A cross-platform application environment for nomadic desktop computing

The possibility to uniformly access the WWW using a standard web browser has fostered the development of nomadic desktop computing, allowing nomadic users to run their applications from nearly any location providing access to the Internet. In this paper, we propose an approach to nomadic desktop computing based on the idea of dynamically deploying and executing personalized applications on the desktop system currently used by a nomadic user. We present a cross-platform application environment that automatically adapts itself to the requirements and configuration of a nomadic desktop application and enables the seamless execution and migration of applications across heterogeneous desktop computer systems. The implementation of our approach is outlined and its use in ongoing research projects is demonstrated.