Automated reverse engineering of hard-coded GUI layouts

Authors:
Christof Lutteroth
Affiliations:
The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Venue:
AUIC '08 Proceedings of the ninth conference on Australasian user interface - Volume 76
Year:
2008

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Abstract

Most GUIs are specified in the form of source code, which hard-codes information relating to the layout of graphical controls. This representation is very lowlevel, and makes GUIs hard to maintain. We suggest a reverse engineering approach that is able to recover a higher-level layout representation of a hardcoded GUI using the Auckland Layout Model, which is based on the mathematical notion of linear programming. This approach allows developers to use existing code and existing tools, as well as specifications on a higher level of abstraction. We show how existing hard-coded GUIs can be extended to support dynamic layout adjustment with very little effort, and how GUIs can be beautified automatically during reverse engineering.