An An Empirical Study of Web Page Structural Properties

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13052/jwe1540-9589.2044

Keywords:

web sites, empirical study, statistical analysis, DOM

Abstract

The paper reports results on an empirical study of the structural properties of HTML markup in websites. A first large-scale survey is made on 708 contemporary (2019–2020) websites, in order to measure various features related to their size and structure: DOM tree size, maximum degree, depth, diversity of element types and CSS classes, among others. The second part of the study leverages archived pages from the Internet Archive, in order to retrace the evolution of these features over a span of 25 years. The goal of this research is to serve as a reference point for studies that include an empirical evaluation on samples of web pages.

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Author Biographies

Xavier Chamberland-Thibeault, Laboratoire d’informatique formelle Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada

Xavier Chamberland-Thibeault is an M.Sc. candidate at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada, and a lecturer of Computer Science at Cégep de Jonquière, Canada. In parallel to his work on web site profiling, Xavier has been involved in the development of auto-repair features in Cornipickle, a declarative website testing tool. His work has been published at the International Conference on Web Engineering in 2020 and 2021.

Sylvain Hallé, Laboratoire d’informatique formelle Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada

Sylvain Hallé is the Canada Research Chair in Software Specification, Testing and Verification and a Full Professor of Computer Science at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada. He started working at UQAC in 2010, after completing a PhD from Université du Québec à Montréal and working as a postdoctoral research at University of California Santa Barbara. He is the lead developer of the Cornipickle declarative web testing tool, and the author of more than 100 scientific publications. Pr. Hallé has earned several best paper awards for his work on the application of formal methods to various types of software systems.

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Published

2021-07-08

How to Cite

Chamberland-Thibeault, X., & Hallé, S. (2021). An An Empirical Study of Web Page Structural Properties. Journal of Web Engineering, 20(4), 971–1002. https://doi.org/10.13052/jwe1540-9589.2044

Issue

Section

ICWE 2020