Conxilla

Conxilla: A web-based GUI for collaborative conceptual browsing

Rationale

How could a concept browser like Conzilla work together or be embedded into a traditional web browser? There is a basic version of a web-based Conzilla available, called Conxilla. However, this is just a proof of concept for showing and embedding already published (from within Conzilla) into web pages. Conxilla does not have any UI or specific integration into web browsers yet.

The idea of this project is to first investigate existing web based conceptual mapping solutions to get an idea of the requirements and possibilities of such a web-based GUI. The focus should lie on usability and user-interface design.

Realization and Results

The outcome of this project should be a functional prototype of Conxilla using widgets of an appropriate AJAX toolkit (e.g. Dojo, this has been used for a first and very basic proof-of-concept implementation).

The GUI should have the following features:

• Toolbars or buttons to easily access frequently used functionalities
• Colors and/or icons to indicate special kinds of concepts (links, attached content, reused in a different context, etc)
• List of available contributions
• Metadata presentation (this can be done using the AJAX version of the SHAME framework)

Related Projects

Existing

• Conzilla concept browser
• Collaborilla collaboration server
• SHAME metadata editor and presenter, AJAX version

Planned

• Conziliator: a basic version of this RDF-to-JSON converter for Conzilla related data exists already in the Conzilla CVS.

Third Party Projects

Other slightly related projects can be used for getting ideas for a user interface, e.g. Zitgist, CmapTools, Compendium.