Abstract
Hirzalla, Feras M. M.S., Purdue University, December 2010, Can a Scalable
System be Built to Capture Web Page Thumbnails? Major Professor: John
Springer.
Screenshots of web pages are a novel user interface improvement that
can be used in various systems. Several software packages can be used to
generate a visual representation of a web page, but none of these packages are
designed to capture web pages in a scalable way.
The goal of this research is to build and test a web page thumbnailer that
can simultaneously capture screenshots of multiple web pages using multiple
threads, thus maximizing the throughput of web pages that can be processed per
unit of time. From the data collected during tests, thread count usage
recommendations can be made.
To test the thumbnailer, the author used a sample set of 30,000 web
pages. Web page sizes were collected from the sample set, and 10,000 web
pages were assigned to small, medium, and large categories. The thumbnailer
was timed for different thread counts for each of the size categories. The data
showed that as more capture threads were added, the time it took to generate
visual representations of web pages decreased.
Keywords
scalable, webpage thumbnails, screenshots websites, usability
Date of this Version
9-4-2010
Department
Computer and Information Technology (CNIT)
Department Head
Lonnie Bentley
Month of Graduation
December
Year of Graduation
2010
Degree
Master of Science
Head of Graduate Program
Gary Bertoline
Advisor 1 or Chair of Committee
John Springer
Committee Member 1
Eric Matson
Committee Member 2
Brandeis Marshall