HFWEB June 3, 1999

Towards Web Macros: Automating Common Tasks

on the WebAlex Safonov, Joseph A. Konstan,

John V. CarlisUniversity of Minnesota

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Automatable Web Tasks: Examples

On-line flight reservations– NWA, Internet Travel Network, etc.– multiple, “equivalent” airports (SFO/SJC/OAK)

Cited reference search– re-run for each database, merge results– plug found citations into full-text DL

Persistent shopping cart– multi-vendor?

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Actions to automate

Navigation; form filling and submission; user authentication

Iteration over multiple information services– integrate results

Connecting services “back-to-back”

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Vision of a Solution: Web Macros

Client-side programs that:– Emulate user actions on the Web– Can be created by end users

Requirements for Web Macros– infer navigation and control– support parameters– deal with dynamic, unstructured data– maintain the browsing context

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Related Work

Internet Scrapbook– Sugiura and Koseki, UIST 98

InfoBeans– Bauer and Dengler, IUI 99

AgentSoft’s LiveAgent WebL

– Kistler and Marais, WWW7

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Proxy-based Prototype

Special URLs http://macros/...

HFWEB June 3, 1999

“Get me here” Web macros

Goal: re-establish browsing context– authentication, hidden form fields, cookies

Iteratively generates and test macros– from longer history segments

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Get me to: Housing Search Results

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Invoking Web Macros

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Future Work

Concrete plans– intelligently comparing Web pages– let users specify start and end of macro– update macros based on playback

“deviations”

Neat ideas– use browsing history for improving macros– visual manipulation environment for Web

macros

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Conclusion

Why automate common tasks Requirements and our prototype system Goals

– A free system for automating Web tasks by end-users

– Extensions to Programming by Demonstration techniques for the Web

– Recommendations for content developers

HFWEB June 3, 1999

Existing Tools

Bookmarks/favorites– record static URLs only

Server-based Tools– comparison shopping services; auction

proxies; customizable home pages– limited flexibility: user is not in control

• competing services are excluded