Cameron Usman

Everyday, we look at dozens of websites. The structure of these websites is defined in HTML, the lingua franca for publishing information on the web. Your browser's job is to render the HTML according to the specs (most of the time, at least). You can look at the code behind any website by selecting the "View source" tab somewhere in your browser's menu.

HTML consists of so-called tags, like the A tag for links, IMG tag for images and so on. Since tags are nested in other tags, they are arranged in a hierarchical manner, and that hierarchy can be represented as a graph. I've written a little app that visualizes such a graph, and here are some screenshots of websites that I often look at.

I've used some color to indicate the most used tags in the following way:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Here I post a couple of screenshots, and I plan to make the app available as an applet, so that anybody can look at their websites in a new way. 

Update: Here it is: http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/

Source: http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm

I have to say the applet is pretty amazing. Visit the source for screen shots of major site structures 'graphed' via the applet.

Apple releases software to run XP

Now out is Boot Camp, software to enable Windows XP to run on any Intel-powered Apple. CNET Editor Matthew Elliott takes a look at the beta version of Boot Camp, which will be included in Mac OS X 10.5.

For more and demo video visit:

http://news.com.com/1606-2-6058207.html

I have to say this is the coolest thing since Ensemble Studios (owned by Microsoft) released their popular Age of Kings from PC fame on the Nintendo DS (competitor)

To launch MSN Mimic go to Games or Activities menu in the conversation window and select "MSN Mimic". That will open an activity window on the right side of the conversation that looks like this: