W3C Model-Based UI Workshop Report

The report from the W3C Workshop on Future Standards for Model-Based User Interfaces is now available. The workshop took place in central Rome on 13-14 May 2010, and focused on ideas for making it easier to create Web applications that can be delivered across many kinds of devices and that adapt dynamically to the context.

To achieve this, it is necessary to separate out different kinds of design concerns, and this is where models come in. There has been a steady stream of research work in this area for many years (including the W3C MBUI Incubator Group), and the workshop was held to bring together researchers to examine whether it is now timely to launch standards work. The workshop participants recommended that W3C consider starting a new Working Group on meta-models as a basis for exchange between different markup languages for model-based authoring tools. We hope to make a start on this later this year with help from the EU Serenoa project.

I want to express my thanks to my co-chair Fabio Paternò, all of the participants and to W3C and to the CNR-ISTI HIIS Laboratory for hosting the workshop.