Nilanthi Seneviratne Meghavi Doshi iAnnotate: Digital Ink Annotation on the Web

Concepts Annotation Digital Annotation Ink vs. Text Annotation

Motivation Need to save the content in a desktop application format to annotate and save the information Sharing information found in a webpage Share a link as well as a description Need to switch between the description and the web page Easy Information Sharing Big Picture – a system where annotations are interpreted and indexed for easy searching

Project Allow digital ink annotation on the web browser Save and retrieve the annotation Basic Reflow of the annotation Convert this implementation into an Internet Explorer extension

Converting to an IE extension Two methods: 1. Adds an ink canvas to the browser – not plausible because it would be two different projects instead of one. 2. Uses Nilanthi’s code – path taken

Converting to an IE extension Attempts: Inserting a Silverlight object into the extension

Converting to an IE extension Attempts: Inserting a Silverlight application into the extension The application is readable only – so cannot assign a host or source Inserting Nilanthi’s code into the extension Ability to add correct references since this is not a “Silverlight project” in VS 2008 Is there another way?

Digital Ink Annotation Silverlight object added to the webpage Transparent Detects mouse/pen movement to display ink

Saving and Retrieving Serialises the annotation as an XML string Server saves this into a file Retrieves the annotation by de-serialising the XML string Displays it on the overlay

Basic Reflow of the Annotation Groups the annotation as per the bounding box Anchors the annotation to the closest HTML element So while re-rending it, the annotation is placed where the HTML element appears

Evaluation Planning to do a Usability Test on the project developed so far. One pilot test Three tests to identify major problems Fix those problems Four more tests for the final evaluation

Conclusion Ink annotation is possible on web browsers Basic framework is fairly consistent across several platforms May or may not be possible to add a Silverlight object/application through an IE extension. A great learning experience How to tackle difficult problems How to research relevant subjects Learnt how to work in.Net enviornment, C#, IE extension and Silverlight

Questions?