Semantics in the wild: new jOWL wine Demo

I've prepared a more ambitious jOWL demo that shows off some of the reasoning capability. For the unacquainted, jOWL is a 'semantic' javascript library, under development by OntologyOnline.org, with the intention to make OWL-RDFS files (see also the previous article on OWL) a little more accessible, and thereby bring web3.0 technology another step closer to the user.

The thing about the demo that cheers up the geek within is: there is absolute no server-side scripting involved and no database access is required, all the reasoning is taken care of by your own computer.
It's a great example on how added semantics might influence your future browsing experience. The visuals don't change (web2.0 got that packed to go for us), but the user experience could. There is suddenly some 'smartness' in browsing, and it is something one might quickly get accustomed to. Like all great technology, you should hardly notice it until it's gone, most of it happens under the hood.

I'm still polishing some of the details, and will continue to do so for quite some time, adding more features as we go, but the code is crossbrowser compatible (tested on Firefox and Internet explorer) and I wanted to share that with you.
Expect more demo's in the future as well.

Comments are possible at our discussion group.

jOWL, a javascript library for traversing OWL-RDFS documents

I have started working on jOWL, a jQuery plugin for traversing OWL-RDFS documents. The ambitious intention is to deliver a script that smoothes out cross-browser issues between Firefox and Internet explorer when dealing with OWL syntax and at the same time greatly simplifies traversing OWL-RDFS documents. I'm using a mix of Xpath expressions and jQuery functionality to do so.

My main motivitation for writing this library is to see if I would be able to replicate the behaviour of the freebase-dependent wine widget in a manner that doesn't require database or complex server interactions (Imagine!). Just plain old HTML, some javascript and an OWL ontology file.

While it isn't release ready, the results look very promising and there is already quite some functionality to look at. Have a look at the simple Demo.

All it currently takes to deliver similar functionality is the following lines, it should bear no secrets if you are a little familiar with jQuery:

//load the owl file
jOWL.load('wine.xml', startDemo);

function startDemo(owl){
   //Creates a panel to display individuals
   var individuals = $('#individuals').owl_individuals(owl);

   //Creates a panel to display class, child and parent relations
   var navbar = $('#navbar').owl_navbar(owl);

   //lets this component talk to the individuals panel
   navbar.addListener(individuals); 

   //Creates an autocomplete field, options to refine are possible
   var autocomplete = $('#owlauto').owl_autocomplete(owl);

  //lets the autocomplete field talk (provide input) to 
   the other components.
   autocomplete.addListener(navbar).addListener(individuals);
}

The plan is to extend this functionality further, while keeping syntax required to interact with the OWL-RDFS document as simple as possible. I intend to update this demo page with more examples and documentation as I progress further with this library. I'm currently testing it with the prototypical wine ontology, but plan to expand the test to other ontologies when the time is ripe.