Spoken Dialogue Technology presents an extensive coverage of spoken dialogue systems. To establish a coherent view the author has analysed design with dialogue theory and technologies, marking it out from previous papers published in this subject area. The book allows students and practitioners to design and test dialogue systems using several available development environments. This practical orientation is available otherwise only in reference manuals supplied with software development kits. By acknowledging current and future research, McTear does not only discuss development environments in relation to VoiceXML. The book covers research in spoken dialogue systems, with an extensive coverage of the most relevant theoretical issues as well as a critical evaluation of current research prototypes. Supplementary materials, code, links to resources etc will enable readers to develop and test their own systems. In the past such materials have been difficult to track down, available only on a range of disparate web sites.