Agent technology for website browsing and navigation

A website is a repository of information which can be accessed through a Web browser. There are more and more websites that are devoted to a specific topic. Such websites are attractive because they are often better organized, systematic, and are the easiest places to gather information that the user needs about a special domain. This paper discusses the issue of website browsing and navigation, that is, traversing within the confine of a website and collecting information. Although the problems posed by website browsing are similar to those of Web browsing, they are different in magnitude and solvability. We investigate problems encountered in website browsing and navigation and propose solutions based on agent technology. We investigate how a website browsing agent may utilize user profiles to achieve personalization, and propose a dedicated window approach to integrate all desirable functions. We illustrate how the idea works by describing a website browsing agent for navigating the NTU digital library.