Changing How People View Changes on the Web

Comments:
Jill

Summary:
This paper outlined a new plug in for IE, Internet Explorer, called DiffIE.  The purpose of DiffIE, is to highlight material on a web page that is new to the reader.  Most sites will tag content as being new in regards to the site but there are few indications as to what may be new to the reader.  DiffIE attempts to resolve this by maintaining a cache of the web pages recently viewed by the user and doing a diff on any new sites visited in opposition to the previous versions.  If any new content has been added the changes will be highlighted and presented to the user as such. 

The team took some pains to modify what was actually highlighted and what wasn't.  For example on blogs when new content is added all the previous content is moved down but highlighting the entire page to show the moved content is usually not very helpful as the user most likely only wants to see stories added since their last visit.  Moved content, however, can still be of great use.  For example when things move in a ratings list this could be of interest to a user and should therefore be added.

Discussion:
This paper is interesting because it affords the user more information about that is new on the site from their last visit, instead of just when things were added.  It could be a useful tool to many users when searching the web.  I personally feel that it would just be incredibly annoying.  I am very particular about the aesthetics of a website and having random highlights would detract from the look of the site. 

The paper makes mention of some fast algorithms used but they also note that DiffIE can operate somewhat slower than desired.  The site will load completely before DiffIE fires so if a user is relying on DiffIE they will have to wait a little bit longer for the page to load.  In their study, the authors found that many users would begin clicking and interacting with the site before the site was even fully loaded and therefore before DiffIE had fired.

If I were in charge of this program I might continue to offer it as a pluin for IE but nothing else.  It seems like it would just be incredibly annoying.  Also the people that are apt to make use of some power functionality of this program are not likely to still be using Internet Explorer, a browser widely regarded to be inferior to Firefox and Chrome.  If they were serious about the project taking off, the developers would be forced to break ranks with Microsoft and port it onto Chrome and Firefox, but since it was developed by Microsoft there is little hope of this outcome.