AHA! meets Interbook…

Paul De Bra

Tomi Santic

Peter Brusilovsky

Topics

The AHA! Project

Layout in Interbook and AHA!

The (new) AHA! Layout Model

Compiling Interbook into AHA!

Conclusions / Future Work

The AHA! Project

AHA! = Adaptive Hypermedia Architecture

Open Source project, Web-based adaptive engine

Built on Java Servlet technology, XML and XHTML

General-purpose user-model and adaptation rules

Data storage (domain, adaptation, user model)	using XML files or mySQL database

High-level authoring of domain- and adaptation model through Java Applets

Compilers from authoring to engine structures

Main AHA! Engine Features

AHA! mainly reacts to page accesses

Each resource (page) is associated with a concept

The access event triggers rules that update attributes of user model concepts

Each attribute update may trigger more rules that update more attributes of more concepts

Links in the requested page are annotated based on expressions on attribute values

Fragments and objects are conditionally included based on expressions on attribute values

Interbook Built-In Layout (different types)

AHA! Author-defined Layout (no built-in)

The View-Based AHA! Layout Model

The smallest layout construct is the view:

<view name="v5" type="ToolboxView" title="Toolbox"

background="IBookbluesq.bmp" params="leftspace=70">

<secwnds>

<secwnd link="TOC" viewgroup="TOC" img=“TocBtn.bmp"/>

<secwnd link="Glossary" viewgroup="Glossary"

img="GlossBtn.bmp"/>

</secwnds>

</view>

The view defines the background decoration

The primary view refers to secondary views that are called upon through buttons.

The View-Based AHA! Layout Model

Views are placed in viewgroups to form a complete layout

<viewgroup name="MAIN" wndOpt="width=800,height=600">

<compound framestruct="rows=20%,*" border="0">

<compound framestruct="cols=*,130" border="0">

<viewref name="v1" />

<viewref name="v5" />

</compound>

<compound framestruct="cols=*,130" >

<viewref name="v3" />

<viewref name="v2" />

</compound>

</compound>

</viewgroup>

This viewgroup defines compounds (HTML frames).

Each compound contains compounds or a view.

The View-Based AHA! Layout Model

The overall structure is:

at the highest level there is a layoutlist

the layoutlist contains layouts

a layout contains viewgroups

a viewgroup contains compounds

a compound contains compounds or views

AHA! Simulates Interbook Layout

Alternative AHA! Layout for Interbook

Compiling Interbook to AHA!

Interbook applications are written in MS-Word (using special comments)

Interbook is then compiled from MS-Word to a special Interbook format (HTML files and codes to connect sections and glossary concepts)

The Interbook format is compiled to AHA! concepts with adaptation rules

A predefined layoutlist defines the layouts that give the resulting AHA! application an Interbook look and feel

Conclusions and Future Work

AHA! has been extended with “layout” in order to offer Interbook functionality and look and feel

A compiler was built to automatically translate Interbook courses to AHA! applications

The “layout” extensions and compiler illustrate that AHA! can be used as a back-end (engine) to serve applications for different adaptive applications

We will investigate compiling more different adaptive systems into AHA! structures

The layout and compiler work enables authoring tools for different AHS to serve as authoring tools for AHA!

/facilitair bedrijf in de MasterSlide (in het menu: View | Master | Slide Master) eventueel weghalen of vervangen door een ander submerk zie www.fb.tue.nl/huisstijl/fonts/faq.htm

Dit is een voorlopige versie!

In Interbook there are different pre-defined layouts, for different types of concepts.

The window on the left shows the layout for a textbook page. It consists of five html frames.

The top left frame shows an annotated partial table of contents, which is automatically generated.

The bottom left is the actual page to be studied.

On the top right there is a menu with links to other functional parts.

Below that are a list of concepts the user must know before studying this page.

Below that are a list of concepts the use learns about by reading this page.

The window on the right shows a glossary page, explaining where the concept “Production” fits in.

This page is also generated automatically.

The synchronization between the frames is automatic: every link leads to a top level frame, in which all 5 frames are generated again.

In AHA! the layout of an application is completely up to the author.

This viewgraph shows a layout with two frames. In the leftmost frame a partial table of contents is shown.

This is completely hand-authored. The submenus open en close through conditional inclusion of fragments.

The link adaptation is of course done by the system.

To keep the two frames (left and right) synchronized some Javascript code is needed.

This example shows the new AHA! engine serving an Interbook equivalent.

We see the same 5 frames as in the earlier Interbook course.

We see the same Interbook decorations.

AHA! meets Interbook, and more...

Toine Kuiper

1999-09-23T10:59:52

Paul De Bra