Automating Web navigation with the WebVCR

Recent developments in Web technology such as the inclusion of scripting la nguages, frames, and the growth of dynamic content, have made the process o f retrieving Web content more complicated, and sometimes tedious. For examp le, Web browsers do not provide a method for a user to bookmark a frame-bas ed Web site once the user navigates within the initial frameset. Also, some sites, such as travel sites and online classifieds, require users to go th rough a sequence of steps and fill out a sequence of forms in order to acce ss their data. Using the bookmark facilities implemented in all popular bro wsers, often it is not possible to create a shortcut to access such data, a nd these steps must be manually repeated every time the data is needed. How ever, hard-to-reach pages are often the best candidates for a shortcut, bec ause significantly more effort is required to reach them than to reach a st andard page with a well-defined URL. The WebVCR system addresses this probl em by letting users record and replay a series of browsing steps in smart b ookmarks - shortcuts to Web content that require multiple steps to be retri eved. It provides a VCR-style interface to transparently record and replay users' actions. Creating and updating smart bookmarks is a simple process i nvolving only the usual browsing actions and requiring no programming by th e user. In addition to saving users time by providing shortcuts to hard-to- reach Web content, smart bookmarks can be used as building blocks for many interesting Web applications and new e-commerce services. In this paper, we describe the WebVCR and the techniques it uses to record and replay smart bookmarks, as well as our experiences in building the system. We also discu ss some applications that are simplified/enabled by smart bookmarks. (C) 20 00 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.