AbstractsSocial Sciences

CrawLogo: An Experiment in End-User Programming for Web-Enabled Applications

by Johan Nilsson




Institution: Linköping University
Department:
Year: 2003
Keywords: Interdisciplinary studies; CrawLogo; end-user programming; Web-enabled applications; Logo; Turtle geometry; Turtle metaphor; TVÄRVETENSKAP; Social Sciences; Other Social Sciences; Social Sciences Interdisciplinary; Samhällsvetenskap; Annan samhällsvetenskap; Tvärvetenskapliga studier; INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AREAS; TVÄRVETENSKAPLIGA FORSKNINGSOMRÅDEN; Kognitionsvetenskapliga programmet; Cognitive science programme; samhälle/juridik; samhälle/juridik
Record ID: 1346593
Full text PDF: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-2090


Abstract

With the rise of the Web, there is more interest among end-users to create different kinds of software that use elements from the Web or allow for networked interaction between users. Currently however, many available tools for this purpose are hard to use or lack a sufficient level of expressiveness. To provide new insights on the construction of tools that allow end-users to create their own Web-enabled software, this thesis explores design issues and consequences of applying the Turtle metaphor from the Logo-programming language to an end-user programming environment for Web-enabled applications. In order to explore this, CrawLogo was created - a programmable end-user tool that supports the creation of Web-enabled applications using a Turtle-like control metaphor and language adapted from Logo. As a proof-of-concept, several Web-enabled applications were created using this new tool, including CrawLogo Pong, a somewhat alternative version of Atari’s classic Pong game, and a collaborative browsing environment, in which users can browse the Web together. The resulting CrawLogo environment allows for creating Web-enabled applications that - using more traditional programming languages - would be quite complex and require deep technical programming skills. Further, while utilizing a Turtle-like control metaphor in CrawLogo allows for the creation of some new types of applications and some new ways of interacting with the Web, it also raises new problems such as how to successfully design within the CrawLogo metaphor and how to create a meaningful representation of Turtle- geometry-based navigation on the Web.