PDA Access to Internet Content: Focus on Forms

Many web applications, in business, personal finances, medicine, sales, and education, are ideal scenarios for the integrated use of different devices, both wired and wireless. From the user's perspective, accessing web content using multiple devices is not enough, there needs to be continuity of task focus and a recognition that each device has particular characteristics. In earlier work we concentrated on dynamic transformation of text, lists, and tables found in web pages and in this paper we examine specifically the transformation of forms for use on small screens. This means, for example, that a user can deal with a complex form on a small screen in a mobile setting, can begin to fill out a form on one machine and complete it on another, or can fill in a form in a collaborative context. Our algorithm has a success rate of over 90% in the transformation of forms occurring in web pages into forms suited for small screens.