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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hansen, Malte, Moreno-Lumbreras, David, Hasselbring, Wilhelm
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00004
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author Hansen, Malte
Moreno-Lumbreras, David
Hasselbring, Wilhelm
author_facet Hansen, Malte
Moreno-Lumbreras, David
Hasselbring, Wilhelm
contents Software visualization, which uses data from dynamic program analysis, can help to explore and understand the behavior of software systems. It is common that large software systems offer a web interface for user interaction. Usually, available web interfaces are not regarded in software visualization tools. This paper introduces additions to the web-based live tracing software visualization tool ExplorViz: We add an embedded web view for instrumented applications in the 3D visualization to ease interaction with the given applications and enable the exploration of the thereby displayed HTML content. Namely, the Document Object Model (DOM) is visualized via a three-dimensional representation of the HTML structure in same-origin contexts. Our visualization approach is evaluated in a preliminary user study. The study results give insights into the potential use cases, benefits, and shortcomings of our implemented approach. Based on our study results, we propose directions for further research to support the visual exploration of web interfaces and explore use cases for the combined visualization of software cities and HTML structure. Video URL: https://youtu.be/wBWKlbvzOOE
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_00004
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle HTML Structure Exploration in 3D Software Cities
Hansen, Malte
Moreno-Lumbreras, David
Hasselbring, Wilhelm
Software Engineering
Software visualization, which uses data from dynamic program analysis, can help to explore and understand the behavior of software systems. It is common that large software systems offer a web interface for user interaction. Usually, available web interfaces are not regarded in software visualization tools. This paper introduces additions to the web-based live tracing software visualization tool ExplorViz: We add an embedded web view for instrumented applications in the 3D visualization to ease interaction with the given applications and enable the exploration of the thereby displayed HTML content. Namely, the Document Object Model (DOM) is visualized via a three-dimensional representation of the HTML structure in same-origin contexts. Our visualization approach is evaluated in a preliminary user study. The study results give insights into the potential use cases, benefits, and shortcomings of our implemented approach. Based on our study results, we propose directions for further research to support the visual exploration of web interfaces and explore use cases for the combined visualization of software cities and HTML structure. Video URL: https://youtu.be/wBWKlbvzOOE
title HTML Structure Exploration in 3D Software Cities
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00004