An alternative paradigm for navigation

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Zoomable User Interfaces

• An alternative paradigm for navigation

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Agenda

• Questions
• Lit review comments full refs
• Motivating zoomable UIs
• PAD
• Applications
• Toolkit support

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A note on references

• When citing a paper, provide enough information
  for a reader to find the article.
• Author(s)
• Title of article
• Journal/Proceedings
• Pages, date
• URL

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Reading

• Ben Bederson Jim Hollan (1994) Pad A zooming
  graphical interface for exploring alternate
  interface physics. UIST 94, pp. 17-26.
• Other significant contributors
• Ken Perlin (NYU), George Furness (Michigan)

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History

• Ken Perlin and David Fox. Pad An alternative
  approach to the computer interface. SIGGRAPH 93
• Introduction of the multiscale concept for UIs.

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Motivation Interface Physics

• Alternative behavior to desktop metaphor
• Zooming as primitive
• Info viewed at varying scales

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Interface Physics vs. Metaphor

• Dangers of a metaphor
• reliant upon experiential knowledge
• Temporary bridges
• Dont scale
• Harmful if they lead to supposition of
  non-existent behaviors
• Simple laws of an interface physics (like
  scaling), can overcome these limitations

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Semantic Zooming

• Different representations of objects when viewed
  at different scales

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Implementation

• Pad implemented as extension to the Tcl/Tk
  scripting environment
• Semantic zooming via Tcl procedural objects

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Applications

• Pad Web browser
• Depicts multiple pages with links in single view
• http//www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/jazz/learn/papers/bookc
  hap-98-webbrowser/index.html

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Examples (Maryland)

• CounterPoint
• Presentation software
• http//www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/counterpoint/
• PhotoMesa
• Photo hierarchy viewer
• http//www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photomesa/
• TimeSearcher
• Visualization of time series data
• http//www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/timesearcher/

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Applications (Maryland)

• KidPad
• Collaborative story authoring
• http//www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/kiddesign/kidpad.shtml

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Tools

• Pad
• Tck/Tk, C toolkit, available from UCSD
• http//www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pad/
• http//www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pad/tour/
• Jazz
• Java toolkit (UIST 2000)
• http//www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/jazz/
• Piccolo
• Smaller, easier to use version of Jazz