Automation and customization of rendered web pages

ABSTRACT

On the desktop, an application can expect to control its user interface down to the last pixel, but on the World Wide Web, a content provider has no control over how the client will view the page, once delivered to the browser. This creates an opportunity for end-users who want to automate and customize their web experiences, but the growing complexity of web pages and standards prevents most users from realizing this opportunity. We describe Chickenfoot, a programming system embedded in the Firefox web browser, which enables end-users to automate, customize, and integrate web applications without examining their source code. One way Chickenfoot addresses this goal is a novel technique for identifying page components by keyword pattern matching. We motivate this technique by studying how users name web page components, and present a heuristic keyword matching algorithm that identifies the desired component from the user's name.

REFERENCES

• 1: Thomas Kistler , Hannes Marais, WebL - a programming language for the Web, Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web 7, p.259-270, April 1998, Brisbane, Australia
• 2: Jun Fujima , Aran Lunzer , Kasper Hornbæk , Yuzuru Tanaka, Clip, connect, clone: combining application elements to build custom interfaces for information access, Proceedings of the 17th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, October 24-27, 2004, Santa Fe, NM, USA [doi>10.1145/1029632.1029664]
• 3: Chris DiGiano , Mike Eisenberg, Self-disclosing design tools: a gentle introduction to end-user programming, Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, & techniques, p.189-197, August 23-25, 1995, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States [doi>10.1145/225434.225455]
• 4: Vinod Anupam , Juliana Freire , Bharat Kumar , Daniel Lieuwen, Automating Web navigation with the WebVCR, Proceedings of the 9th international World Wide Web conference on Computer networks : the international journal of computer and telecommunications netowrking, p.503-517, June 2000, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• 5: Rob Barrett , Paul P. Maglio , Daniel C. Kellem, How to personalize the Web, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.75-82, March 22-27, 1997, Atlanta, Georgia, United States [doi>10.1145/258549.258595]
• 6: Ekiwi, LLC. "Screen-scraper: solutions for web data extraction." www.screen-scraper.com/
• 7: Bruce Krulwich, Automating the Internet: Agents as User Surrogates, IEEE Internet Computing, v.1 n.4, p.34-38, July 1997 [doi>10.1109/4236.612213]
• 8: David Flanagan, JavaScript (2nd ed.): the definitive guide, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Sebastopol, CA, 1997
• 9: Microsoft. "Smart Tags and Smart Documents." msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/smarttags/default.aspx
• 10: Miller, R.C. and Myers, B.A. "Integrating a Command Shell into a Web Browser." Proc. USENIX, 2000, pp. 171--182.
• 11: W3C. "XML Path language (XPath) Version 1.0," 1999.
• 12: W3C. "Document Object Model (DOM)." ww.w3.org/DOM/.
• 13: Garrett, J. "Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications." www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php
• 14: Atsushi Sugiura , Yoshiyuki Koseki, Internet scrapbook: automating Web browsing tasks by demonstration, Proceedings of the 11th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.9-18, November 01-04, 1998, San Francisco, California, United States [doi>10.1145/288392.288395]
• 15: Robert C. Miller , Krishna Bharat, SPHINX: a framework for creating personal, site-specific Web crawlers, Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web 7, p.119-130, April 1998, Brisbane, Australia

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Graphical user interfaces (GUI)

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.6 Programming Environments
          Subjects: Interactive environments
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features

  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: User-centered design

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Languages

Keywords:
web automation, web browsers