MapSurface is a tool that tracks user activity within a web page. Its purpose is to provide an understanding of how users find, navigate and value web pages. It displays this information in a compact widget which sits above the web page.

If you press the “Alt” and “X” keys (try this on the Ajax Link Tracker page) the MapSurface Dashboard appears. The dashboard contains summary information such as the number of views and top referrers. There are two hyperlinks above the summary tables. Clicking on the “map” link will display an overlay of link usage by percentage. The “more >” link opens a second floating window called the ViewPlane which contains more detailed information. Example sites that are already configured with MapSurface include: www.glennjones.net, www.madgex.com and www.mapsurface.com

MapSurface is both an interface and web application design prototype. It is not yet a commercial or beta (Web 2.0) application. I was encouraged to build it by the positive response to the Ajax Link Tracker. I have posted this work to the web to get peoples views of its worth and also because I wanted to share the technical journey of building an application like this. I have used a number of interesting techniques such as JSON data transfers, dynamic script loading and module interface design pattern. Time permitting, I am hoping to write tutorials about each of these subjects.

I have numerous ideas to take this concept forward. Although the current version only displays a small about of information, it is gathering all it needs to match most current web statistics packages. The ViewPlane could be extended to include what browsers people are using etc.

But I believe the most interesting direction to extend MapSurface would be to use the social bookmarking and tagging site APIs. With some thought you could provide interesting information about the context of a page within the whole web. Measuring the popularity of the page through how many people have bookmarked or linked to it.

To help generate some feedback I have a limited number of test accounts for anyone who is interested in trying out MapSurface. If you would like to be considered for an account please fill-in the form on www.mapsurface.com. To use MapSurface you simply need an account at www.mapsurface.com and to add a JavaScript file link into any page you wish to track. The tracking file is currently 8K. The widget interface is loaded only when you press the key combination.

Note /> I will be developing different commercial applications from these concepts through my company Madgex. I am unsure about the path of the MapSurface prototype itself, if there is enough interest it could be developed into a commercial service. So for now I am not making the code open source.