Information systems for the support of complex business processes are often equipped with web-based front-ends to allow convenient user access. To produce executable specifications of the users’ interactions with such web-based applications, we use a visual language that enables developers to model their complex dialog structures. In this paper, we introduce the formal semantics of the core constructs of this Dialog Flow Notation: We define its syntax in terms of invariants about the permitted elements and their relations, and show how any words of the language (i.e. any syntactically correct dialog flow specifications) can be mapped to a deterministic pushdown automaton whose behavior defines the notation’s semantics. This gives us and other tool developers a formal basis for the design and implementation of tools and frameworks that mirror the precise meaning of all DFN constructs.

When building web applications for use on different devices, developers need to deal with a wide range of input/output capabilities that affect how users interact with the application: A dialog that can be completed in one step on a desktop client may have to be broken up into a number of steps on a small-screen mobile device. Since it is time-consuming to define all the possible dialog masks and dialog flow variants for different channels manually, it would be desirable to automate the adaptation of dialog masks and flows. To address this need, we introduce the DiaDef language for the abstract, device-independent definition of the widgets in a dialog, and the DiaGen framework that automatically breaks this abstract dialog definition down into sufficiently small dialog masks for the users’ mobile devices and incorporates them into suitable micro dialog flows that are generated at run-time in order to be handled by our Dialog Control Framework.

Web recommendation systems have become a popular means to im-prove the usability of web sites. This paper describes the architecture of a rule-based recommendation system and presents its evaluation on two real-life ap-plications. The architecture combines recommendations from different algo-rithms in a recommendation database and applies feedback-based machine learning to optimize the selection of the presented recommendations. The rec-ommendations database also stores ontology graphs, which are used to semanti-cally enrich the recommendations. We describe the general architecture of the system and the test setting, illustrate the application of several optimization ap-proaches and present comparative results.

As the availability and popularity of the Internet continues to grow, the trend ofproviding global access to business resources and services online is an efficient andprofitable way for organizations to acquire a new share of the market. Due to the flexibilityand scalability of modern web technologies, web-based applications processand store personal or critical information in enormous amounts. Hence, the overallapplication’s functionality and secure data processing are the main key factors ofeach web application. For ensuring those key factors, the web page code must be regularlymonitored to retain the overall quality of the code. This project is devoted tochange identification and classification in modern web-based applications, based onthe comparison of two versions of web page code, acquired in different time periods.The foundation of the development is described as a detection algorithm in one of theacademic papers. The algorithm was supplemented by a more extensive classificationof changes that was originally proposed by the author. The result of the researchis a semi-automatic tool, developed in Python. The tool compares two versions ofthe web page code to find changes and classify those changes. The result of the tool’sexecution is a report file that contains statistics of the overall algorithm’s executionand type-clustered information about the detected changes between two versions ofthe web page code. The analysis of results showed that the implemented diff-toolprovides reliable results and allocates all types of possible changes in the web pagecodes, which are acknowledged by statistical analysis. The comparative analysis ofthe results of the developed diff-tool with the results of other similar technical solutionsrevealed serious shortcomings of other solutions, due to their data processingimplementation, classification of the changes and resulting report file.

Web development is receiving increasing attention among all kinds and sizes of companies. Web presentation has become a hygiene factor for companies nowadays. Fortunately, nowadays web developers can choose from a great number of ready-made technologies instead of developing everything from scratch. However, web development technologies have evolved much in the past 20 years. Due to the increased complexity and diversity of the alternatives, it is getting more and more difficult for companies to make an overall good choice of technologies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that usually do not have resources to make a thorough research before choosing. This thesis creates WeTS - Web Technology Stack Guidelines, which contains three parts: process, algorithm and software quality characteristics. By following WeTS, inexperienced web developers, especially in SMEs, can select web technology stacks in an optimal way. Meanwhile, WeTS could be used for experienced practitioners and researchers as a reference to have an overview about modern web development technologies. Based on WeTS Guidelines, this thesis evaluated a number of technology stacks. Then a case study was performed with a startup company named Sqore. By comparing WeTS with Sqore’s technology selection process step by step, this thesis evaluated WeTS Guidelines.

Företaget Dramatify tillhandahåller en tjänst för TV- och filmproduktions-bolag att hantera kommunikation och information kring sina produktioner med hjälp av mobiler och datorer oavsett var de befinner sig. De upplever långa responstider för sin webbapplikation och gav som förslag att studera lagring av produktionsdata i cache. För att lösa problemet har en under-sökning av tidigare arbeten inom området och lämpliga tillämpningar för att implementera, testa och analysera prototyper som lagrar data i cache. Resultatet blev en prototyp för klient respektive server med strategin att lagra varje produktion styckvis i cache. För att testa prototyperna skapades en implementation av automatiska tester som lagrade mätdata om relate-rad prestanda till cache för sidanrop från webbapplikationen i olika en-heter och webbläsare. En analys av mätdata gjordes och det visade sig att klientprototypen var 32 procent snabbare och serverprototypen 21 procent snabbare jämfört med Dramatifys implementation. / Dramatify is providing TV and film production companies with a software as a service for project management. The web application is accessible from any device with a modern web browser from anywhere in the world. Dramatify were having performance issues with high latency and needed help to implement cache for maximum performance gain. To solve the problem, a research was conducted where information about suitable ap-plications to implement, test and analyze prototypes for storing data in cache. The result was two prototypes, one for the client and one for the server, for managing cache. Performance testing was done with automatic tests on multiple devices in different web browsers. The tests was collecting rele-vant data to measure the performance in conjunction to the original imple-mentation. When analyzing the collected test data, it showed that the client prototype was 32 percent faster and that the server prototype was 21 per-cent faster than the original implementation.

A market survey conducted on students currently studying at different universities in Sweden showed that a majority of students either were in need or previously had been in need of a platform where solely students can buy and sell everyday services to each other. Furthermore, the survey showed that a majority of the students in question found it very important that a web application is easily navigated and that they can find what they are looking for with as few clicks as possible. The purpose of this study was to examine how different aspects of a web application intended for students in Sweden affects navigability in terms of the number of clicks needed to perform various tasks on said web application. This was done by iteratively developing and assessing a website based on research within the area, navigability measures as well as qualitative and quantitative feedback from user testing. The results suggest that a higher degree of navigability was obtained when the structure of the web application was made broader through more direct links to and from different nodes. It also seems to be of importance that users were certain of where a click of a button would take them in the overall structure, through effective labeling and placement.

Water quality data collection, storage, and access is a difficult task and significant work has gone into methods to store and disseminate these data. We present a tool to disseminate research in a simple method that does not replace but extends and leverages these tools. In the United States, the federal government maintains two systems to fill that role for hydrological data: the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Information System (NWIS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Storage and Retrieval System (STORET), since superseded by the Water Quality Portal (WQP). The Consortium of the Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI) has developed the Hydrologic Information System (HIS) to standardize search and discovery of these data as well as other observational time series datasets. Additionally, CUAHSI developed and maintains HydroShare.org as a web portal for researchers to store and share hydrology data in a variety of formats including spatial geographic information system data. We present the Tethys Platform based Water Quality Data Viewer (WQDV) web application that uses these systems to provide researchers and local monitoring organizations with a simple method to archive, view, analyze, and distribute water quality data. WQDV provides an archive for non-official or preliminary research data and access to those data that have been collected but need to be distributed prior to review or inclusion in the state database. WQDV can also accept subsets of data downloaded from other sources, such as the EPA WQP. WQDV helps users understand what local data are available and how they relate to the data in larger databases. WQDV presents data in spatial (maps) and temporal (time series graphs) forms to help the users analyze and potentially screen the data sources before export for additional analysis. WQDV provides a convenient method for interim data to be widely disseminated and easily accessible in the context of a subset of official data. We present WQDV using a case study of data from Utah Lake, Utah, United States of America.

Företaget Telia har en webbapplikation som är under utveckling och ska fungera som en internportal för kunder till företaget. De upplever en bristande prestanda i frontenddelen av applikationen i form av långa laddningstider. De vill därför undersöka möjligheter för optimering av prestandan för deras webbapplikation, i hopp om att förbättra användarupplevelsen. Målet var att undersöka möjligheter för tillämpning av olika optimeringstekniker som kan förbättra delar av prestandan med nära koppling till användarupplevelsen.  I detta arbete undersöktes tidigare forskning inom ämnet användarupplevelse relaterat till digitala produkter. Det gjordes även undersökning av liknande arbeten, lämpliga prestandamått och optimeringstekniker. För att testa, analysera och utvärdera optimeringsteknikerna skapades automatiska tester som lagrade mätdata på valda prestandamått. Därefter analyserades mätdata från testerna för att kunna föreslå vidareutveckling för Telias webbapplikation. En analys av mätdata visade en förbättring av Telias webbapplikation för de två undersökta prestandamåtten med 33% respektive 35%. / The company Telia has a web application that is under development and will serve as an internal portal for clients of the company. They experience a lack of performance in the frontend part of the application in the form of long loading times. They therefore want to explore possibilities for optimizing the performance of their web application in hope of improving the user experience. The goal was to investigate possibilities for the application of different optimization techniques that can improve parts of the performance with close connection to the user experience. For this thesis, previous research was examined in the field of user experience related to digital products. Research of similar work such as appropriate performance measures and optimization techniques was also conducted. To test, analyse and evaluate the optimization techniques, automatic tests were created that stored measurement data on selected performance metrics. Measurement data from the tests was then analysed in order to suggest further development for Telia’s web application. An analysis of the measurement data showed an overall improvement in Telia’s web application performance for the two examined performance metrics by 33% and 35%respectively.

Introduction: Blazor is a new framework and current research show that there is a lack of performance comparisons. Therefore, a need to compare and evaluate this new Blazor framework is ought to be requested to show if it can compete with one of the best and most used frameworks, Angular. It is also one of the few web developing frameworks that has moved away from using JavaScript and therefore a comparison with a framework that uses JavaScript will be very interesting. Aim: The aim of this study is to make a performance comparison between two web applications using the Angular and Blazor frameworks. I will evaluate the performance and present the results to see if Blazor can compete with Angular as a modern web development framework. More specifically, the study aims to answer the following research question: Based on a performance evaluation would it be favorable for a developer or company to consider usingthe Blazor framework over the Angular framework when developing web applications? Method: I started by doing a literature review of the field I wanted to research. I used du.se library search engine, which had access to the DiVa portal, Google scholar, Summon and Libris etc. The literature was found using the keywords “Blazor”, “Angular”, “Web application”, “Framework”, “Comparison” and “Evaluation”. Thereafter, two web applications were developed for the purpose of performance evaluation of the two frameworks. An evaluation tool was used to create the report based on the measurement criterions: “First Contentful Paint”, “Time to Interactive”, “Speed Index”, “Total Blocking Time”, “Largest Contentful Paint” and “Cumulative Layout Shift”. When evaluating I summed up which framework that was more favorable in each category and displayed it in tables and graphs. Results: I found that the Angular framework was more favourable in 4 out of the 6 criterions. Even though Angular performed better overall it showed some very unstable performance results during the twenty tests. Blazor displayed a stable performance throughout all twenty tests in all categories and was very fast and responsive once the initial load of the client was done. Conclusions: Based on the results Angular was the more favourable framework during my tests, due to overall performance. But the Angular framework showed too many inconsistencies during the tests to call it superior, meanwhile Blazor performed very stable results. This indicates that the Blazor framework can possibly compete with the Angular framework as a modern web development framework. Thus, my conclusion is that it would be favourable for developers and companies to consider using the Blazor framework for new projects, especially if they have previous experience with the C# language or are new to web developement.