Section: Software

Wmtrace

Participant : Olivier Chapuis [correspondant] .

Wmtrace  [42] includes two tools that help us study an individual user's window management activity. The first tool runs in the background of an X Window session and continuously logs information about windows and how they are being manipulated. The second uses a VCR-like interface (Figure 7 ) to replay the resulting logs and analyze the entire session. This tool provides several ways to filter the logs and extract high-level information, including interactive move events and mouse speed. Both tools allow HCI researchers to perform qualitative and quantitative statistical analyses of window management activity.

Figure 7. VCR-like interface, session overview and sample plots of mouse trajectories (black) and mouse clicks (red)

• Web: http://insitu.lri.fr/~chapuis/software/wmtrace/ .

• ACM: H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Windowing systems

• Software benefit: see [42] , [47] , [41] .

• License: GPL

• Type of human computer interaction: Deamon and Graphique

• OS/Middleware: X Window (deamon) and Java (VCR interface)

• Required library or software: all X libraries (daemon) and Java (VCR interface)

• Programming language: * C and Java