Automating Content Extraction of HTML Documents

Web pages often contain clutter (such as unnecessary images and extraneous links) around the body of an article that distracts a user from actual content. Extraction of 'useful and relevant' content from web pages has many applications, including cell phone and PDA browsing, speech rendering for the visually impaired, and text summarization. Most approaches to making content more readable involve changing font size or removing HTML and data components such as images, which takes away from a webpage's inherent look and feel. Unlike 'Content Reformatting', which aims to reproduce the entire webpage in a more convenient form, our solution directly addresses 'Content Extraction'. We have developed a framework that employs an easily extensible set of techniques. It incorporates advantages of previous work on content extraction. Our key insight is to work with DOM trees, a W3C specified interface that allows programs to dynamically access document structure, rather than with raw HTML markup. We have implemented our approach in a publicly available Web proxy to extract content from HTML web pages. This proxy can be used both centrally, administered for groups of users, as well as by individuals for personal browsers. We have also, after receiving feedback from users about the proxy, created a revised version with improved performance and accessibility in mind

When data changes pre-purchase behavior : the effects of information visualization on online information seeking

Online consumer information search became a crucial initial step in the purchase decision process. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate and measure the effects of different visual representations of information about products on individual’s behavior during pre-purchase online information seeking activities. More specifically, this dissertation analyze what type of information customers considered most important and pays more attention and what is the extent of the visual aspect and its impact in information seeking behavior. To do so, five experiments were conducted, three using online participants via Amazon Mechanical Turk, and two using participants in a laboratory setting, being collected biological measures in one of them. Through two studies, the first article shows how different degrees of evaluability of the same online review can influence on helpfulness, overestimation of information, and purchase intention. It also evidence individual’s involvement while browsing has a moderating role in the relation between evaluability and helpfulness as well as in the relation between evaluability and purchase intention. The second article analyze the relationship between depth-of-field and type of search on several behavioral outcomes, such as intention do revisit the website and visual appeal. It was also investigated whether or not involvement, expertise and attitude toward products moderates these relations. Drawing on the findings of the first and second articles, the third article focus on replicate the finding of the second article via biological measures using an eye-tracking device, including attention measures. The third article aims to contribute to online information seeking literature by investigating participant’s online search and browse behaviors and the resulting processing of information when viewing products presented visually differently in a webpage. These patterns of individual’s visualization studied in both three articles have important practical implications for the website design creating experiences that supports the type of information search undertaken by consumers

A Web-Based geographical information system prototype on Portuguese traditional food products

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesPortuguese traditional food products use certification labels from EU quality schemes to distinguish from other food products. With the number of traditional food products increasing every year, how to manage the information more efficiently and how to spread the information to the public more clearly and interactively become the challenges. Considering the geographic distribution is one of the key features of the traditional food products, the web-based GIS is a potential system to manage and share the information. In this thesis, the prototype of web-based GIS is designed as three tiered software architecture comprising of web application, web service and spatial database. The prototype provides the possibility to integrate with the information from other sources. For the information managers, the prototype takes advantage of the web, open specifications and open source software. Therefore, it minimizes the barrier of the migration from original information system, and the information management is easy to be done in the web browser. For the public, the web map is easy to use and user-friendly. In the end, the potential improvement in the management web interface is discussed, and the further development such as introducing more roles into the system and having the usability test are pointed out

Using facets to improve tag-based bookmarking

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-52).Facette is a web service that uses facets to enhance the organizational capabilities of tag-based bookmarking systems. As with other bookmarking services, Facette allows users to associate tags with bookmarks to assist the retrieval of information. Facette also allows users to classify tags through use of facets. To create these facets, Facette introduces a method of facet creation called free faceted tagging. To assist the classification of tags using facets, Facette extends the concept of collaborative tagging and introduces the concept of collaborative faceting. For ease of implementation, Facette is implemented as an augmentation of Delicious' tagging system. Faceted information is saved to Delicious through use of new tag syntax. Faceted information is retrieved from Delicious through use of Delicious's API. Since its public debut on February 16th, 2009, Facette has successfully assisted the use of faceted tagging. Facette has been used by several hundred Delicious users. Facette's tagging interface has led to the bookmarking of thousands of pages with thousands of faceted tags. Overall, Facette has successfully encouraged the creation of faceted information.by Peter Lai.M.Eng

A Blind-first Approach to Site Design

When designing a website, designers have to consider the needs of potential users. This is often difficult when designers have to design for different senses or for devices that they are not accustomed to using. In this case, most designers will then rely on creating websites that are targeted to users that are just like them, for example, a sighted designer creating a website for sighted users. In this body of work, I explore how I, as a sighted designer with limited knowledge and experience in web accessibility, learn how to create an accessible website by involving users who are blind in the design process. I achieve this in two ways: firstly, by involving five users with knowledge of assistive technologies in one- on-one user sessions and secondly, by creating design-related scenarios as the basis of a dialogue between myself and these users who are blind to simulate interaction with the proposed website. I conclude this work by critically reflecting on what I’ve learned through this process and discuss practical considerations in its application

ADOLESCENTS' CONSTRUCTIVELY RESPONSIVE READING STRATEGY USE IN A CRITICAL INTERNET READING TASK

The goal of this study was to examine types and patterns of reading strategies that proficient adolescent readers used while reading on the Internet. Informed by research related to reading comprehension, intertextuality, and new literacies, I drew upon the model of Constructively Responsive Reading that had evolved from print reading to Internet reading (Afflerbach & Cho, 2009; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). The model offered an analytical tool to construct descriptions of the complexity of use of the four general types of strategies in Internet contexts: Realizing and Constructing Potential Texts to Read, Identifying and Learning Text Content, Monitoring, and Evaluation. Seven highly proficient adolescent readers (Mean Age = 17.5) individually performed Internet reading, with a goal to create a critical question about their self- selected controversial topic across two 45-minute sessions: Open Website Searching and Focused Website Learning. I used multiple sources to triangulate complementary data to infer participants' Internet reading strategy use. Participants' think-aloud verbal reports were synchronized with their reader-computer interactions recorded in the computer. These real-time strategy data were complemented by other contextual data (e.g., pre-/post-reading interviews, participant-generated critical questions). I integrated these data into Internet Reading Strategy Matrices of the individual participants, which were analyzed, both qualitatively and quantitatively. During the entire course of data analysis, I constantly referenced the model of Constructively Responsive Reading with the four strategy categories. My data analyses afforded detailed descriptions of diverse constructively responsive reading strategies in Internet contexts and dynamic patterns of such reading strategy use. Grounded-analysis of data resulted in the identification of an array of reading strategies and many instances of strategy interplay among the four strategy categories. Chi-squared analysis of aggregated strategy data revealed the goal-directed nature of strategy use, as participants' use of these four types of strategies was associated with two different session tasks. Also, analysis of the processing chains visualizing the flow of strategy use indicated differences in the performances of Internet reading strategy use among the participants and their distinctive modes of Internet reading. Overall, my study supported the theoretical model of Constructively Responsive Reading, with empirical data that described diversity and patterns of constructively responsive reading strategies in Internet contexts. The complexity of Internet reading was discussed with regard to constructively responsive reading that coordinates different roles and functions of the four general types of strategies

Understanding and Supporting Cross-modal Collaborative Information Seeking

Most previous studies of users with visual impairments (VI) access to the web have focused solely on single user human-web interaction. This thesis explores the under investigated area of cross-modal collaborative information seeking (CCIS), that is the challenges and opportunities that exist in supporting visually impaired users to take an effective part in collaborative web search tasks with sighted peers. The thesis examines the overall question of what happens currently when people perform CCIS, and how might the CCIS process be improved? To motivate the work, we conducted a survey, the results of which showed that a significant amount of CCIS activity goes on. An exploratory study was conducted to investigate the challenges faced and behaviour patterns that occur when people perform CCIS. We observed 14 pairs of VI and sighted users in both co-located and distributed settings. In this study participants used their tools of choice, that is the web browser, note taker and preferred communications system. The study examines how concepts from the “mainstream” collaborative Information Seeking (CIS) literature, play out in the context of cross-modality. Based on the findings of this study, we produced design recommendations for features that can better support cross-modal collaborative search. Following this, we surveyed mainstream CIS systems and selected the most accessible software package that satisfied the design recommendations from the initial study. Due to the fact that the software was not built with accessibility in mind, we developed JAWS scripts and employed other JAWS features to improve its accessibility and VI user experience. We then performed a second study, using the same participants undertaking search tasks of a similar complexity as before, but this time using the CIS system. The aim of this study was to explore the impact on the CCIS process when introducing a mainstream CIS system, enhanced for accessibility. In this study we looked into CCIS from two perspectives: the collaboration and the individual interaction with the interface. The findings from this study provide an understanding of the process of CCIS when using a system that supports it. These findings assisted us in formulating a set of guidelines toward supporting collaborative search in a cross-modal context

Casual Information Visualization on Exploring Spatiotemporal Data

The goal of this thesis is to study how the diverse data on the Web which are familiar to everyone can be visualized, and with a special consideration on their spatial and temporal information. We introduce novel approaches and visualization techniques dealing with different types of data contents: interactively browsing large amount of tags linking with geospace and time, navigating and locating spatiotemporal photos or videos in collections, and especially, providing visual supports for the exploration of diverse Web contents on arbitrary webpages in terms of augmented Web browsing

Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Web

We introduce Mind2Web, the first dataset for developing and evaluating generalist agents for the web that can follow language instructions to complete complex tasks on any website. Existing datasets for web agents either use simulated websites or only cover a limited set of websites and tasks, thus not suitable for generalist web agents. With over 2,000 open-ended tasks collected from 137 websites spanning 31 domains and crowdsourced action sequences for the tasks, Mind2Web provides three necessary ingredients for building generalist web agents: 1) diverse domains, websites, and tasks, 2) use of real-world websites instead of simulated and simplified ones, and 3) a broad spectrum of user interaction patterns. Based on Mind2Web, we conduct an initial exploration of using large language models (LLMs) for building generalist web agents. While the raw HTML of real-world websites are often too large to be fed to LLMs, we show that first filtering it with a small LM significantly improves the effectiveness and efficiency of LLMs. Our solution demonstrates a decent level of performance, even on websites or entire domains the model has never seen before, but there is still a substantial room to improve towards truly generalizable agents. We open-source our dataset, model implementation, and trained models (https://osu-nlp-group.github.io/Mind2Web) to facilitate further research on building a generalist agent for the web.Comment: website: https://osu-nlp-group.github.io/Mind2We