Efficiently Repairing Internationalization Presentation Failures by Solving Layout Constraints

Abstract

Web developers employ internationalization frameworks to automate web page translations and enable their web apps to more easily communicate with a global audience. However, the change of text size in different languages can lead to distortions in the translated web page's layout. These distortions are known as Internationalization Presentation Failures (IPFs). Debugging these IPFs can be a tedious and error-prone process. Previous research efforts to develop an automatic IPF repair technique could compromise the attractiveness and readability of the repaired web page. In this paper, we present a novel approach that can rapidly repair IPFs and maintain the readability and the attractiveness of the web page. Our approach models the correct layout of a web page as a system of constraints. The solution to the system represents the new and correct layout of the web page that resolves its IPFs. In the evaluation, we found that our approach could more quickly produce repairs that were rated as more attractive and more readable than those produced by a prior state-of-the-art technique.