W3Pal Navigator Tutorial

The W3Pal Navigator is an example web browser that can be used to view pages in a webgraph. The Navigator will display the webgraph of a web site and dynamically update the graph as different pages on the site are visited. This application illustrates how webgraph information can be used to facilitate web browsing.

The first step in using the Navigator is to select the start page. The start page does not have to be the index of the web site, in fact it can be any page on the web site (the index is usually the best choice, though). To select the start page, open the File menu and select the Open URL... option. The URL of the start page should be entered into the dialog box that appears. The Navigator will load information on the start page (root node) and all of its children. This action will produce an image similar to that in figure 1.

The webgraph in Figure 1 is of the root node and it's children. Different node shapes represent different HTML objects. For example, the circles represent web pages and the oval represents a mailto: link. The pages, represented by circles, can be visited and their children will be added to the webgraph. To load a page or object in Netscape, right click it and select the Display in Netscape option.

The W3Pal Navigator is a prototype browser for webgraphs. Users can jump from one section of a web site to another just by clicking the desired pages on the webgraph. Site administrators could create webgraphs of their sites and make them available. Advanced web browsers could generate the webgraphs as users travel from one page to another and users could use the webgraphs when they want to revisit a page or move to another section of the site.