Tracking and viewing changes on the web
Fred Douglis, Thomas J. Ball · 1996
We describe a set of tools that detect when WorldWide -Web pages have been modified and present the modifications visually to the user through markedup HTML. The tools consist of three components: w3newer, which detects changes to pages; snapshot, which permits a user to store a copy of an arbitrary Web page and to compare any subsequent version of a page with the saved version; and HtmlDiff, which marks up HTML text to indicate how it has changed from a previous version. We refer to the tools collectively as the AT&T Internet Difference Engine (AIDE). This paper discusses several aspects of AIDE, with an emphasis on systems issues such as scalability, security, and error conditions.