PERSONALIZING ACCESS OF GAME WEB SITE BASED ON USER CONFIGURATION

A personalized web page displays a subset of multiplayer games available on a game web site, corresponding to game software programs that are installed on a user's computer. When the user connects to the web site, an extended markup language (XML) data file, a web page that is not yet personalized, and a control file are downloaded. An executable instance of an ActiveX™ control program instantiated by JScript included in the web page queries the operating system registry to produce an XML text string listing each software program of a specific type that are installed. The results are then compared to the XML data downloaded from the web site, returning the subset of the games that are available on the web site and also installed on the computer. The web page is then transformed to display the subset, producing the personalized web page.