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Modern Web browsers all provide a history function that allows users to see a list of URLs they have visited in chronological order. The history log contains rich information but is seldom used because of the tedious nature of scrolling through long lists. This paper aims to propose a new way to improve users’ Web browsing experience by analyzing, clustering and visualizing their browsing history.

The authors developed a system called Personal Web Library to help users develop awareness of and understand their Web browsing patterns, identify their topics of interest and retrieve previously visited Web pages more easily.

User testing showed that this system is usable and attractive. It found that users can easily see patterns and trends at different time granularities, recall pages from the past and understand the local context of a browsing session. Its flexibility provides users with much more information than the traditional history function in modern Web browsers. Participants in the study gained an improved awareness of their Web browsing patterns. Participants mentioned that they were willing to improve their time management after viewing their browsing patterns.

As more and more daily activities rely on the internet and Web browsers, browsing data captures a large part of users’ lives. Providing users with interactive visualizations of their browsing history can facilitate personal information management, time management and other meta-level activities.

This paper aims to help users gain insights into and improve their Web browsing experience, the authors hope that the work they conducted can spur more research contributions in this underdeveloped yet important area.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the structural relationship between web site personality, utilitarian web browsing, hedonic web browsing and online impulse buying of tourism products.

A total of 405 valid online questionnaires were collected to empirically test the measurement and structural model using partial least square path modelling approach, a variance-based structural equation modelling technique. The study sample includes experienced online shoppers who performed shopping tourism products and services via internet medium.

The results imply that web site personality is a second-order reflective construct comprising solidity, enthusiasm, genuineness, sophistication and unpleasantness. web site personality positively influences utilitarian web browsing, hedonic web browsing and online impulse buying; and both hedonic web browsing and utilitarian web browsing positively influence online impulse buying.

Online impulse buying of tourism products has not been profoundly explored in current literature, despite its important implication for managers, academicians and consumers alike. This study contributes to the field of e-commerce marketing, retailing and e-tourism research.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to investigate whether it is meaningful to use the Engineering Index (Ei) classification scheme for browsing, and then, if proven useful, to investigate the performance of an automated classification algorithm based on the Ei classification scheme.

A user study was conducted in which users solved four controlled searching tasks. The users browsed the Ei classification scheme in order to examine the suitability of the classification systems for browsing. The classification algorithm was evaluated by the users who judged the correctness of the automatically assigned classes.

The study showed that the Ei classification scheme is suited for browsing. Automatically assigned classes were on average partly correct, with some classes working better than others. Success of browsing showed to be correlated and dependent on classification correctness.

Further research should address problems of disparate evaluations of one and the same web page. Additional reasons behind browsing failures in the Ei classification scheme also need further investigation.

Improvements for browsing were identified: describing class captions and/or listing their subclasses from start; allowing for searching for words from class captions with synonym search (easily provided for Ei since the classes are mapped to thesauri terms); when searching for class captions, returning the hierarchical tree expanded around the class in which caption the search term is found. The need for improvements of classification schemes was also indicated.

A user‐based evaluation of automated subject classification in the context of browsing has not been conducted before; hence the study also presents new findings concerning methodology.

It has become common for children to browse web pages. However, there is no web browser that takes into account children's characteristics on information acquisition. Therefore, even though such general pages have a variety and detailed information, children cannot effectively use the internet with current web browsers, e.g. they have difficulty in understanding the contents and easily get bored when browsing general pages. The purpose of this paper is to propose a children‐oriented web browser, which aims to keep children's interest on pages and help them understand the contents of the pages.

The paper designed and implemented a web browser for children using a bubble metaphor, which converts general pages into a children‐friendly presentation. The browser is displayed in an undersea scene and presents contents of a web page in bubbles of different sizes, speeds, and colors. Furthermore, it presents the details of the content in a picture book style in a way that children can easily understand.

The paper conducts a user experiment with 13 children between four and ten years of age. The experimental results show that the browser changes general pages into a children‐friendly presentation and make a web browsing fun for children.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first investigation into the web browsing characteristics of children. The findings may be useful to researchers who are interested in the relationships between children and the web, as well as information acquisition of children.

The paper develops a behavioral model of Web information seeking that identifies four complementary modes of information seeking: undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, informal search, and formal search. In each mode of viewing or searching, users would adopt distinctive patterns of browser moves: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. The model is applied empirically to analyze the Web information seeking behavior of 24 women in IT professions over a two‐week period. Our results show that participants engaged in all four modes of information seeking on the Web, and that each mode may be characterized by certain browser actions. Overall, the study suggests that a behavioral approach that links information seeking modes (goals and reasons for browsing and searching) to moves (actions used to find and view information) may be helpful in understanding Web‐based information seeking.

This paper aims to propose an anonymous web‐browsing protocol that harnesses some of the advantages of store‐and‐forward anonymity solutions whilst retaining some of the interactive properties of web browsing. Anonymity research on high latency, store‐and‐forward mediums such as e‐mail have led to comparatively well‐researched anonymity technologies. However, similar achievements have proven to be more difficult for low‐latency communications such as web browsing.

A review of existing anonymity solutions notes the advantages of mix technologies versus the advantages offered by Onion Routing. A solution is presented that features a combined approach of both solutions.

The proposed protocol differentiates between web requests and web responses – a request is treated as a store‐and‐forward message whilst the response is handled as a data stream.

The solution described can be used by existing anonymous web browsing solutions in order to improve the level of anonymity whilst minimising the overhead of anonymously distributing web content.

The purpose of this paper is to focus specifically on the examination of factors influencing the effectiveness of product placement in social media.

Two field experiments were used to test research models and questions. In each experiment, random sampling was used to assign volunteers into groups, controlled by different experimental settings. Questionnaires were distributed to the volunteers in order to collect their attitude toward advertisement, brand impression, and intention to click the advertisement. Their browsing behavior was measured by click through rate, browse depth, and browsing time.

The paper found that the effects of product placement conducts (product prominence and presentation) in social media are similar to the effects of product placement in other media. Also, a match between the vehicle and product would create deeper browsing depth and longer browsing time on the product web site. Product placement on a higher awareness vehicle would be more effective for marketing.

This study makes its contribution in understanding the effectiveness of product placement in social media on delivering a marketing message. The results further highlight the importance of “integrating” the product placement content with its context and its vehicle.

This study investigated differences between Web‐shoppers and non‐shoppers, in terms of compatibility, relative advantage and demographics. Stepwise discriminant analysis was applied on a sample of 165 personally interviewed consumers, which showed that compatibility and relative advantage were overall successful, whereas, demographics were unsuccessful, in distinguishing Web‐shoppers from non‐shoppers. Significant variables included three factors of compatibility (use of direct shopping; use of Web browsing activities at home; and use of Web browsing activities at the office), and two factors of relative advantage (motives; and impediments). Managerial implications for targeting prospective Web‐shoppers and designing better‐grounded consumer Web‐marketing strategies are also discussed, together with study limitations and directions for future research.

The purpose of this research is to determine whether instruction would be welcomed by instant messaging (IM)/chat users, whether instruction is possible in this medium, whether it can be effectively provided, and if the use of co‐browsing enhances learning.

Two studies were conducted in which IM/chat reference transcripts were analyzed and patron surveys collected. This research paper compares results from these studies, the first based on use of text‐only IM software, the second using commercial chat software with a co‐browse feature.

Findings indicate that patrons welcome instruction, whether they ask for it or not, and are satisfied with chat/IM as an instructional medium. Librarians usually provide instruction, though they are more likely to do so if patrons ask for it, directly or indirectly. Co‐browsing was used little and did not increase the amount of instruction provided. Patron question format had an impact on the likelihood of co‐browsing. Despite a high rate of technical difficulties, co‐browsing was very well received by survey respondents.

Findings suggest more training on the importance of instruction in virtual reference is needed.

Providing instruction via reference is an established practice at the physical reference desk, yet few studies of instruction in virtual reference have been conducted and none on co‐browsing as an instructional tool. This study addresses the need for research on instruction in the virtual reference environment.

The purpose of this article was to confirm whether users’ interests are reflected by tweeted Web pages, and to evaluate the credibility of interest reflection of tweeted Web pages.

Interest reflection of Twitter is investigated based on the context of sharing behavior. A context-oriented approach is proposed to evaluate the interest reflection of tweeted Web pages based on machine learning. Some different distribution models of similarity are present, and infer whether tweeted Web pages reflect respective users’ interests by analyzing user access profiles.

The analysis of browsing behaviors finds that many users partially hide their own concerns, hobbies and interests, and emphasize the concerns about social phenomenon. The extensive experimental results showed the context-oriented approach is effective on real net view data.

As the first-of-its-kind study on evaluating the credibility of interest reflection on Twitter, extensive experiments have been conducted on the data sets containing real net view data. For higher accuracy and less subjectivity, various features are generated from user’s Web view and Twitter submission background with some different context factors.