Multi-platform user interface models by means of the Abstract Platform concept

Model-based user interface development methods offer capabilities to cope with the increasing effort needed for the development of industrial visualization systems. This increasing effort emerges among others from new device classes like smart phones or tablets to be supported. Current modeling languages usually support a dedicated class of platforms, e.g. either PCs or smart phones. Thus, despite of comparable functionality of the user interface, the support of different platforms requires a manual redevelopment of the solution or dedicated transformations towards a modeling language with another platform focus. This paper discusses the introduction of abstract platform models to support multiple platform classes in a single user interface model. In detail, we present an approach for the abstraction of input capabilities of panel PCs and tablets. Furthermore, the effects on the transformation generating the final user interfaces as well as restrictions and benefits of our approach are discussed.