HTML and Site Linkage Analysis

In the late 1980s, a new term hypertext emerged in the area of information dissemination. What sets hypertext apart from ordinary text is the fact that hypertext contains information about the text embedded within itself. Entities within a hypertext document can be linked to other entities and to other documents.

HTML objects are linked with one another by hyperlinks. The anchor tag in HTML (<A HREF=" "> </A>) is the simplest way to link various hypertext entities. Other tags that use hyperlinking include the <FORM> tag, whereby input is delivered to a Web resource, and the <OBJECT> and <APPLET> tags, which allow objects to be embedded in a document.

At first, the process of site linkage analysis seems like a manual task. The visual components rendered by the browser are easy to analyze. For example, you can easily observe HTML forms or an applet on a Web page. However, several other components don't get rendered visually by the browser. A bit more digging is required to observe them; you have to view the HTML source code or look at the HTTP response header. The manual approach of inspecting each Web resource and the HTML source code behind it may seem practical for small Web sites or applications that contain a couple of dozen resources. In the case of medium to large Web sites or applications, inspecting and analyzing each resource manually simply isn't practical. An automated methodology for performing site linkage analysis is required.