Abstract

Many Web design and usability problems have a tendency to recur in various projects. Web designers often try to reinvent solutions from scratch, because the current Web design guidelines are hard to remember, and difficult to use effectively by novice Web designers or software engineers who are not familiar with user interfaces and Web design principles. Furthermore, current Web authoring tools have long been available to assist developers in integrating many aspects of Web applications, although the majority of these environments do not provide a mechanism for explicitly ensuring the usability of the developed Web user interfaces. For our research, we will describe a pattern language supported by an innovative tool for Web applications design. Using this tool, the patterns are shown to be more than an alternative design tool to current Web design guidelines and tools. We perceive them as an ideal vehicle for gathering best design practices, and transferring by means of Web authoring tools the knowledge of usability experts to software engineers unfamiliar with usability engineering.