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typing tool, which on the one hand saves development time and on the other is a helpful means to meet the
needs and wishes of a customer.
The W3DT Web-Designer was developed using Perl 5.0 and Wafe [see Neumann and Nusser 1993], a prototyping
environment for the X-environment. The Web-Designer provides an easy to use graphical browser for
the W3DT methodology. The user is able to draw and edit all the W3DT-constructs in a very straight-forward
manner. Large sites with several hundreds of pages are modeled within very short time. By means of the hierarchical
refinement, the models are kept clear and easy to comprehend.
Generating a prototype of the Cybersound site
In order to demonstrate the functionality of the W3DT Web-Designer, we will now take a closer look at the
CD-Form part of the Cybersound example introduced in the previous section. The first step in generating a
running system for this model with the W3DT Web-Designer is the definition of a Site. Essentially, this means
that the user provides basic information on the target system. Among others, the directories for HTML files or
CGI-scripts have to be specified.
Once a site is defined, the user can start to add the objects of the W3DT design methodology and to link them
together with static and dynamic links as shown in figure 2. The button bar on the left side of the window
provides easy access to all the necessary W3DT constructs.
Figure 3: General Form Attributes
Any time during the design process, new Layouts can be created. A Layout basically consists of a header, a
footer and other attributes, which will be used in all pages and CGI-scripts throughout the system. Once a
Layout has been created, it can be assigned to any page in the diagram. This helps to achieve a uniform "look
and feel" of the Web-site. After having designed the information and access structures of the site it is necessary
to set the page-specific attributes. Through context-sensitive windows all attributes of the currently selected
element can be modified. Figure 3 shows as an example the attribute window of a Form.
Here all relevant information of the page like its name, a comment, its language, or the responsible organization
can be entered. Much of this data is used for the generation of helpful reports for the administration of a
site. By means of the index-tab Form all dialog elements of a Form can be defined (shown in figure 4). Text
fields, check boxes, selections and all the other form elements supported by HTML 2.0 can be inserted. Layout
and form elements are important attributes for the generation of a prototype of the designed site.