Show HN: Sieve - filter webpages and watch changes

Cool concept, but name collision: Sieve has been the name of a server-side mail filtering language for quite some time. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_%28mail_filtering_language%29" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_%28mail_filtering_langua...</a>

This is very awesome! The implementation is different to what I expected (or to what I would have done).<p>They seem to run a browser on the server and let the user interact with it to choose DOM elements to monitor for changes. I would have just taken a screenshot (perhaps with <a href="http://urlbox.io/" rel="nofollow">http://urlbox.io/</a> or perhaps with CutyCapt) and allowed the user to draw boxes over the screenshot. Then repeatedly screenshot the site and whenever the contents of that box changes, alert the user.<p>The Sieve method has the advantage that you are able to tell the user what the new text is. The screenshot method is significantly simpler.<p>EDIT: So, in startup terms, the screenshot method could be the MVP :). Provided, of course, that it is considered "viable" not to know the text. If I were a user I would consider it viable - it is still a vast improvement over having to check the site manually.

I'd been mulling over the same concept for quite a while, as a sort of an intelligent update to IE5 for Mac's Subscription manager[1]. It was a very useful tool in my toolbox, and I mourned losing it as that browser decayed.<p>The main issue with the Subscriptions was that they were global, and would not inform you what changed, just that there were changes. With the increased dynamicness of the web since good ol' Y2K (especially with ads), this model is much less feasible, whereas a DOM-based model is more robust, and allows further automatic data processing.<p>I never got past small prototypes, so I look forward to Sieve's release since it is basically someone doing my work for me! :)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.macoptions.com/tips/images/iesub2.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www.macoptions.com/tips/images/iesub2.gif</a>

Hello HN! I am excited to show Sieve. Its in alpha state and under active development.<p>Would appreciate your feedback. Checkout Visual Selector used to let user filter content from a webpage.

Can I ask what sort of libraries you're using for the canvas-in-page-browser-selector? Is it server or client side?<p>The technology here is spectacular. Great job!

Might I suggest, re the name collision, to simplify the name to Siv? Sieve is prone to misspellings, and "Siv" has more of a brand feel to it.

One of my friend's summerjob is to keep eye on heat rates of some electrical engines (web page, as it seems) and he will surely love this.

Is the selection of the relevant part of the page not possible on the client side? Through some iframe magic or something?

Btw, the landing page is a Stripe.com rip off.