Portlet Wrappers using JavaScript

In this paper we extend the classical portal (with static portlets) design with HTML DOM Web clipping on the client browser using dynamic JavaScript portlets: the portal server supplies the user/passwords for all services through https and the client browser retrieves web pages and cuts/selects/changes the desired parts using paths (XPath) in the Web page structure. This operation brings along a set of advantages: dynamic wrapping of existing legacy websites in the client browser, the reloading of only changed portlets instead of whole portal, low bandwidth on the server, the elimination of re-writing the URL links in the portal, and last but not least, a support for Java applets in portlets by putting the login cookies on the client browser. Our solution is compliant with JSR168 Portlet Specification allowing portability across all vendor platforms.