Dash

Abstract

Popular application suites, as well as specialized apps, are designed for workflows in which users focus on a single task for extended periods of time. These application silos slow down the many other workflows that require users to move with agility between tasks in a single working session. This is particularly true for creative people who have personalized patterns of gathering, organizing, and presenting information from a variety of sources. Moreover, each application comes with its own learning curve and data model, restricting users seeking to extend their workflows and in some cases, losing data through poor data transferring mechanisms such as clipboard copy and paste. Dash is an open component-based hypermedia system that provides what we believe to be a best of breed set of components. While each component can be used in isolation as less full featured versions of an analogous application, Dash allows users to interoperate components and compose their own workflows without losing data or expending effort while switching between tasks. As hypertext allowed users to flexibly move between texts, Dash allows users to flexibly move between tasks.