Up close and personal
When it comes to custom design, Metabrowsing sites are
threatening to sweep away the portals
Guy
Granit
guy.granitthemarket
The endless flow of
information, continuous browsing and multiplicity of windows that
open up into dozens of Web sites, can be confusing, even
frightening, and exhausting. One of the more efficient solutions for
surfers needing a stable framework from which to enter cyberspace,
is pages with "customized interface." These allow the surfer to
design his home page with a browser according to his preferences and
favorite categories, building a sort of personal portal.The latest
thing in customized interface is Metabrowsing, whose facilities
offer concentrated content and online services - all customized in a
single page. Surfers can design different "presentations" for
themselves, in which data and site extracts from multiple sources
are concentrated in a single document. This contrasts to the
services of the portals, where contacts and links are dictated by
the Web site.
Quickbrowse.com is a basic example of
Metabrowsing. After registration on the site, the user can key a
list of Internet addresses into a text box. By pressing an
additional key, the required pages are "poured" one after the other
into the browser. The loading of this page is a bit slow, depending
on the number of pages condensed into the personal page and their
capacity.
More advanced possibilities offered by quickbrowse
are the ability to save folders of sites in a personal folder for
future use, as well as to edit them. One can also define, in
advance, dates for automatic delivery of site folders by e-mail, to
convert the main page into its browser symbols, or to send it to a
friend.
The site also supports Web sites whose addresses
change every day according to the date, as well as Web sites
requiring an entry password. In addition, it offers solutions for
grappling with Web sites composed of several pages of HTML. Web
sites including complex design and special effects are likely to
suffer a bit. In quickbrowse.com one can also find an integrated and
personally customized search engine that enables a simultaneous
search via several search engines.
OnePage.com offers more
advanced Metabrowsing. The different content and services appear in
several different windows and are scattered across several
personally customized pages. In addition, one can process the
content to a certain extent, so that in the windows one chooses in
advance, only specific parts of pages will appear. The site offers
several models for ready pages, on subjects like shopping, tourism,
sport and finances. Additional pages can be added and personally
customized any time.
By contrast with quickbrowse, OpenPage
makes no provision for integrating entire Web sites into the
personal page, but only selected parts of them. Each window includes
a headline and link to the site the information was taken from, as
well as the possibility of refreshing the presentation, or deleting
or editing the window. Content integrated into the windows can be
added from a catalog which the site offers, or from an external
Internet Web site chosen by the user. During editing one can alter
the headline and size of the window, or choose a date for renewing
the page.
Mark Anderson, a founder of browser manufacturer
Netscape, recently joined the management board of start-up
octopus.com, which is active in Metabrowsing. One of the main
factors that attracted him was the wide range of personal
customizing that exists on the site. "People get mountains of
unprocessed material on the Net, and Octopus.com adds a layer of
intelligent filtering to all this," he said.
As with
OpenPage, Octopus.com consists of pages ("presentations") and
windows. But one needs to add a micro-browser which only supports
the experimental version of Explorer's Internet site. Octopus.com
offers a ready data base of groups of content and services, and a
database which centralizes folders of groups prepared by other
surfers, who have chosen to share them. Customized interfacing of
the folders is carried out by one of 11 templates, or without
them.
Octopus' uniqueness lies in its more dynamic windows,
which offer a wide opening of possibilities, and are designed by
means of "dragging" services, content and window constructions, from
a catalog to the personally customized personal page. One can
integrate other sites at full size, import lists of symbols from the
browser and from various Internet sites, add graphic elements or a
personal HTML code.
The windows can be customized precisely.
For example, a window showing the graph of a share on one particular
day of trading can also contain several graphs of a longer period of
time, a map of the street where the company has its headquarters,
its logo, a selection of facts, data and news about the company and
its shares, listing of the company's name in the search engine,
etc.
The above also applies to news, art and entertainment,
sport, search engines and sources of information. Thus, for example,
one can create a cluster of Web sites for downloading icons, or for
looking for collections of MP3, or for screening times at cinemas,
or maps. Filling the windows is rather slow because of the need to
merge information from different sources.
NSM Israel is the
Israeli portal closest to Metabrowsing, but is still quite a
distance from it. The site has 27 collaborators with content and
service providers. Also, in addition to changes of color and format,
the site permits one to individually customize the content which
appears in the site's main page, though not on its other
pages.
http://www.Quickbrowse.com
http://www.OpenPage.com
http://www.Octopus.com
http://www.msn.co.i
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© copyright
2000 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
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