A Chromium-based Memento-aware Web Browser

TL;DR

This paper presents a proof-of-concept web browser based on Chromium that is aware of archived web pages (mementos), enhancing user experience by clearly differentiating between live and archived content with minimal code changes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel memento-aware browser built on Chromium, enabling users to identify and create archived web pages seamlessly within the browser environment.

Findings

Memento-awareness integrates well into Chromium with minimal modifications.

The prototype improves user experience by clearly indicating archived pages.

The approach demonstrates feasibility for future browser enhancements.

Abstract

Web browsers provide a user-friendly means of navigating the web. Users rely on their web browser to provide information about the websites they are visiting, such as the security state. Browsers also provide a user interface (UI) with visual cues about each tab that is open, including icons for if the tab is playing audio or requires authentication to view. However, current browsers do not differentiate between the live web and the past web. If a user loads an archived webpage, known as a memento, they have to rely on UI elements present within the page itself to inform them that the page they are viewing is not the live web. Additionally, memento-awareness extends beyond recognizing a page that has already been archived. The browser should give users the ability to archive live webpages, essentially creating mementos of webpages they found important as they surf the web. In this report, the process to create a proof-of-concept browser that is aware of mementos is presented. The browser is created by adding on to the implementation of the open source web browser by Google, Chromium. Creating this prototype for a Memento-aware Browser shows that the features implemented fit well into the current Chromium implementation. The user experience is enhanced by adding the memento-awareness, and the changes to the Chromium code base are minimal.