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CMU-CS-97-131
Computer Science Department
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
CMU-CS-97-131
Creating Dynamic World Wide Web Pages by Demonstration
Robert C. Miller, Brad A. Myers
May 1997
[Also appears as CMU-HCII-97-101]
CMU-CS-97-131.ps
Keywords: World wide web (www), end-user programming,
programming-by-demonstration, Hypertext Markup Languages (HTML), client
gateway interface (CGI), scripting languages
Turquoise is an intelligent browser and editor for the World Wide Web
(WWW) that allows users to create dynamic pages by demonstration
rather than by writing program code. With Turquoise, users without
programming experience can create scripts that combine data from
several Web pages, automate repetitive browsing or editing tasks,
convert other data formats into Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and
process submitted forms. Scripts are demonstrated by familiar browsing
and editing actions, which Turquoise records and generalizes into a
program. In order to generalize the locations of the user's
actions on a page, Turquoise includes a novel pattern matcher that
finds locations within an HTML document. Turquoise infers patterns
automatically by picking from a knowledge base of pattern templates,
heuristically chosen to be robust and comprehensible to the user. With
a good pattern knowledge base, Turquoise can often infer the correct
script after only a single demonstration.
18 pages
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