Graphical User Interface

In the next years, we plan to implement several graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for FOXY, be it to ease configuration (and therefore usability) or to support content extraction tasks. The structure of the XML configuration files and their consistent representation in Java (see section 2.2.2) strongly supports the development of configuration-GUIs. This graphical configuration utility should especially be designed to meet the needs of non-expert users.

Additionally, to assist the user in the task of selecting important parts of a web-page, a browser-like GUI that offers facilities for selecting HTML-content in real time can be implemented (This GUI could be combined with the mentioned configuration user-interface.). It has to provide the user ways to graphically ''pick'' the parts (of a web page) of her liking directly in the browser window. For example, Firefox ([17], Mozilla's ([18]) popular web browser can be extended with add-ons. These add-ons - which add new functionality to the browser - are realized with the help of XUL ([19]), the XML User Interface Language. This seems an efficient way to combine the browser's graphical capabilities with FOXY's extraction functionality.

Another possible user interface may be be created together with the implementation of specialized pre- or post-processing modules, needed for automated content (or information, respectively) extraction tasks (see section 4.4.5).