Semantic Browsing Alexander Faaborg Research Assistant MIT Media Lab Carl Lagoze Senior Research Associate Cornell University Information Science ECDL 2003

1. Using Semantic Metadata 2. Creating Semantic Metadata 3. Future Work / Conclusion 4. Questions Agenda

Section 1 What should be the user interface for the Semantic Web? Section 1

A User Interface For the Semantic Web The Web:

A User Interface For the Semantic Web The Semantic Web: (Jeeves is smarter)

A User Interface For the Semantic Web User Interface 1: Change Nothing, The Semantic Web is Server-Side

A User Interface For the Semantic Web User Interface 2: The Anthropomorphic Client-Side Agent

A User Interface For the Semantic Web Hey funky blue head, go buy me concert tickets!

…this is the wrong approach for the time being Our ability to represent knowledge currently exceeds our ability to process natural language If you ask the agent to do something, and it can’t, it will annoy the user User Interface

A User Interface For the Semantic Web User Interface 3: The Augmented Web Browser

Passive user interface agent that enhances the functionality of an existing Web browser User stays in control Agent is always running in the background, monitoring what the user is doing Agent only displays information when it has it, otherwise it stays quiet: fail-soft No digital head, just a smart application A User Interface For the Semantic Web

The Web Task Pane The Web Task Pane integrates itself with Internet Explorer through COM interoperability: It knows what IE knows (like knowing what page the user is on) It can directly control IE (like forwarding the user to new web page) A User Interface For the Semantic Web

Looking at the UI you can see how: “the Semantic Web is an extension of the current web” The Web The Semantic Web A User Interface For the Semantic Web

Browser-like tasks that logically extend beyond the current page Semantically related information on the Web increases navigation choices Navigation that extends beyond “back” and “forward” buttons A User Interface For the Semantic Web

The overall goal of this project was to show how semantic metadata can improve the functionality of web browsers Web Usability

Donald Norman’s View of Interface Design: All communication between the Designer and the User takes place through the system image

Web Usability Alan Cooper’s View of Interface Design:

Web Usability The Semantic Web is a new Manifest Model for the Web

Motivation 1: A data model should match the way the user understands the data Web Usability

(both the designer and user know this is a sequence of pages)

Web Usability (the Web Browser doesn’t have a clue)

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Motivation 2: With semantic metadata, users no longer have to perform repetitive actions Web Usability

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Motivation 3: With semantic metadata, users can navigate based on semantic relations Web Usability

A simple navigational structure for a modern art Web site

Web Usability Some of the many semantic links the users may perceive in the data

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Section 2 How is this Semantic Metadata Created? Section 1

Creating Semantic Metadata Site Annotator

Creating Semantic Metadata Web Annotate Pane

Creating Semantic Metadata Steps: 1.A user authors RDF metadata using the Web Annotate Pane 2. The RDF metadata is uploaded to a web server as a /index.xml file (like a robots.txt file, but the opposite) 3. The Web Task Pane searches each domain the user browses to for a /index.xml file to provide contextually relevant information and tasks

Creating Semantic Metadata Steps: 1.A user authors RDF metadata using the Web Annotate Pane 2. The RDF metadata is uploaded to a web server as a /index.xml file (like a robots.txt file, but the opposite) 3. The Web Task Pane searches each domain the user browses to for a /index.xml file to provide contextually relevant information and tasks

Creating Semantic Metadata 2. The RDF metadata is uploaded to a web server as a /index.xml file (like a robots.txt file, but the opposite) Other Options: 1. or download xml files with RDF metadata 2. Upload to a web repository (DMOZ) 3. Upload anywhere so a spider can find it (Google) Need Web of Trust

Creating Semantic Metadata Using the Web Annotate Pane Create an RDF Triple

Creating Semantic Metadata Using the Web Annotate Pane Create an RDF Sequence or Bag

Creating Semantic Metadata Using the Web Annotate Pane Import and View RDF Schema

Creating Semantic Metadata Using the Web Annotate Pane Save, View, and Delete RDF Statements

Creating Semantic Metadata Creating an RDF Triple

Creating Semantic Metadata UI:XML: Graph:

Creating Semantic Metadata UI:XML: Graph: Note the bright and bold brush strokes

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Creating Semantic Metadata Creating an RDF Sequence or Bag

Creating Semantic Metadata UI:XML: Graph: </rdf:Bag

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Section 3 How does this work relate to the future of the Semantic Web? Section 3

Conclusion The Task Pane UI is still a good decision, even for more complicated tasks:

From Spinning the Semantic Web Fensel, Hendler, Lieberman, Wahlster XMLHTML XHTML UPML OWL RDF RDFS Currently these applications only deal with lower level semantic web technologies Conclusion

Final Points 1.A passive UI agent like the Web Task Pane is the best user interface for the immediate future of the Semantic Web 2.A data model should match the way the user understands the data 3.With semantic metadata, users no longer have to perform repetitive actions 4.With semantic metadata, users can navigate based on semantic relations 5.Tools to create semantic metadata need to be targeted at computer users, not computer scientists

Questions