A web synchronization method for supporting real and non-real-time web communication

We propose a web synchronization method that shares the same webpage and operations (e.g. button click) by browsers among users in not only real-time but also non-real-time to remotely support operations in various scenes. This method also synchronizes the output time of a scene in streaming content (e.g. voice and video) and the output time of other content (non-streaming content including the output result of operations at the scene). Conventional methods achieve a web synchronization to supplement voice/video communication with the support of operations in real-time for services such as call centers and e-learning. An operator can remotely operate a user's browser instead of users. However, users cannot receive the services when support by an operator is unavailable. Therefore, we propose a novel method for enabling non-real-time web communication. The proposed method achieves web synchronization by automatically adding synchronization information to web content that specifies the time at when an operation is executed. The timing for synchronization is calculated according to the output time of streaming content and communication environments (network delay and rendering performance). We implemented a prototype system and measured the difference in the output time between browsers. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves synchronization within 300-400ms (target time is 400ms).