MAWA: A Browser Extension for Mobile Web Augmentation

Abstract

In recent years, the usage of mobile browsers has experienced an astonishing growth. Nowadays, most citizens use their mobile phones instead of their laptops to surf the Web for immediate availability. Nevertheless, Web design is performed considering laptops screen dimensions and websites are readjusted to mobile screen resolutions using Responsive Web Design. This conversion to smaller screen resolutions causes some drawbacks to mobile navigation. Web Augmentation is an effective methodology that allows end-users to customize third party websites according to their needs. This technique can mitigate the problems caused by small screen resolutions.

This article introduces MAWA, a Firefox mobile browser extension for Web Augmentation designed to remove and move content in any website using a visual programming technique. The article presents the benefits introduced by MAWA in response to the drawbacks arising when websites are adapted from laptop screen resolutions to mobile dimensions. Evaluation is also introduced in this article where end-users with no programming knowledge have adapted four different websites using the extension. Results show that testers claim that drawbacks presented by mobile browsers are mitigated with the utilization of MAWA.