment and execution of web applications, such as interaction with a scripting language (here, ECMAScript), cookies, and asynchronous behaviour of the network layer, while hiding other aspects, such as page navigation and presentational issues. We use a multi-agent Abstract State Machine as our formal model, showing how the browser behaviour can be partitioned into a number of distinct components, and specifying precisely their interactions. The specification can also be used as basis to prove consistency properties of common frameworks for web applications.

In this position paper, we propose the concept of Elastic HTML5, which enables web applications to offload workload using cloud-based web workers and cloud-based storage for mobile devices. Elastic HTML5 is a collection of software components and functions in for a web runtime agent (e.g., web browser); this includes components and methods to create and manage web workers in the cloud so as to augment the computation functionality of a browser-based application running on a device. Elastic HTML5 also includes the components and methods to create and manage elastic storage between the main thread of a web application and its web workers. With these functions, a web application can run in elastic manner such that, whenever necessary, the mobile device can obtain resources from the cloud, including computation and storage, and when necessary, it can run offline at the device side completely.

The chief task of software test based on model, which is an efficient way for testing the Web application, is building an abstract model of the Web application waiting for test. One problem with current Web application test technologies is the lack of tools for modeling the whole Web software. Specifically, there is the lack of support for describing Web application from the view of action and function. This paper is concerned with providing the support for development and test of Web application. The presented novel model, named CBTOWADM, abstracts the Web application as a tree based on its system function and business process. CBTOWADM not only simplifies the design and development of the Web application, but also acts as the model middleware for software test. We describe the basic model definition and the application in software test of CBTOWADM.

Asynchronous invocations are needed in the context of distributed object frameworks to prevent clients from blocking during remote invocations. Popular Web Service frameworks offer only synchronous invocations (over HTTP). When a client with asynchronous invocation of Web Service is not supported, client developers have to build asynchronous invocations on top of the synchronous invocation facility. But this is tedious, error-prone, and might result in different remote invocation styles used within the same application. Current autonomic computing application uses synchronous Web Service to manage their resources. In this paper we propose autonomic system by using Design Patterns for Web Service, which is amalgamation of fire and forget, chain of responsibility and Case based reasoning Design Patterns. The system will provide synchronous and asynchronous paradigm based on demand of client. By using our proposed Adaptive Design Pattern for invocation of Web Services previous Web Service systems will update their resources based on client request. Our proposed system satisfies the properties of autonomic system. The pattern is described using a java-like notation for the classes and interfaces. A simple UML class and Sequence diagrams are depicted.

With the development of web technologies and the increasing size of web sites, the structure of the web application becomes more complicated, and it becomes a difficult task to model and analyze it. Web navigation, which is useful for clarifying requirements and specifying implementation behavior, can be helpful in the analysis of web application. The structure of a web application can be checked based on the web navigation model. In this paper, we present a method to model and check a web application based on web navigation. We first model the web navigation by statechart, and then translate the statechart model to Promela description (the input language of SPIN), meanwhile, the properties to be checked are specified by LTL (Lineal Temporal Logic); finally the web navigation can be checked by SPIN. A case study demonstrates the advantages of our method.

Web applications can only be accessed through dedicated client systems called Web browsers. The behaviors of Web browser’s interactions influence the functionalities and navigation of Web applications. In the past, on stage of Web application design and modeling, Web browsers’ interactions are not taken into account. Therefore, in the later implementation phase, it only relies on the developer’s experience. This gives a challenge to the follow-up testing. In this paper, starting from a conventional page navigation graph of a Web application, we propose an approach to transform page navigation graph into FSM-BI (FSM with Web browser’s interactions), and further, design and implement a prototype tool, called AGT4W (Automatic Generating Tests for Web Applications). Based on the FSM-BI, the automated generation of test cases was implemented. Additionally, the detailed process and implementation methods were give out. Firstly, we use ArgoUML to model a traditional Web page navigation graph and import it as a XMI file. Secondly, we transform the XMI file into FSM-BI, so we got a FSM model. Thirdly, based on FSM model, we transform FSM model into FSM Test-Tree. Finally, automatic generation of test cases was carried out.

Typical web applications employ a multi-tier architecture. Traditionally, a pool of physical servers is used to host web applications. To handle the dynamic workloads which characterize today’s web applications, several authors have proposed schemes for dynamic resource provisioning. Such schemes add more servers during peak loads and remove servers during other times. Advances in cloud computing technologies have created new perspectives for real-time dynamic provisioning. The elastic nature of cloud computing systems allows system administrators to quickly scale resources to respond to unexpected load changes. In such systems, dynamic provisioning is not only concerned with meeting Service Level agreements, but also must take into account monetary costs. In this paper, we exploit performance modeling in the context of cloud computing (Amazon EC2). Having such performance models enables understanding the trade-off between performance and cost, a cornerstone in developing dynamic provisioning performance management schemes.

Future Internet Architecture (FIA) is being defined by a common research effort of different EU projects to advance a shared vision for harmonized European-scale technology platforms. In this paper we describe the ongoing work of a non-plugin web browser-based Service Delivery Platform for personal and mobile clients which enables easy service creation and deployment using features of FIA. Services are implemented as HTML5 web pages and standard web elements (servers, proxies and web browser) are used to forge a SDP which enables provision of composite services to the end-user.

Manufacturing companies are facing the challenge to cope with individualized process chains in spite of high market dynamics. In order to achieve high process efficiency by realizing logistic targets, two main leverages can be identified: adjustment of production structure and configuration of production control. The production structure represents the layout and arrangement of machines, the organization of production processes as well as the information and material flow. Once installed, it is often set for a long period of time and therefore represents the basis for further elements in a production environment such as production control. The dilemma of production planning and control is to achieve high process efficiency, low throughput times and good planning confidence while customers demand short product-lifecycles, an increasing product variety and a growing individualization of products. Within this paper, a simulation-based study about the effects of production structure and production control to logistical targets is introduced.

We present a Sensor Web browser with an efficient spatio-temporal data loading mechanism as a client-side application in GeoCENS project. The same way the World Wide Web needs a web browser to load and display web pages, the World Wide Sensor Web needs a Sensor Web browser to access distributed and heterogeneous sensor networks. However, most existing Sensor Web browsers are just mashups of sensor locations and base maps that do not consider the scalability issues regarding transmitting large amount of sensor readings over the Internet. While caching is an effective solution to alleviate transmission latency and bandwidth problems, a method for efficiently loading spatio-temporal sensor data from Sensor Web servers is currently missing. Therefore, we present LOST-Tree, a new spatio-temporal structure, intended to be the sensor data loading component on a Sensor Web browser. By applying LOST-Tree, redundant transmissions are avoided and consequently enables efficient loading with cached sensor data.

A solution of asynchronous Web Services is proposed through the analysis of Web Services' concept and architecture. And on this basis, some further discussions on how to implement the WebLogic JMS-based Asynchronous Web Services with several specific examples. It is proved that asynchronous Web Services can improve performance of application in particular case, but it is not always applicable. In practice, appropriate Web Services should be adopted according to actual situation.

Complexity of Web applications and demand for their reliability have greatly increased over recent years as they have begun to be used in wide variety of areas, including control systems and enterprise applications. Due to short delivery times and changing requirements quality assurance of Web applications is usually an informal process. Meanwhile, formal methods have been proven to be reliable means for the specification, verification, and testing of systems. In this paper, we present an approach for automatic modelling of an existing web application using finite state machines. The paper describes a method to generate an application model by fully automatic dynamic analysis of any given existing web application combined with recorded user browsing sessions analysis. Method supports both applications with transitions between web pages and single-page applications with AJAX requests and dynamic DOM modifications. An algorithm is proposed that simplifies state model by merging similar states to achieve a human readable model even for complex real world web applications. The obtained model could be used to define formal requirements for the application, automatic model checking, documentation and test automation.

The paper reports on first experiences with modern web-based technologies used in building the human-machine interfaces for the industrial automation applications. It mainly focuses on distributed and intelligent manufacturing control systems designed according to holonic, multi-agent, or service-oriented principles. We briefly introduce Google Web Toolkit, and HTML5, which are gaining increasing popularity for creating dynamic user interfaces running in a web browser. We present two case studies from the industrial automation domain. The former one is the web application developed in Google Web Toolkit, which displays real-time values of tags of the industrial controller. The latter one aims at visualization of a manufacturing ontology in a web browser using both the canvas and the scalable vector graphics features of a new HTML5 standard.

A great development of Web technologies requires the application of complex systems and algorithms for maintaining high quality of Web services. The paper presents application of a broker-based architecture to the globally distributed Web system and the deployment of adaptive request distribution algorithm using neuro-fuzzy models in the decision-making process. The presented results of the simulation experiments show how the Web system operates under control of the proposed algorithm and the way of adaptation of the system to time-varying environment.

The widespread use of the World Wide Web by persons from different age groups, diverse cultures, and with different computer skills has put more emphasis in the process of ensuring that web sites and applications are usable On the other hand we can see how plain text web pages have been replaced by ones in which multimedia information (images, video and audio) are an important part of them In this context we have developed a multi-agent system for analysing web usability that performs both static and dynamic analysis of web sites The static analysis can examine certain multimedia issues related to usability (mostly associated with images) and in this paper we also comment on the issues related with video and audio technologies.

Current research in domains such as the Life Sciences depends heavily on the integration of information coming from diverse sources, which are typically highly complex and heterogeneous, and usually require exploratory access. Web services are increasingly used as the preferred method for accessing and processing these sources. Due to the large number of available web services, the sheer complexity of the data and the frequent lack of documentation, discovering the most appropriate web service for a given task is a challenge for the user. In this paper we propose a semi-automatic approach to assist the user in the discovery of which web services are the most appropriate to achieve her requirements. We describe the overall framework of our approach and we provide a detailed description of the techniques used in each phase of our approach. Finally, the usefulness of our approach is demonstrated through a Bioinformatics case study.

Client-based attacks on internet users with malicious web pages represent a serious and rising threat. Internet Browsers with enabled active content technologies such as JavaScript are vulnerable to so-called drive-by downloads. Drive-by downloads are able to automatically infect a victim's system during a single visit of a crafted web page testing various vulnerabilities and installing e.g. malware files or illegal content without user interaction. In this paper we present MonkeyWrench, a low-interaction web-honeyclient allowing automatic identification of malicious web pages by performing static analysis of the HTML-objects in a web page as well as dynamic analysis of scripts by execution in an emulated browser environment. Using this hybrid approach MonkeyWrench overcomes shortcomings of existing low-interaction web-honeyclients in dealing with obfuscated JavaScript while outperforming high-interaction systems. Further MonkeyWrench is able to identify the exact vulnerability triggered by a malicious page and to extract payloads from within obfuscated scripts which are valuable information to security analysts and researchers. Results of an examination of several hundred thousand web pages demonstrate MonkeyWrench's ability to expose rising threats of the web, and to collect malware and JavaScript exploit samples.

In recent years, increasing amounts of scientific data on geophysical and environmental fluids, e.g., in the atmosphere and oceans, are being available. Further, there is increasing demand for web-based data services. Several browser-based data servers, on which geophysical-fluid data can be analyzed and visualized, have been developed. However, they are suitable only for initial "quick-looks" and not for subsequent research processes. As a solution, we developed data server software named Gfdnavi. One of its important features is that it provides extensive support for programming (scripting). With Gfdnavi, users can easily switch between operations using a web browser and operations using scripts or command lines. This paper describes its network features: web services, which is an important part of Gfdnavi's programmability, and the functionality to search across multiple Gfdnavi servers. To develop the web services, we adopted the REST architecture. We also developed a client library to ensure access to web services in the programming language Ruby. Using this library, data can be analyzed and visualized on either the server side or client side. It also enables data handling on multiple servers. Search across multiple web servers is made possible by a simple peer-to-peer network with a central server, with the peer-to-peer communication based on web services.

We analyze the effectiveness of different Web browser update mechanisms on various operating systems; from Google Chrome's silent update mechanism to Opera's update requiring a full re-installation. We use anonymized logs from Google's world wide distributed Web servers. An analysis of the logged HTTP user-agent strings that Web browsers report when requesting any Web page is used to measure the daily browser version shares in active use. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first global scale measurement of Web browser update effectiveness comparing four different Web browser update strategies including Google Chrome. Our measurements prove that silent updates and little dependency on the underlying operating system are most effective to get users of Web browsers to surf the Web with the latest browser version.

Web 2.0 is much more than adding a nice facade to old web applications rather it is a new way of thinking about software architecture of Rich Internet Applications (RIA). In comparison to traditional web applications, the application logic of modern Web 2.0 applications tends to push the interactive user interface tasks to the client side. The client components on the other hand negotiate with remote services that deal with user events. The user should be assisted in different scenarios in order to use the existing platforms, share the resources with other users and improve his security. In this paper we present a user-centered content extraction and classification method based on self-organizing maps (SOM) as well as a prototype for provided content on Web 2.0. The extracted and classified data serves as a basis for above mentioned scenarios.

Traditionally, human machine interactions (HMI) occur in the form of simple, typically single flows of uniform events, such as mouse clicks on Graphical User Interface (GUI). Researchers in the HMI field aim to improve the HMI experience using a more natural approach. Interaction infrastructure is becoming more pervasive, and terminal devices are increasingly equipped with multiple sensors, such as video cameras or audio/video equipment, capable of collecting information from the environment. Video sensors are already placed in nearly every kind of device with which humans interact, such as PCs, mobile phones, and PDAs. In this paper, we propose that in Web 2.0-3.0, the interactive experience could be greatly improved from the client point of view with the use of a pervasive computing paradigm. We focus our attention on improvements that can be obtained with video sensors, and describe a more general architecture that is compliant with the current web infrastructure.

Future Web applications will increasingly require real-time data from the physical world collected by a myriad of sensors and actuators. Currently, integration of such devices require customized solutions due to the lack of widely adopted protocols for devices. Because the Web architecture offers a high degree of interoperability and a low entry barrier, we propose to leverage the Web to build hybrid applications that combine the physical world with Web content. Our work builds upon recent developments in Web push techniques and extends them for embedded devices with a RESTful messaging system. Our results illustrate that fully Web-based distributed sensing applications are not only feasible - but actually desirable - because Web standards offer an ideal compromise between performance and functionality.

The Web does not only offer an almost infinitive number of services and resources but can be also seen as a technology to combine different technological devices, like mobile phones, digital media solutions, intelligent household appliances, tablet PCs, and any other kind of computers, in order to create environments satisfying the need of users. However, due to the large amount of web resources and services as well as the variety and range of user needs, it is impossible to realize software solutions for all possible scenarios. In this paper, we present a user-driven approach towards designing and assembling pervasive environments, taking into consideration resources and services available on the Web and provided through computing devices. Based on semantics embedded in the web content, we explain the concept as well as important components of this user-driven environment design methodology and show a first prototype. Finally, the overall approach is critically discussed from the perspectives of programmers and web users on the basis of related work. ispartof: pages:63-77 ispartof: Metadata and Semantic Research vol:108 pages:63-77 ispartof: MTSR 2010 location:Alcalá de Henares, Spain date:20 Oct - 22 Oct 2010 status: published

Web-based simulation has its major application in teaching, education and collaborative model development. Keywords are virtual training environments (VTE), virtual classrooms, virtual labs and advanced distance learning [7, 4]. A VTE allows its participants to share editing and running of simulation models, to publish self-developed models and to collaborate in model development. The teacher (in the role of an administrator) can provide examples of good practice, templates as basis for further development and is able to supervise the participants of a simulation course.

Most today's web sources are designed to be used by humans, but they do not provide suitable interfaces for software programs. That is why a growing interest has arisen in so-called web automation applications that are widely used for different purposes such as B2B integration, automated testing of web applications or technology and business watch. Previous proposals assume models for generating and reproducing navigation sequences that are not able to correctly deal with new websites using technologies such as AJAX: on one hand existing systems only allow recording simple navigation actions and, on the other hand, they are unable to detect the end of the effects caused by an user action. In this paper, we propose a set of new techniques to record and execute web navigation sequences able to deal with all the complexity existing in AJAX-based web sites. We also present an exhaustive evaluation of the proposed techniques that shows very promising results.

Computer simulation of biochemical networks plays a central role in systems biology. While there are several software packages for modeling and simulation of these networks, they are based on graphical user interfaces that operate on the local computer. However, it is now often desirable to operate simulation tasks through a distributed computing framework where data can be gathered from different sources and distinct subtasks operated in different physical computers. In this paper we describe a web services implementation for the COPASI biochemical network simulator (CopasiWS). COPASI provides a range of numerical methods for simulation, optimization and analysis of biochemical reaction networks. Our aim is to allow easy integration of these powerful functionalities with local and remote services to provide a distributed computing platform for the simulation and analysis of biochemical models. One immediate result of this work is that simulation tasks are now available to be used in a platform--- and language---independent manner as components of distributed workflows, for example using the Taverna workflow engine. We describe the CopasiWS architecture, key design and implementation issues, and illustrate the range of services available through a web portal interface (CopasiWeb).

It is possible to create interactive, responsive web applications that allow user-generated contributions. However, the relevant technologies have to be explicitly deployed by the authors of the web pages. In this work we present the concept of parasitic and symbiotic web applications which can be deployed on arbitrary web pages by means of a proxy-based application platform. Such applications are capable of inserting, editing and deleting the content of web pages. We use an HTTP proxy in order to insert JavaScript code on each web page that is delivered from the web server to the browser. Additionally we use a database server hosting user-generated scripts as well as high-level APIs allowing for implementing customized web applications. Our approach is capable of cooperating with existing web pages by using shared standards (e.g. formatting of the structure on DOM level) and common APIs but also allows for user-generated (parasitic) applications on arbitrary web pages without the need for cooperation by the page owner.

This paper covers some of the most advanced optimization techniques for web servers and web applications applied to a Modular Object Oriented Distance Learning Environment based on PHP 5 and Apache 2.

The paper concerns a problem of the e-commerce Web server system performance evaluation through simulation experiments, especially a problem of modeling a representative stream of user requests at the input of such system. Motivated by a need of a benchmarking tool for the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) environment we discuss a workload model typical of such Web sites and also a model of a multi-tiered e-commerce Web server system. A simulation tool in which the proposed models have been implemented is briefly talked over and some experimental results on the Web system performance in terms of traditional and business performance measures are presented.

Penetration testing is a widely used method for testing the security of web applications, but it can be inefficient if it is not done systematically. Public databases of web application vulnerabilities can be used to drive penetration testing, but testers need to understand them and interpret them into executable test cases. This requires an in-depth knowledge of security. This paper proposes a model-based testing approach using a data model that describes the relationship between web security knowledge, business domain knowledge, and test case development. The approach consists of a data model that represents the relevance between attack surface, application fingerprint, attack vectors, and fuzz vectors; a test case generator that automatically generates penetration test scenarios for web applications; and a penetration test framework supported by TTCN-3 test environment. The model-based testing approach can be used to provide structured tool support for developing penetration test campaigns. We demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the approach at the design level.

The web affords unique opportunities to assist students in learning. Due to the rapid proliferation of the web in recent years, many educators seek to improve the effectiveness of their instruction by providing innovative web-based course material to their students. In particular, many web-based educational contents are being developed. It helps to teach and train students. It is spreading widely due to repeated learning any time, any where. In this paper we implemented C functions and quizzes for checking comprehension of statements in a C programming lecture, developing scenario related concepts and algorithm comprehension. We used visual representation. The web-based contents were implemented as FLASH animations or Java applets.

Service-oriented systems are constructed using Web services as first-class programmable units and subsystems and there have been many successful applications of such systems. However, there is a major unresolved problem with the software development and subsequent management of these applications and systems. Web service interfaces and implementations may be developed and changed autonomously, which makes traditional configuration management practices inadequate for Web services. Checking the compatibility of these programmable units turns out to be a difficult task. In this paper, we present a technique for checking compatibility of Web service interfaces and implementations based on categorizing domain ontology instances of service description documents. This technique is capable of both assessing the compatibility and identifying incompatibility factors of service interfaces and implementations. The design details of a system model for Web service compatibility checking and the key operator for evaluating compatibility within the model are discussed. We present simulation experiments and analyze the results to show the effectiveness and performance variations of our technique with different data source patterns.

With the increasing concerns over the security and privacy of Web based applications, many solutions based on strong cryptography have been proposed to protect client side Web applications against attacks such as phishing, pharming and even server side attacks. While strong cryptography is used, one critical building block in cryptosystem, the random number generator, is often neglected. Considering this situation, in this paper we design and implement a pseudo-random number generator only rely on ubiquitous Web browser abilities - JavaScript, HTML and AJAX. We also provide a mechanism called Pseudo-cookiefor JavaScript programs to access operating system services for retrieving random or entropy values without changing Web browser security policies. The security model, analysis and performance evaluation demonstrate that our method is secure and efficient.

The ongoing adoption of the latest Web development patterns such as AJAX is helping to enhance the user experience on the Web. Moreover, there is now API-based support from various vendors that allow seamless fusion of disparate data sources into a single application. However, the barrier for Web designers to integrate such features into their Web applications remains high. This hampers a wider proliferation of such novel Web applications. In this paper, we conduct an experiment to see whether visual programming is appropriate for allowing Web designers integrate the aforementioned features. For the experiment, we have developed a prototype, tentatively named WIPER that allows Web designers to incorporate pre-built JavaScript components into live Web pages using drag-and-drop. We combined rapid revision with usability testing to iteratively advance our prototype. Working with users, we have learned that with some targeted refinements, visual programming paradigm can be very effective in achieving our goal.

A number of Web design problems continue to arise, such as: (1) decoupling the various aspects of Web applications (for example, business logic, the user interface, navigation and information architecture; and (2) isolating platform specifics from the concerns common to all Web applications. In the context of a proposal for a model-driven architecture for Web applications, this paper identifies an extensive list of models aimed at providing a pool of proven solutions to these problems. The models span several levels of abstraction such as business, task, dialog, presentation and layout models. The proposed architecture will show how several individual models can be combined at different levels of abstraction into heterogeneous structures, which can be used as building blocks in the development of Web applications.

Web pages have increasingly been used as the user interface of many software systems. The simplicity of interaction with web pages is a desirable advantage of using them. However, the user interface can also get more complex when more complex web pages are used to build it. Understanding the complexity of web pages as perceived subjectively by users is therefore important to better design this type of user interface. This paper reports an analysis of web page complexity through visual segmentation of web pages. 100 web pages were visually segmented by human participants as well as a computer program using Gestalt principles. The participants also indicated the perceived complexity of the web pages during the experiment. The result shows the perception of complexity is highly subjective but may be reliably measured. The number of blocks resulted from the three segmentation methods seemed to be irrelevant to perceived complexity. However, a composite metric that incorporate visual block information and other data of web pages seems to be promising in predicting the perceived complexity.

With the rapid development of WWW, HTML documents become one of the main file formats on the Web. However, blind people find difficulty in accessing the HTML documents for their complex structure and visual reliability. The main methods for the blind to browse the web pages are through screen reader and text web browser with TTS engine. These methods can only read text on the screen without knowing the relationship among the texts. It's very difficult and time consuming to find out some information from a bunch of texts. In this paper, a special web browser called eGuideDog is designed for the visually impaired people. This web browser can extract the structure and the content of an HTML document and represent it in the form of audio. It helps the blind finding out information they concern more quickly.

Many available software products are overcrowded with functionality, so that a lot of users are overwhelmed. Often, the result is a failure of the according product. Especially environmental simulations need a lot of data as input and results should be simple to handle.

The general problem addressed in this paper is the rapid development of web interfaces to software systems using only their command line interface. This kind of system is frequently developed in environments that greatly differ from those where web interface will be implemented. In this setting it is also important to maintain a loose coupling between the web interface and the system it controls since the latter must be able to continue its normal development independently of the former. We propose a framework to develop web interfaces targeted to these systems whose main feature is the fact that it can be extended without requiring code programming. The hot spots of our framework are XML configuration files to define the interface data, how this data is mapped into the system's commands, and how commands output and the interaction state is mapped into web formatting languages. With this approach the web interface is kept separated from the system it controls, it is easy to define and modify, and is able to capture enough domain knowledge to be a real advantage for the novice or sporadic user. In this paper we present the proposed framework architecture, loosely inspired in the MVC pattern, its implementation on Java servlet containers, and its application to the AGILMAT system, a high-school mathematical problem generator developed using constrained grammars.

The World Wide Web is evolving from a platform for information access into a platform for interactive services. Several applications are already used through Internet and Web browsers. User interface of such an application is defined by HTML. However, HTML has its deficiencies when used as a general UI description language. Several parties have addressed this problem by defining specific UI description languages. Thus, for instance, a web browser could be used as a user interface for any application. We have revised the requirements for a UI description language from literature and evaluated two XML-based UI description formats against the requirements through use cases.

In the GIS(Geospatial Information System) Web Services, SOAP/MTOM shows best performance when transferring large size of data between services. SOAP/MTOM uses XOP for message optimizing method, so data serialization and deserialization time is reduced. Additionally, integrating Ajax(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) approach into GIS visualization Web Services have performance enhancement, because it provides more interactive user experience. Ajax, one of the technologies of "Web 2.0", is appeared after Dot Com bubble is occurred. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change.

There is a great amount of information on the web that can not be accessed by conventional crawler engines. This portion of the web is usually known as the Hidden Web. To be able to deal with this problem, it is necessary to solve two tasks: crawling the client-side and crawling the server-side hidden web. In this paper we present an architecture and a set of related techniques for accessing the information placed in web pages with support for client-side dynamism, dealing with aspects such as JavaScript technology, non-standard session maintenance mechanisms, client redirections, pop-up menus, etc. Our approach leverages current browser APIs and implements novel crawling models and algorithms.