The portrait of a common HTML web page

Abstract

Web pages are not purely text, nor are they solely HTML. This paper surveys HTML web pages; not only on textual content, but with an emphasis on higher order visual features and supplementary technology. Using a crawler with an in-house developed rendering engine, data on a pseudo-random sample of web pages is collected. First, several basic attributes are collected to verify the collection process and confirm certain assumptions on web page text. Next, we take a look at the distribution of different types of page content (text, images, plug-in objects, and forms) in terms of rendered visual area. Those different types of content are broken down into a detailed view of the ways in which the content is used. This includes a look at the prevalence and usage of scripts and styles. We conclude that more complex page elements play a significant and underestimated role in the visually attractive, media rich, and highly interactive web pages that are currently being added to the World Wide Web.