"The Structured Graph Format (SGF) is an XML format, which has been designed for describing the structure of Web sites. All kinds of applications and tools can use or produce SGF metadata across the World Wide Web. Structured Graphs are a mathematical formalism designed to support scalable browsing and editing of large graphs. They were initally developed in the context of project management and software engineering." Tools for generating and using SGF metadata have been created by the designers; these tools may be downloaded and used free of charge. The SG Viewer is a client side tool that "offers improved navigation by letting users find nodes with a combination of: direct hyperlinks, summary hyperlinks, hierarchy based and text based search. The viewer uses a non-linear box layout to provide a better visual overview, while also allowing hierarchy and selection dependent zooming of details; its interface integrates hierarchy and local network views of a web site through its use of box borders, to highlight network nodes in the hierarchy frame. This allows a node's sources and destinations to also be seen in context."
[April 18, 1999] - "New version of SGViewer available for download. New features include animated transitions, contextual menus and support for boolean queries with textual feedback.
Links:
XML Document Type Definition for SGF documents; [local archive copy]
Mark Sifer presented a paper on the Structured Graph Viewer at APCHI'98 (Shonan Village Center, Hayama-machi, Kanagawa, Japan, July 17-17, 1998). See "Structured Graph Viewer: An interactive Overview Tool for Web Sites." By Mark Sifer (Information Systems Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering, Hiroshima University). Abstract: "When browsing a large hypermedia collection such as a web site, users often struggle to maintain context. An overview facility which works together with standard browsers is needed. The Structured Graph Viewer is part of a system designed to do this. The system supports organising a web site as a structured graph, which can then be explored with the viewer. A structured graph includes: a graph, a hierarchy and a rule for graph summarisation which uses the hierarchy. The viewer offers improved navigation by letting users find nodes with a combination of: direct hyperlinks, summary hyperlinks, hierarchy based and text based search. The viewer uses a non-linear box layout to provide a better visual overview, while also allowing hierarchy and selection dependent zooming of details. The viewer interface integrates hierarchy and local network views of a web site through its use of box borders, to highlight network nodes in the hierarchy frame. This allows a node's sources and destinations to also be seen in context. An early version of the viewer is available at http://www.isl.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/projects/SGF/."
[June 07, 1998] "Structured Graph Format: XML Metadata for Describing Web Site Structure." By Olivier Liechti, Mark J. Sifer, and Tadao Ichikawa [ISL, Hiroshima University]. Paper presented at 7th International World Wide Web Conference. Abstract: "To improve searching, filtering and processing of information on the Web, a common effort is made in the direction of Metadata, defined as 'machine understandable information about Web resources or other things'. In particular, the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) aims at providing a common syntax to emerging Metadata formats. With this idea, we propose the Structured Graph Format (SGF), an XML compliant markup language based on structured graphs, for capturing Web sites' structure. We also present SGMapper, a client-side tool, which aims to facilitate navigation in large Web sites by generating highly interactive site maps using SGF Metadata." Published in Computer Networks and ISDN Systems Volume 30, Number 1-7 (April 1998), pages 11-21, = Proceedings of the Seventh International World Wide Web Conference, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, April 14-18, 1998. See the online version or alternate copy, [local archive copy]. Also available in PDF format, [local archive copy]
