Endless JavaScript with Dojo

It was one year ago when my interest in AJAX and Dojo was awoken; while looking for some approach to draw geometrical objects within a web browser to evaluate the viability of a collaborative browser-based client for diagram design. However, I have been interested in JavaScript since many more years. It has been always an exciting language for my eyes, despite of its criticized existence.

Today I have received an email from mind42, announcing the end of the beta period. And due to my untiring curiosity I have been looking for more details. My first impresion is: "Wow, what an amazing tool for my mental divergences! and collaborative! and developed with dojo!"

This video shows some of its features:

Looking deeper, I have found this interesting video from Stefan Schuster where he discusses the possibilities of JavaScript development with Dojo:

You can also download the slides of the talk from Stefan Schuster website, or these other introduction slides about Dojo 0.9.

All this stuff have been very inspiring for me, and I am wondering about an abstract idea. It deals with the copcept of a self-defined web environment, where users could extend GUI components with the powerfull features provided by Dojo, like OO development (dojo.declare), namespaces (dojo.require), event handling (dojo.connect) and more on.

This extensions could be designed with the diagram capabilities of the environment itself or with a web-based text editor, monitoring preferred usage for futher research of their usability.

Moreover, it would be feasible to develop a Dojo IDE with the features claimed in Stefan Schuster's talk by means of this environment. Both diagram and text approaches.

IADIS Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction Conference 2008 (IHCI)

I have just received the acceptance of the paper:
Web Environment for Collaborative and Extensible Diagram Design

Paper is proposed to be in the proceedings of IADIS Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction Conference 2008 (IHCI) as "Reflection Paper" . However, I had to renounce to publish it due to personal issues, economical mayorly. I also think that it can be improved a lot, as can be realized reading reviewers comments.

Somme positive comments for the paper are:

• "The paper has reasonable technical quality, and clear and consistent diagram and use of technical language"
• "The architecture is based on newly technologies and use well-known patterns"
• "The subject is relevant: Collaborative web-based tools demand a lot of research and implementation work"
• "An excellent idea, very promissing but a lack of credibility as regard to the implementation and the evaluation"
• "Very interesting key issue"

Also, some weak points were remarked by reviewers:

• "This is more a position paper than the result of implementatory work"
• "The lack of any sort of formal discussion or results, makes it hard to see the real world value of the model proposed"
• "Scenarios could be used to improve the explanation, even using hypothetical situations/applications"
• "There is not a proof of concept"
• "In addition, the introduction needs to be expanded to include an overview of the literature on collaborative web-based systems and how is the main differences/similarities with respect to other existing tools (e.g. Google docs)"
• "Unfortunately, there is no evaluation that measures the impact of the system on actual users"
• "It seems unusual to have a paper written in English with references written in any other language"
• "You claim as key words psychology and data mining but you don't adress these questions seriously"
• "Your bibliography could be broadenned"
  

[Draft] Web Environment for Collaborative and Extensible Diagram Design

This is the first paper in which I collaborate as principal author, with the support of José Emilio Labra Gayo, Sheila Méndez Núñez and Ana Belén Martinez Prieto.

Special thanks to Lucía Méndez Núñez for her review of the translation from Spanish to English.

The paper addresess the need of a web environment for colaborative diagram design, with broad posibilities of functional extensions, configuration and personalization by users. The idea grows from my end degree project, but with some new improvements in order to check some metrics about colaborative diagram tools usability, mainly UML, as well as psycological studies of software engineering.

Abstract

There is a growing need for development tools ubiquity, due to the portability and availability problems concerning desktop applications. In this paper, we suggest an approach to avoid any further download or installation. The main goal is to offer a collaborative and extensible web environment which covers a series of domains highly demanded by different kinds of working groups, in which it is crucial to have tools which facilitate the exchange of information and the collaboration among their members. The result would be the development of one or several diagrams accesible from any geographical location, independently of the device employed. By means of this environment, it will be possible to do research on the usability of collaborative tools for design diagrams, mainly UML, as well as research on the psychology of software engineering, assessing the results coming from the employment of methodologies, techniques, paradigms, patterns, etc. Both at an individual and at a collaborative development group level.

Full paper

[PDF] Web Environment for Collaborative and Extensible Diagram Design

[PDF] Entorno Web para el Diseño Colaborativo y Extensible de Diagramas