Tracking and Viewing Changes on the Web
Fred Douglis and Thomas Ball
Abstract
We describe a set of tools that detect when World-Wide-Web pages have
been modified and present the modifications visually to the user
through marked-up HTML. The tools consist of three components:
w3newer, which detects changes to pages; snapshot, which permits a
user to store a copy of an arbitrary Web page and to compare any
subsequent version of a page with the saved version; and HtmlDiff,
which marks up HTML text to indicate how it has changed from a
previous version. We refer to the tools collectively as the ATT
Internet Difference Engine (AIDE). This paper discusses several
aspects of AIDE, with an emphasis on systems issues such as
scalability, security, and error conditions.
Download the full text of this paper in
ASCII (55,245 bytes) and
POSTSCRIPT (1,594,836 bytes) form.
To Become a USENIX Member, please see our
Membership Information.