Cloud-Based Browser Co-Browsing Eliminates DOM Dependency
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing collaborative browsing techniques are limited by their dependency on the Document Object Model (DOM), requiring continuous maintenance, and do not ensure a consistent visual experience across different browsers, leading to inefficiencies and limitations in remote technical support scenarios.
Innovation Solution
A cloud-based browser is shared among participants, capturing and streaming website interactions to eliminate DOM dependency, ensuring all users see the same image and allowing navigation across any website, with interactions executed as if the user is present, and maintaining user session and geo-location integrity through proxy tunneling or short-lived tokens.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If DOM-based co-browsing is implemented, then collaborative browsing functionality is achieved, but continuous maintenance is required due to browser volatility and version dependencies
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a cloud-based browser as an intermediary component that mediates between the website and the users' local browsers. This cloud browser captures the website rendering and streams it to multiple users, eliminating the need for DOM-based integration in the website and removing dependency on users' local browser implementations, thereby resolving the maintenance burden while ensuring reliable co-browsing functionality
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a virtual copy of the browser environment in the cloud that replicates the browsing experience for multiple users simultaneously. Instead of modifying the website to work with multiple browsers, a single cloud-based browser instance is copied and streamed to all participants, ensuring consistency and eliminating the need to maintain compatibility across different browser versions
2Adaptability or versatility
If DOM-based technology is used for co-browsing, then website interaction is enabled, but visual consistency across different browsers cannot be guaranteed
Solution Approach 1:
The cloud-based browser acts as a mediator that standardizes the rendering process. All users receive the same visual output from the single cloud browser instance, regardless of their local browser differences. This intermediary approach guarantees visual consistency while maintaining adaptability to various user environments
Solution Approach 2:
The patent enforces homogeneity in the browsing experience by using a single cloud-based browser instance for all users. The same rendered content is streamed to every participant, ensuring that everyone sees identical visuals and interactions regardless of their local browser's rendering capabilities or version differences
3Adaptability or versatility
If custom code injection is used for co-browsing, then collaborative browsing is achieved on specific pages, but implementation and maintenance burden increases for the website owner
Solution Approach 1:
The cloud browser serves as an intermediary that eliminates the need for custom code injection into the website. The website owner simply needs to integrate the cloud browser service, which then handles all the complexity of capturing and streaming the browsing experience. This reduces implementation complexity from page-level custom code to a single service integration while maintaining full adaptability across all website pages
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the complex co-browsing functionality from the website's codebase and relocates it to a separate cloud-based service. This extraction removes the implementation burden from the website owner, as the cloud browser independently handles capturing, rendering, and streaming without requiring custom code in the website's pages
Data Source
AI summary
According to this disclosure, an alternative to Document Object Model (DOM)-based co-browsing uses a cloud-based browser that is shared by the participants. The cloud browser enables the participants to view a website together but from within their own respective local browser resource. The cloud-based browser is made available by a service provider. Using a cloud browser and streaming of the website image (from the cloud browser) to both peers guarantees that the participants in the co-browse session see the same image, regardless of the local browsers that they use. Further, by transferring the actual user actions (e.g., clicks, taps, gestures, etc.) and executing them in the cloud browser as if the respective user is present in front of the cloud browser, the approach eliminates dependency on the site/page DOM. Rather, in this approach the cloud browser handles all code injections necessary for the streaming of the images to the endpoints.