Abstract
Due to the increasing complexity of web applications and emerging HTML5 standards, a large amount of
runtime state is created and managed in the user's browser. While such complexity is desirable for us
er experience, it makes it hard for developers to implement mechanisms that provide users ubiquitous
access to the data they create during application use. This paper presents our research into browser
session migration for JavaScript-based web applications. Session migration is the act of transferring
a session between browsers at runtime. Without burden to developers, our system allows users to crea
te a snapshot image that captures all runtime state needed to resume the session elsewhere. Our syste
m works completely in the JavaScript layer and thus snapshots can be transfered between different bro
wser vendors and hardware devices. We report on performance metrics of the system using five applicat
ions, four different browsers, and three different devices.
WWW paper:
Lo, J., Wohlstadter, E. and Mesbah, A. Imagen: Runtime Migration of Browser Session
s for JavaScript Web Applications. In Proc. of the International Conference on the World Wide Web, 2013.
Video demonstration of Imagen session migration with: (1) Robots Are People Too, and (2) ColorPiano.
-Change video quality to full screen and HD for best viewing.
-Demonstrates migration between Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox.
