Developing Web Browser Recording Tools Using Server-Side Programming Technology

It is always a challenge to present Web applications at a facility with no Internet connection. Traditional presentation methods such as transparencies or slides are inadequate for demonstrating dynamic Web applications. Currently, virtual-live demonstrations of Web applications are created with static HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) files. However, preparing such presentations is tedious and requires much manual labor for downloading HTML and other files and modifying them for proper linkages. Demo Server (DS) is a tool that automates this process. Developed using Java Servlets and Apache Web Server on the Sun Solaris platform, DS records various types of browsing activities and saves a set of HTML files for presentation automatically. This paper addresses both system level design concepts and key technical implementation details.