Development in PLEs from around the world


 * Back to Development in PLEs Section.
 * Audio File of Presentation Part 1 - Mark Johnson, University of Bolton (MP3 Format - 7.7Mb, Length: 8 minutes).
 * Audio File of Presentation Part 2 - Mark Johnson, University of Bolton (MP3 Format - 5.8Mb, Length: 6 minutes).
 * Notes from Presentation and Discussion on Development in PLEs from around the world - Mark Johnson, University of Bolton.
 * Transcript of MP3 Audio File Presentation by Mark Johnson.

Notes from Presentation and Discussion on Development in PLEs from around the world - Mark Johnson, University of Bolton.
Mark Johnson gave a presentation and demonstration of Flock, which is an aggregator of different services. It can be used:
 * to detect newsfeeds and to set up how they are handled;
 * to handle blogs and the way in which information is submitted;
 * to interface with del.icio.us;
 * with Flickr.

It therefore allows for a considerable amount of personalisation.

Mark also described a new language that has been developed to handle such personalisation. XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) is already being used to describe user interfaces, and now other languages are building on that functionality. XUL (XML User Interface Language), for example, is built around RDF (Resource Description Framework) formatted structures. However, it is not easy to use for development at the moment, although it is well on its way. RDF has power beyond that of XML and, if used with XUL, can provide greater flexibility.

The move towards having a toolset based around a browser is becoming more of a reality.