AERO: An Extensible Framework for Adaptive Web Layout Synthesis

Abstract

We present AERO, an extensible framework for adaptive web layout synthesis. The goal is to provide an underlying software architecture to allow general adaptive layout behaviors. The framework consists of a 1) a suite of templates specified in HTML/CSS, 2) A hierarchical, highly customizable scoring function specification and 3) An evaluation engine that leverages native browser rendering to rapidly render content and apply the scoring functions. Unlike current responsive layout frameworks for web (e.g., Twitter Bootstrap) that have pre-configured grid layouts that adapt in a manually pre-encoded content-independent manner, AERO allows layout to adapt automatically based on multiple content-dependent criteria like aesthetic quality, cropability of individual images, layout A/B testing results, Ad placement etc.