Automated reverse engineering of hard-coded GUI layouts

Research output: Chapter or section in a book/report/conference proceedingChapter in a published conference proceeding

Abstract

Most GUIs are specified in the form of source code, which hard-codes information relating to the layout of graphical controls. This representation is very lowlevel, and makes GUIs hard to maintain. We suggest a reverse engineering approach that is able to recover a higher-level layout representation of a hardcoded GUI using the Auckland Layout Model, which is based on the mathematical notion of linear programming. This approach allows developers to use existing code and existing tools, as well as specifications on a higher level of abstraction. We show how existing hard-coded GUIs can be extended to support dynamic layout adjustment with very little effort, and how GUIs can be beautified automatically during reverse engineering.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 9th Australasian User Interface Conference (AUIC), 2008
Subtitle of host publicationVolume 76
EditorsB. Plimmer, G. Weber
Place of PublicationDarlinghurst, Australia
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages65-73
Number of pages9
ISBN (Print)9781920682576
Publication statusPublished - 2008

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