Mapuccino maps can be used in a variety of ways to enhance your personal use of the
Web and to improve Web site management.
Personalized Maps
Mapuccino enables you to create personalized maps of your favorite Web sites for
convenient browsing and quick reference. You specify your topics of interest, and
Mapuccino uses this information as search criteria when constructing site maps. You
can also save or print a collection of Web pages mapped with the tool.
Mapuccino employs an
advanced information retrieval technology developed at IBM's T.J.
Watson Research Center and IBM's Haifa Research Lab.
To enrich the maps, pages directly associated with the search criteria are displayed along
with "sibling" pages, which are pages that appear closely related based on the structure of the Web site.
Web Site Management
Mapuccino maps can help you perform common Web site management tasks, such as
- Displaying the organization and design of a site (including
the different types of objects that make up a site, such as HTML files and graphical
objects)
- Creating site maps to simplify user navigation
- Locating broken or out-of-date links or duplicate information
By changing the focus from single Web pages (as typically provided by Web browsers) to
a collection of pages, Mapuccino gives webmasters a valuable tool for visualizing an
entire site.
Mapuccino's Mapping Architecture
Mapuccino is built upon two key features: dynamically-created maps and map visualization using
Java applets.
Dynamically-created maps
Mapuccino creates maps using a Web crawling method, which displays
the contents of a site the way a visitor would see it. The Mapuccino crawler
generates a graph that represents a site map and is formatted as an HTML file. When served, the file
starts a Java applet that enables you to visualize the map.
Map visualization using Java applets
The use of Java applets provides not only platform independence, but also full integration of
Mapuccino maps into any browser environment. You can view maps and interact with them from within
your favorite Java-enabled browser and -- more importantly -- perform all your normal tasks
(viewing, saving, and printing) from the same application.