1
Dynamic Mobile Content Adaptation
Abstracting in Device Independent Web
Engineering
Aimin Liang, Cholsu Li, Suwei Guo
Abstract-When delivering content across proliferations of
presentation devices, current web engineering tries to allow the
web accessible for varieties accessing mechanisms and universal
user modes. An intelligent content amalgamation mechanism is
researched to meet current web information systems. It provides
flexible networking infrastructure with effective content
adaptations practices. Including an abstracted network context
logical model, a device independent metadata definition for web
resources, and autonomous-agents based adaptation algorithms
reorganization, this framework serves an optimized dynamic
intelligent mobile web-engineering environment,
Inde;device independent; web engineering
R ecent years have seen a proliferation of devices types and
access mechanisms in the fields ofweb services, extending
far beyond the conventional personal computer. People
surfs the Internet over mobile phones, car carriers, kiosks,
Pocket PCs, TV Boxes, aural devices, information furniture, or
such handheld devices, in verities of environments. It is
unrealistic to expect an author to create different user
experiences for every delivery context. Whenever possible,
authored source content should be reused across multiple
delivery contexts. It suggests the use of adaptation of contents
as the integrator of multiple adaptation applications processing
requirements. Such intelligent adaptation applications are to
allow the Web to be accessible by anyone, anywhere, anytime,
anyhow. The general content related adaptation framework
provides users with an improved user experiences over any
access mechanism. Web authors then can design& maintain all
the web resources+1 andS interaction
1o + + S 1 in universal1 styles
model < 1
before deploying.
To cover such a complex situation, Sybase Corp and
Tsinghua University starts a research project analyzing the
characteristics of current services for mobile devices including
capability limited devices, and puts forwards general strategies
Manuscript received Feb 16, 2006. This work was supported by Sybase.
Aimin lhang, Cholsu Li, and Suwei Guo are with Computer Sci&tech
Department, Tsinghua University, Information Science&Technology Building,
1-308, TsinghuaYuan, Haidian District, 100081 Beijing, PRC,
(hiangam@tsinghua.edu.cn, hitsO3@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn,
g*@snhaeuc.
I1-4244-0574-2/06/$20.OO (0)2006 IEEE
and toolkits to facilitate an efficient adaptation framework for
web content.
II. CONTENT ADAPTATION MODEL
The W3C defines content adaptation as "a process of
selection, generation, or modification that produces one or
more perceivable units in response to a requested uniform
resource identifier in a given delivery context." [1] So the model
for web content adaptation must deal with categories in 3
processes, they are context identification, content authoring
and adaptation procession. Adaptation process can occur
anytime at any location ofthe path from content servers to users.
Three basic approaches exist for adapting content for
subscribed users: server-side, intermediate, and client-side.
These approaches take function individually or cooperatively.
Situation becomes further complicated while an adaptation
engine can't identify other adaptation schemes to decide his
role in the context of delivering the most suitable content to
end-users. To meet such challenges, this research proposed
resolutions from special perspectives, in context identification,
content authoring, adaptation procession algorithms, and
adaptation amalgamation. Considering the co-existing of
varieties of mobile devices with limited capabilities, a
server-side adaptation framework is proposed as following.
Web elemens
Ub M§trkt b
modacclss
contrgaconipionn
11 1 1 0 f Xq O 8 g gS LTp b adaptation flow
Topicl:based ladlapAtationforfdw,
Cutoer~~Customer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
111l rB NIIi
Rendering devices
Real accessing context A a
Pic 1: general server adaptation model
In a general sense, this content adaptation framework
illustrates the relationship of involved packages. To provide a
universal web site by using this framework, we need a web
mdln rcs mlmne yteasrc
e
components organization to build up organization of semantic
web elements, a ubiquitous context model to cover complex
subscriber characters, and an adaptation process implemented
by the topic based adaptation negotiation and adaptation agents
 2

repository. The adapted web components that suffice accessing <?xml version=" 1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
context and elements semantic &author preferences are <rdf:RDF xmlns= ... >
translated into concrete presentations before delivery by ...

components rendering part. <prf:Keyboard>Qwerty</prf:Keyboard>

<prf:InputCharSet><rdf:Bag>
<rdf:li>ISO-8859-</rdfli>
1</rdf:li>
III. CONTEXT IDENTIFICATIONS <rdfli>UTF-8
Many approaches are made by different organizations in </rdf:Bag></prf:InputCharSet>
context identification, or at least some aspects of it. Delivery ...
context includes different perspectives of users, authors and
implementers' concerns, which focus on different aspects of
delivery context, such as vocabularies, protocols, data <?xml version=" 1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
structures, and implementations [2]
HTTP is the basis for most current Web-based <: subscriber xmlns=...
information delivery. HTTP headers are most widely used to ...

carry delivery context information. A number of. standard <device:textlnputCapability>

. . ~~<device: language lang="Simplified Chinese">
<device:languagel
accept headers can be used to match the capabilities of a e
requesting device (or, in particular, its user agent) to the .
information that is delivered from an origin server. The current </device:textlnputCapability>
Composite Capabilities/Preferences Profile (CC/PP)[7], defined ...

by W3C with a data structure and a sample vocabulary for I_I

profiles, can also convey delivery context information. Open
Mobile Alliance (OMA) has defined a User Agent Profile as an
implementation of CC/PP for WAP-enabled mobile terminals,
providing convergence of mobile web technologies with those
ofthe Web [3] . HP set out DELI[4] to cope devices implemented
CC/PP or UAprof. Media Queries introduce another
vocabulary for accessing device characteristics['] SMIL 2.0
defines a BasicContentControl Module that defines certain
system characteristics that may be used to control a SMIL
presentation[91. Transparent Content Negotiation (TCN), IETF
Content Negotiation working group (Conneg), Media Feature
characters of context into ubiquitous logical model via in an
example 4-step calculation as following, processing the related
device profiles into a logical device.
Web author may indicate the class or range of special
abstract parameters or primary physical attributes. Adaptation
engine uses the abstract context model, authors' hints, and web
elements semantic to arrange the adaptation process.
Pic2: context abstraction process procedure
,,....

conflict<
voaulre acodn to their spca concerns. pAVnadfph
Ubqitu
contextN modeltarl dscee balswpinthuc divrsqityof
decie ofvcevirtuaapabvideifyf)rediferentrbrosereagent..Conten
SetsELMPENTcapabilitieci,
in ontology usequraent wihfceso autorng.s.o.povde.or
< LMN referencsteh
moait,devc, capreferences) and networks.tce hecnen utoig o aln
<! ETTLEMT
As ilLustrate mrodalty auralusreen
follworing: IDATAlIpntID # require> NWaiiis
iei uprigacest hi .. ie rmavreyo
<! ELEMENT sbcriabilter (id, moapblity,) preference,otntathrigist povdmr
devices,t
newr)LMN aaiiy(d dsrpin>poie'ghnswe dpaigcntn oues uhmr
<!ELEMENTpreferene
<!ATTLIST idpet
naD(sds o capabluties*)>
#RQURDAT RQURD Web authorse have noticedothencontenttauthoringxfortalong
<! ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ELEENdevice(dvne* #requred IVb CONTENTeAUTHORINGtm
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~apoce
Networ(id,(idcpabilitis*)>pties
<! ELEMET
<..ELMN subscriber... embedalt,dedadvices apreference, in suporing access
IN
hito their sraitesfomnal
langualso d
coftnt
varety
s1mllar algor1thm. In eng1neer1ng, abstrachon maps the evicepthesyapplica
scupport

instead of primary physical parameters. For example, instead of pages,'by adding author hints into traditional web content.
different tpofabulars
kboardorinputo styles suechuc 'o.. ~~Author
example,hints are metadata related to parts of web contents, for
relative importance. IBM set out external annotation
context model map these device characters into an universal btac aat i
tex inutapbilty ve fuzy alclaion asilustate i documents with content adaptation hints' ' . UIML by OASIS is
another paper. Following iS a translation form UAProf to
unscriver cnonteta e. XML based language describing user interfaces that are
similrealegorthmDiferet cntetdenifiatin
Integitn ahieedthehepopular
cn e eaps
dericng,ararctin physil e dtoday
a -- i. for traditional Itdesktop,
cibeus web, mobile,
 3

interface for custom devices or devices that are invented in the
future '4]. XForms provides "appearance" attribute that can be
specified on all Form Controls. An author has the ability to
provide a hint to the component responsible for rendering.
Increasingly, authors prepare content that includes more
accommodate web entities' attributes over a fixed combination
of processing algorithms. 2. Adaptation Topic. Adaptation
Topic is an optimized cluster of titles/topics combined with the
application interest vectors. Cluster of titles is noted as
CB=- {,)7} , whereas = {CI C2, . .,I C } is a collection of
I

semantic information. Early years Technical University of preferred adaptation titles, and the titles relation
Vienna set out MyXMLE'0] to achieve some semantic web description
t 7={<C,Ci b> coc,cit eT E {0,>,7}} fitS
sevices for device independent via a xml/xlt grace. Here we put
forward forwad
2 concepts: General Web
2 oncets: Gnera Language oject(GWL
WebLanguge objects(GWL into binary relationship between titles. The adaptation topic
.[11] must suffice 3,~C C X cE ,u 1J,1i,.,ijC
< i, j < n, i # j Ci C
objects) and abstract web elements orgnization in semantic. m C =

GWL objects are web objects similar to Swing UI components, Application interest vectors are Lt= tel, te2., ten}, where tei is
including pages, containers, forms, lables, buttons, and so on. one of the logical device traits. Via title based agent negotiation
Each object has it's events definition, variables and rendering between title agents, topic deals with a web service in suitable
conditions. Abstract web elements orgnization give out context, as this diagram.
ontology based relationship of objects of a web site, for app-ia--- Di e
example, loops, headers, references. All these concepts can be C
described in our special Device independent page markup
language (DIML)Y1" , or built up directly from
estrng e avalue

already-published HTML files. A web resource authoring Trit B N a lue

toolkit is developed to process the translation. Documents with T C Value C
dynamic contents such as JSP can be managed within this
toolkit, but scripts with tag included are rejected. Adaptation ------- ue

process part modifies these entities' parameters and relation. 0 _ ! ! ! |

Selected entities for the special context are rendered to the user
in correspondent rendering machine. Following diagram Title Title Title A bin Topic
illustrates the process. Z

V. ADAPTATION PROCESSION
Adaptation process includes content selection, navigation
generation, media translation, items sorting, layout reschedule,
and unit decomposition. The limited abilities and varieties of
handhold accessing devices have different style, layout, content,
structure, navigation, and interaction when accessing the same
web service. It's necessary to amalgamate flexibly among
different adaptation algorithms in destined context. E-business
needs schemes to construct device related applications from
device independent applications. Most current adaptation
technologies deal with some special classes of context
characters when processing the adaptation. For example, the
types of devices supported by MMIT 12] is decided by the
amount of adaptors, and algorithm of corresponding adaptor
decides the quality of adaptation; Adaptations in XML/XSLT
based adaptation framework includes mainly fragmentation
and transformation; UIML defines abstract UI with a device
dependent style; and such on.
With the ubiquitous context model and organized abstract
web entities, a general content adaptation framework can deal
wihagrtm an tehiqe m re frey To prvdems
efficinthandobetter texperiquen
user experience, we
efficient and better user put.
we put
To temli-ent
out the multi-agent
based adaptation framework and build up an application to
prototype the flexible web engineering. Two basic concepts are
put forward to refine adaptation granularity and quality: 1.
Adaptation Title: A title defines special group of adaptation
algorithms available in a given fixed autonomous context
vectors combination, wrapped as a software agent. It is context
traits vector-sensible unit, dealing with defined context to
Pic3: flexible adaptation topic amalgamation
The topics search in their application interest vector based on
The tinedrcntext.ePr atchin ibere complex tn
the desned context. Part matching will be more complex than
Thislote rstshin cren aetotall ne topicThedatin
agents will cooperate with each other and decide new
processing strategy. New strategy becomes a new adaptation
topic. Adding more adaptation title can reduce the probability
of negotiation failure. We have developed more than 12 soft
agents of content adaptation title.
VI. RENDER MACHINE
When a network resource have been adapted in the
adaptation engine according the context parameters, the refined
web entities can be rendered into serial of concrete
representations, which a user can accept and identified with
better ex erience. The renderin machine oes over followin
g g g
steps. After web enhtites in adaptive server are owed to refined
object events and signal systems, select group of elements for a
sigedlvr nt btatPg A)i is vlae
s
according to the interaction modality of context model. Then
the AP will be adapted in runtime by our General Web
Language package into the different concrete pages (CP), such
as HTML, WML, cHTML, and so on. Especially, the CP can be
an UI interface of desktop PC, describing by tsinghua XGUItar,
an extensible GUI xml standards supporting JFC Swing and
 4

AWT [15]. The interactive actions of user submitted to server are VIII. CONCLUSIONS
translated into the events of correspondent objects to trigger Device independent web engineering introduces content
another resource request, just like the traditional Ul interaction. adaptation of existing network resources to varieties of web
users with better experiences. Based on the current content
adaptation technologies, a dynamic flexible practice of
VII. IMPLEMENTATIONS intelligent recognition models the round general adaptation
Universal context model is first built up covering HTTP, framework. Web content elements are reorganized according
W-HTTP, HTTP-Ex, and server-side Media Queries. We then universal context parameters and transformed in quite effective
set out a web content authoring toolkit to prototype the web representation. A prototype illustrates the modeling,
entity abstraction. The title repository includes 12 adaptations abstraction, adaptation, and render realities.
title currently. And 35 topics are defined for frequently context.
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P 61 Si 6r=