TY - GEN
T1 - JSCleaner
T2 - 29th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2020
AU - Chaqfeh, Moumena
AU - Zaki, Yasir
AU - Hu, Jacinta
AU - Subramanian, Lakshmi
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 ACM.
PY - 2020/4/20
Y1 - 2020/4/20
N2 - A significant fraction of the World Wide Web suffers from the excessive usage of JavaScript (JS). Based on an analysis of popular webpages, we observed that a considerable number of JS elements utilized by these pages are not essential for their visual and functional features. In this paper, we propose JSCleaner, a JavaScript de-cluttering engine that aims at simplifying webpages without compromising their content or functionality. JSCleaner relies on a rule-based classification algorithm that classifies JS into three main categories: non-critical, replaceable, and critical. JSCleaner removes non-critical JS from a webpage, translates replaceable JS elements with their HTML outcomes, and preserves critical JS. Our quantitative evaluation of 500 popular webpages shows that JSCleaner achieves around 30% reduction in page load times coupled with a 50% reduction in the number of requests and the page size. In addition, our qualitative user study of 103 evaluators shows that JSCleaner preserves 95% of the page content similarity, while maintaining nearly 88% of the page functionality (the remaining 12% did not have a major impact on the user browsing experience).
AB - A significant fraction of the World Wide Web suffers from the excessive usage of JavaScript (JS). Based on an analysis of popular webpages, we observed that a considerable number of JS elements utilized by these pages are not essential for their visual and functional features. In this paper, we propose JSCleaner, a JavaScript de-cluttering engine that aims at simplifying webpages without compromising their content or functionality. JSCleaner relies on a rule-based classification algorithm that classifies JS into three main categories: non-critical, replaceable, and critical. JSCleaner removes non-critical JS from a webpage, translates replaceable JS elements with their HTML outcomes, and preserves critical JS. Our quantitative evaluation of 500 popular webpages shows that JSCleaner achieves around 30% reduction in page load times coupled with a 50% reduction in the number of requests and the page size. In addition, our qualitative user study of 103 evaluators shows that JSCleaner preserves 95% of the page content similarity, while maintaining nearly 88% of the page functionality (the remaining 12% did not have a major impact on the user browsing experience).
KW - Classification
KW - JavaScript
KW - User Experience
KW - Web Simplification
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85086594188&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85086594188&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3366423.3380157
DO - 10.1145/3366423.3380157
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85086594188
T3 - The Web Conference 2020 - Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2020
SP - 763
EP - 773
BT - The Web Conference 2020 - Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2020
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Y2 - 20 April 2020 through 24 April 2020
ER -