CSR: Small: An Efficient Framework for Real-Time Collaborative Browsing

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Collaborative browsing, also known as co-browsing, allows multiple users to access the same web pages in a simultaneous manner and collaboratively fulfill certain tasks. As a useful and attractive technique, co-browsing has a wide range of important applications such as online training and customer supporting. Existing co-browsing solutions must use either a specific collaborative platform, a modified web server, or a dedicated proxy to coordinate the browsing activities between web users. Besides, these solutions usually require users to install special software on their computers. These requirements heavily impede the wide use of collaborative browsing among Internet users. We propose to design and develop an efficient framework for Real-time Collaborative Browsing. This framework is a pure browser-based solution. It leverages the power of Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) techniques and the extensibility of modern web browsers for performing co-browsing. Our objective is to achieve real-time collaboration among web users, without the involvement of any third-party platforms, servers, or proxies. The proposed framework will enable fine-grained co-browsing on arbitrary web sites and web pages. The success of this project will provide significant research contributions to on-line collaboration. Our research results will be disseminated to industry and academia through high-quality publications and the development of prototypes. The educational aspect of this project focuses on integrating education and research activities, and enhancing the undergraduate and graduate system and networking curricula.