The app I wrote visits a website and downloads the source text. It parses the text, looking for links to other web pages, links to itself, links to other file types, email addresses, etc. Based on how many links it finds, it creates a “star”. The number of links found equals the number of spines on the “star”. Thus, if it finds no links, it draws a circle.

It then goes to the first link on the page and does the same thing. Then it iterates over thousands of pages. E-mail addresses are drawn as a plus-sign, errors are an ‘x’, non-html files are squares, and a line follows the path the program took.

Another caveat: The first instance of a web page is a unique star. Anytime the app finds that same page linked to by another page, it draws a line back to the originating star instead of another star.