Automatically logging Web activity

Problem
The electronic whiteboard in Classroom 2000 captures all activity that occurs within it. However, in a class, the teacher usually uses other computer programs to demonstrate certain points. For example, it is common practice to bring up a Web browser to point to various information during a lecture. Since this is often a very important part of the learning experience, it is important to keep track of Web browsing activity during class. We have been experimenting with URL logging in Classroom 2000. For an example of what we produce, here is a sample URL log from a class this quarter. This log was created by a program written by Mark Guzdial in the Frontier environment for the Macintosh and leverages off of the Apple Event interface between Frontier and Netscape.

The object of this project is to replace the Frontier solution with a solution in Java that will provide a cross-platform URL logger. You need to create a Java applet that, once invoked, tracks the URLs visited by the browser and writes the results to a file that resides in the correct diretory for the particular class. The location of the URL log is dictated by the ZenPad system and resides on the machine c2000.gatech.edu.

Once complete, this URL logger will be used in conjunction with ZenPad and other Classroom 2000 tools to track Web use during a class. An ambitious student should also be able to think of a number of other applications of a general URL logging utility such as this.

Background

• You need familiarity with Java and will need to do some network programming. There are plenty of resources here to get you started in this direction, including a very good book by O'Reilly and Associates on Java Networking. What you will need to figure out is how an applet gains information about the context of the browser in which it was invoked. It is most likely that you will write the logging utility as a thread that regularly polls the state of the browser.
• You need some familiarity with the directory structure required by ZenPad, but this is fairly minimal and easy to understand.

• all source code for your solution
• a Web page describing the application and includes a pointer for the user to provide a demonstration of the working system. This would involve loading the applet and then directing the user to the file that contains the history of Web browsing that the applet noticed available on some network machine.