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Web Architecture for Distributed Surface Applications

This is an ongoing project.

Multitouch platforms offer great opportunities for collaborative applications, but to support software development there needs to be a distributed architecture to allow for real-time remote and collocated coordination. There are various platforms with native support for multitouch in large and small devices such as Microsoft Surface, Android, and iOS-supported equipment, how- ever there are numerous practical advantages to targeting web browsers as platforms for application development. Using this approach, applications need no installation process, and can be developed once for a wide range of devices. We are especially interested in distributed apps, whereby co-located teams can collaborate using a combination of shared large surfaces and personal small surfaces such as tablets and smartphones. We are exploring various emergent technologies in the vibrant JavaScript library community, developing and evaluating small prototype applications. Our architecture, PanUI, is emerging as a combination of several libraries and we are developing more extensive applications as proofs of concept. On important lesson is that the nature of the application design seems to change models of software design and development process, similar to the say in which object-oriented programming led to new processes in the 1980s and 1990s.

Partner: Bedarra Research Labs