Web Browser / Digital Textbook Browser as Desktop Application: Interprocess Communication, The Facilitation of Education Technology Features and Education Workflow Scenarios across Platforms

W3C Technical Architecture Group,

Daniel Appelquist,

Domenic Denicola,

Harry Halpin,

Marcos Caceres,




I would like to broach some Web architecture topics towards providing a next set of education technology features for students.  Many of the features that we can envision together involve students utilizing mobile computers, utilizing multiple applications, or tabs in applications, scenarios with fluid interoperability between applications including browsers; in addition to digital textbooks are numerous web-based educational software solutions, e.g. courseware.






For our convenience, here are some hyperlinks, we can consider all Web-based and browser-based education technology, e.g. digital textbooks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_technology , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_software .





Web-based educational software, e.g. course websites, and digital textbooks are browser topics; thus, the interoperability topics are broached at the W3C.  There are more hypotheses pertaining to interprocess communication than there are operating systems.




On the topic of JavaScript-based solutions, Web Intents (http://webintents.org/, http://www.w3.org/TR/web-intents/) and schema (http://schema.org), which could facilitate a scripting layer for Web-based educational software, digital textbooks, including as the set of verbs is extensible.  Also possible, in schema-based approaches, applications could express to browsers that they interoperate with various data types, and providing verbs per data type for context menus on objects in hypertext documents.  Per platform, per data type, browsers could process interprocess platform data, e.g. shell and registry data, to generate context menus in browsers per objects in hypertext.





WebOLE is possible where objects have URI verbs, implement interfaces, which, from hypertext contexts, map to JavaScript or browser implementations.  Adorning XML, XHTML, with semantic content and interface mappings to scripting language implementations could be topics.  Web components and interfaces could be topical.




Interprocess communication topics also include component object approaches pertaining to expanding or processing XML (resembling XML macros or web components) with computation utilizing data or models across application domains or data boundaries.  Contextual macro expansion or contextual web components might, for example, relay read-only document object model interfaces to other desktop applications or might relay interfaces expressing parallel semantic or document structure; that is, tree or graph traversal with multiple stacks.




In addition to the interoperability of browsers with hypertext and semantic objects are topics pertaining to the interoperability of browsers with multimedia content such as interactive video (http://navmotion.com/); digital textbooks are multimedia.




Towards the topics of “educational workflows”, though ideas might be better expressed with storyboards or videos, specific scenario topics include, but are not limited to: (1) A student goes to a course website for the first time, possibly before the course commences; which features are possible as the course's web pages load into their browser? (2) A student goes to a course website during a quarter or semester; in addition to multimedia content, which gestures can students do on web content to convenience themselves interoperably with other applications? (3) A student uses the Web while doing schoolwork, e.g. combinations of browsers and document authoring software, which features can convenience students? (4) How can calendar applications, notes software, personal information manager software, et cetera, interoperate with educational software, contributing to ergonomically enhanced educational workflows?













Kind regards,




Adam Sobieski