#26200
TopBlend: An Efficient Implementation of HtmlDiff in Java 
The World Wide Web is growing rapidly with new and changing web content. Detecting changes in web pages is crucial for website masters who care about website integrity. It is also convenient for web surfers who are constantly looking for new products, services, or information on their favorite websites. This paper describes TopBlend, a new HTML differencing tool implemented in Java. TopBlend uses the fast Jacobson-Vo algorithm, which solves the Heaviest Common Subsequence problem, for page comparison. Performance results indicate that TopBlend significantly outperforms a previous HTML differencing tool in most time-consuming jobs, often by 1-2 orders of magnitude. TopBlend allows comparisons to be performed either on the server or client side. The latter has become increasingly powerful enough to offload busy servers by performing heavy computations. TopBlend can present the results in either a merged HTML view or a more convenient side-by-side view for web pages with complex graphics designs. TopBlend has been integrated with the AT&T Internet Difference Engine (AIDE) and can also be employed easily by other website tracking services.
Chen, Yih-Farn, Fred Douglis, Huale Huang and Kiem-Phong Vo. AT&T (2001). Articles>Information Design>Programming
#25978
Topic-Oriented Information Development and Its Role in Globalization
For all of its upside, XML-based single-source publishing has proven to be expensive and complicated to implement. XML-based single sourcing requires significant tool development, data conversion, and system integration prior to realizing the benefits of repurposing and reuse. To mitigate this, some vertical industries have developed their own XML tag sets. While successful on their own, these vertical industry efforts have not been extensible to other industries. A new XML-based approach to information development is the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).
Trippe, Bill. Gilbane Report (2004). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>XML
#23218
Toward Usable Browse Hierarchies for the Web 
The goal of the following study was to determine the potential usefulness of tracking traversal patterns through a browse hierarchy as a way to monitor confusion and determine its source. The major conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that this method is a useful and insightful way to monitor user experience.
Risden, Kirsten. Microsoft (1999). Articles>Information Design>Web Design
#18522
Towards Multimodal Public Information Systems 
In the future e-Home, information from various sources, located both globally and locally, are at hand for a wide range of tasks. Many of these tasks involve finding out about public authorities' rules and regulations. The Public Tax authorities, for instance, provide hundreds of documents on their web site (forms, FAQ’s, tax rules, etc.). Currently, the user is restricted to navigating and searching these information sources by clicking hyperlinks or typing in keywords in a search box. Suppose a citizen needs to know what the local tax in his area is. By providing the keywords “kommunalskatt” (local tax) and “Linköping” to the search engine five documents are retrieved and the user can continue clicking on the provided links to see if the answer is provided in the documents found. On the other hand, supposing that the user had the ability to state the information problem in natural language.
Merkel, Magnus and Arne Jonsson. Linkopings Universitet (2002). Articles>Information Design>Government>Multimedia
#27078
Transforming Documentation from the XML Doctypes Used for the Apache Website to DITA: A Case Study
A primary factor behind the enormous interest in XML is the support it provides for transforming documents to meet the needs of information-processing applications as well as human readers working with HTML, print, and other presentation media. This case study reviews the issues we confronted, the tools we implemented, and the procedures we adopted to transform a documentation set from one XML document type to another, and from XML to HTML and Adobe PDF. The documentation set for Xalan, the Apache XSL transformer based largely on code donated by Lotus/IBM, is written in XML, using document types shared by the projects on the Apache XML website. To present Xalan reference releases to IBM project groups, the Cambridge Advanced Technology Group has set up build procedures to transform the Xalan XML documentation to DITA, an extensible XML information typing architecture currently under development in IBM. After verifying that the DITA output conforms to its declared document type, the build publishes the DITA documentation set as HTML and as PDF.
Leslie, Donald M. Cover Pages (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA
#23255
#29395
Two Approaches to Modularity: Comparing the STOP Approach with Structured Writing
The first time I heard of the STOP paper was sometime in the mid 80's when the historian of technical writing, John Brockman, phoned me to ask if my Information Mapping method of structured writing derived from the STOP method. At the time I told Brockman that there was no direct relationship between our two approaches since I'd never read the paper. When the editor of this journal sent me the STOP document in preparation for writing this paper, I read it with delight. Although our two innovations date from the same period, the STOP authors and I were working in two completely different disciplines, cultures, organizations, and locations. These two approaches resulted in modularity - albeit of quite different kinds. The main purpose of this project is to compare and contrast these two approaches to modularity. I should note here that I approach this article principally as an exercise in historical comparison, rather than as an exposition of my current views, about which I will say a bit at the end of this article.
Horn, Robert E. Journal of Computer Documentation (1999). Articles>Information Design>Technical Writing>History
#20829
Two Basic Hypertext Presentation Models
The hypertext world has classically distinguished between two fundamentally different ways of presenting hypertext nodes on the screen: scrolling and cards. Throughout the history of hypertext, designers of hypertext systems have argued about the relative merits of these two contrasting approaches. The proponents of the scrolling model are sometimes called the holy scrollers and the proponents of the card model are called the card sharks. Here are examples of documents I have authored myself in these two models, using pre-WWW hypertext systems.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1995). Articles>Information Design>Hypertext
#26136
I have long wondered why government web sites all over the world tend to use metadata of several different types jumbled together and overlapping. For example, pages with two description metatags or two or three title tags are common. I suspect that most of the replication and confusion has developed for historical reasons.
McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Metadata
#27615
UML 3.0 and the Future of Modeling
The major revision work for UML 2.0 is complete, and it is now an OMG Final Adopted Specification. This is a good time to reflect on UML's future, and the future of model-driven development.
Kobryn, Cris. UML Forum (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML>UML
#21607
This document covers key areas in UML (the Unified Modeling Language), such as Association, Multiplicity, Aggregation, Generalization and diagrams such as the Use Case diagram, Class Diagram, and Sequence Diagram.
Sundaram, Elango. Yahoo (2003). (Farsi) Articles>Information Design>XML>UML
#23254
L'articolo descrive il funzionamento della Classificazione Bibliografica Bliss, 2a edizione (BC2), sistema di classificazione interamente basato su uno schema a faccette, di cui Vanda Broughton è la curatrice insieme a Jack Mills.
Broughton, Vanda. AIB (2001). (Italian) Articles>Information Design>Metadata
#23252
Understanding Information Architecture
This introductory article gives a high-level overview of information architecture from both a theoretical and practical perspective.
Foster, Rudy. USC (2003). Articles>Information Design
#25086
Undoing the Industrial Revolution
The last 200 years have driven centralization and changed the human experience in ways that conflict with evolution. The Internet will reestablish a more balanced, decentralized lifestyle.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Information Design>History
#27033
Unravel the OpenOffice File Format
OpenOffice provides a suite of applications whose native file format consists of a set of XML files, compressed into a ZIP archive. This article explores the basics of the OpenOffice file format.
O'Reilly and Associates (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML>OpenOffice
#23253
Unraveling the Mysteries of Metadata and Taxonomies
Samantha Bailey, formerly at Argus and current lead IA for Wachovia Corporation's Wachovia.com website, talks about the transition from being a consultant to an 'innie' IA, unravels the mysteries of metadata and taxonomies and shares her vision of the future of IA.
Bailey, Samantha and Christina Wodtke. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design>Metadata
#18708
Yahoo is truly one of the Best of the Net, as it has filled an enormous void in the areas of browsing and searching Internet-based information. So I hope you'll believe that I am truly sad as I predict the death of Yahoo. It seems inevitable, as Yahoo's organization, its information architecture, will collapse under the weight of the high volume of entries. And, unfortunately, searching won't solve the problem of volume.
Rosenfeld, Louis. CMC Magazine (1995). Articles>Information Design>Web Design
#27744
With XForms technology, you can provide a lightweight editor for an existing collection of XForms. Explore an approach to form authoring for simple, quick changes that improve the effectiveness of data collected. Typical form editing requires a separate application even for the most trivial changes. XForms manipulates XML data and submits it to a server, making it an ideal choice to author these trivial changes and submit them for redeployment.
Speicher, Steve K., Jan J. Kratky and Kevin E. Kelly. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML
#27034
Use Character and Entity References
Not all characters are available on the keyboard! This hack shows you how to represent such characters in an XML document by using decimal and hexadecimal character references, and how to represent entities by using entity references.
O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML
#26890
Use Data URIs to Include Media in XML
There are many ways to link to non-XML content within XML, including binary content. Sometimes you need to roll all such external content directly into the XML. Data scheme URIs are one way to specify a full resource within a URI, which you can then use in XML constructs. In this tip, Uche Ogbuji shows how to use this to bundle related media into a single file.
Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>Multimedia>XML
#20483
When you place content, Adobe® InDesign® 2.0 doesn't just add the graphics and text to your document—it keeps track of the original files as well. You can use the links to update the data if the original file changes, to track down missing graphic information, or to replace a graphic with another, without losing the transformations you've applied. And when you work with text files, it's usually best to remove the link altogether.
Adobe. Articles>Information Design>Document Design>Hypertext
#29960
Use PHP to create XForms, Part 1: Creating a PHP XForms library
This two-part article series is designed to get PHP developers up to speed in leveraging Web 2.0 XForms forms for their PHP forms development so that they can finally put their outdated Web 1.0 HTML forms away. This will be accomplished by creating a library of functions that generate XForms elements when called upon. In this article, Part 1 of a two-part series, developers will create the XForms library using PHP, allowing each function to take in parameters and output XForm elements.
Anderson, Tyler. IBM (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL
#29959
Use PHP to create XForms, Part 2: Using the PHP XForms Library to Create Useful XForms
This two-part article seriess is designed to get PHP developers up to speed in leveraging Web 2.0 XForms forms for their PHP forms development so that they can finally put their outdated Web 1.0 HTML forms away. In Part 1, you created the PHP XForms library. In this article, Part 2, you will enhance the library to include some error checking and convenience functions to help make using the library more manageable, and lastly you'll demo the library by creating a proof of concept XForm.
Anderson, Tyler. IBM (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL
#25839
While no one would argue that email is useless, continued inefficient management of emails makes email worse than useless—--it makes them dangerous.
Mancini, John. e-Doc (2005). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Information Design>Email
#23589
User Preference Tests: Show and Tell for Information Design
This article relates the author's experiences with user preference tests. User preference tests help a technical communicator make design decisions. To illustrate this point, the author describes a real-world scenario, the prototyping efforts involved in preparing for a user preference test, and three types of user preference tests.
Corbin Nichols, Michelle. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Information Design>User Centered Design
