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	Voxwire MeetingRoom

Web Touring - Co-Browsing

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A co-surfing facility or, as Voxwire labels it, "Follow me browser", is available to all users. This feature works quite well and reliably.

Only users accessing the Voxwire MeetingRoom with a "moderator"-level password will be able to use this feature. All other participants (guests) will be able to simply see what the presenter/moderator will choose to showcase.

The technology behind this functionality is quite simple. The URL addresses of Web pages to access are redistributed to all meeting participants. When the "Follow me" mode is activated, all session participants will thus be able to see the Web sites being accessed though the loading time for each one may certainly differ due to varying connection speeds.

The Voxwire Follow-me browser is quite usable, simple and effective. Though some limitations take away from its full potential to be realized, it is a tool that you can start using efectively after a few minutes of use.

Though there is no easy way of monitoring when participants are all seeing a co-browsed Web page the moderator can request the participants to signal their status by briefly pressing the left Ctrl key -which provides a visual clue next to each participant name (meaning: I am seeing the page) or by giving a short notice in the text chat box.

Some limitations

A common limitation of standard co-browsing technology is the fact that participants of a web touring session will not be able to see when the presenter scrolls a page to show a particular item. In addition, it is easy for participants to "branch off" in any direction by clicking links that appear on any web page. To "sync back" those curious participants that may have gone off to see some secondary links Voxwire provides a very effective "Synch Web Page" command which "re-aligns" all participants to see the same page again.

The URL box utilized to input the addresses of Web site pages to access is not too user friendly. A drop down menu stores a history of all URLs inserted but this becomes easily unusable as too many URLs clog up its access. To clean up such history of URLs one needs to access the Options -> Clear URL's command.

There is no easy way to store selected Web page addresses as one does with Netscape bookmarks or IE favorites.

Available controls allow the presenter to move forward and backward among pre-visited URLs and to refresh the currently displayed Web page.

Another small bug presents itself when two or more users keep their Follow-me mode active simulatenously. You will hear lots of clicking and some of the presenters will not be able to have the others synch correctly with his/her Web page. The solution here is simply to keep only one presenter at a time with the Follow me mode turned on.

What Voxwire suggests as being an effective method of presenting content available on Web pages to be co-browsed is to "pre-navigate" all of the URLs required, and then by using the backward and forward navigation controls, go through such selected Web pages more easily during the actual presentation.

« PowerPoint Presentation Facilities | Main | Web Touring - Co-Browsing »

Posted on August 22, 2003 at 02:35 PM

Updated on November 17, 2003 at 03:05 PM

Overview

Key Strengths

Weak Points

PowerPoint Presentation Facilities

Web Touring - Co-Browsing