Enhancing browsing experience of table and image elements in web pages

As the popularity and diversification of both Internet and its access devices, users' browsing experience of web pages is in great need of improvement. Traditional browsing mode of web elements such as table and image is passive, which limits users' browsing efficiency of web pages. In this paper, we propose to enhance browsing experience of table and image elements in web pages by enabling real-time interactive access to web tables and images. We design new browsing modes that help users improve their browsing efficiency including operation mode, record mode for web tables and normal mode, starred mode, advanced mode for web images. We design and implement a plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer, called iWebWidget, which provides a customized user interface supporting real-time interactive access to web tables and images. Besides, we carry out a user study to testify the usefulness of iWebWidget. Experimental results show that users are satisfied and really enjoy the new browsing modes for both web tables and images.