Grouplab Internet Explorer History System
Requirements:
  • Windows 98, ME or Windows 2000
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or greater

Installation Instructions:

  1. Click on the link above to download - choose "run in place".
  2. Open 'My Computer'
  3. Choose 'View...', then 'Explorer Bar...', then 'Grouplab History'.
  4. The history system will be available the next time that Internet Explorer is restarted

Customizing the Toolbar

Internet Explorer should now have 3 additional buttons on the toolbar:  Grouplab History and new back and forward buttons.  If these buttons do not appear, follow these steps to add them:

  1. 'Right-click' on the toolbar, then choose "Customize..."

  2. Select each Grouplab icon on the left panel and choose "Add"

  3. Click "Close"

Features:

  • Thumbnail Icons- As the user navigates web pages, the history system collects thumbnail images of the visited pages.  The listing shows these thumbnails, which are zoomed when the user holds the mouse over an item.  These thumbnails allow the user to find pages by their 'look', which is helpful in situations where the title is not easily recognized.

  • Recency-Based Back / Forward Buttons- Current web browsers have stack-based back and forward buttons which have the advantage of allowing quick moves up and down the levels of a web page.  Their disadvantage is that they do not allow the user to return to pages that are not on the current path of navigation.  This leads to situations where the user must re-navigate through the web site's links in order to find a page that was accessed very recently.  The recency-based buttons are a true time-ordered history of the user's web page navigations, allowing the user to access any page they have visited. 

    Further, they allow the user to move back to pages visited in previous sessions, which are not accessible by the standard back and forward buttons.

  • Search By Site (Domain)- This dropdown list shows the web sites visited by the user - sorted to show those most recently visited.  If for example, the user selects the item, "www.microsoft.com", the history list will update to only show pages from that web site.

  • Title Search-  As the user types in this field, the list is dynamically updated to only show pages whose title contains the typed in text.  For example, typing, "hockey" will filter the history list to only show web pages that have the word "hockey" anywhere in the title.

  • Hits Slider- This slider filters the list by 'visit count'.   As the user moves the slider point to the right, the history list is updated to only show pages that have been visited that many times.  The pages marked as 'Dog Ears' (See below) are not filtered off the list, and are the only pages shown on the slider's right-most position

  • Dog Ears-  These are similar to the standard 'Favorites' Folder.  However, Dog Ears are designed to be light-weight, and do not require organization into folders in order to keep them uncluttered.  By 'right-clicking' an item in the history list, the user can make that page  a 'Dog Ear'.  By using the hits slider (above), the user can easily return to pages marked as Dog Ears.  Dog Ears do not need to be organized into folders, as they are sorted by recency - ensuring that old items do not interfere with newer, more important Dog Ear pages.
Thumbnails Cleanup Utility

   Allows you to completely remove your thumbnails file, should hard drive reach critical low levels.

   To use it, open up you Windows Disk Cleanup utility - Start menu, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup.  You will see a new entry for the Grouplab Thumbnails Cleanup.  

 

 

 

Read publications about this system

Comments/Contact / Support

Email:  kaasten@cpsc.ucalgary.ca

 

 

URL Tracing Software

Install    Source

This program, useful for research experiments, allows a person to track a single session.  It produces a text file containing all of the URL navigations that were made in the session, including the date, time, URL, and Window (main or newly spawned).

To use, launch the program and specify the user and session numbers.  These numbers will be used to name the data file produced.  For example, if user 1 and session 2 are specified, the file name produced will be "User_1_Session_2.txt".  The file is saved in the applications directory "Program Files\Grouplab Url Tracer".

Press 'Begin' and the Internet Explorer browser should appear.  From then on, all navigations are recorded.  When the last Internet Explorer window is closed, the data file can be safely opened and imported into a data analysis program such as Microsoft Excel.

 

 
 

License Terms