Today's graphical interactive systems largely depend upon pointing actions, i.e. entering an object and selecting it. In this paper we explore whether an alternate paradigm-- crossing boundaries -- may substitute or complement pointing as another fundamental interaction method. We describe an experiment in which we systematically evaluate two targetpointing tasks and four goal-crossing tasks, which differ by the direction of the movement variability constraint (collinear vs. orthogonal) and by the nature of the action (pointing vs. crossing, discrete vs. continuous). We found that participants ' temporal performance in each of the six tasks was dependent on the index of difficulty formulated in the same way as in Fitts' law, but that the parameters differ by task. We also found that goal crossing completion time was shorter or no longer than pointing performance under the same index of difficulty. These regularities, as well as qualitative characterizations of crossing actions and their application in HCI, lay the foundation for designing crossing-based user interfaces.

Abstract. We describe WEST, a WEb browser for Small Terminals, that aims to solve some of the problems associated with accessing web pages on hand-held devices. Through a novel combination of text reduction and focus+context visualization, users can access web pages from a very limited display environment, since the system will provide an overview of the contents of a web page even when it is too large to be displayed in its entirety. To make maximum use of the limited resources available on a typical hand-held terminal, much of the most demanding work is done by a proxy server, allowing the terminal to concentrate on the task of providing responsive user interaction. The system makes use of some interaction concepts reminiscent of those defined in the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), making it possible to utilize the techniques described here for WAP-compliant devices and services that may become available in the near future. Keywords. Hand-held devices, web browser, proxy systems, focus+context visualization, text reduction, flip zooming, WAP (wireless application protocol) 1

Browsing accounts for much of people's interaction with digital libraries, but it is poorly supported by standard search engines. Conventional systems often operate at the wrong level, indexing words when people think in terms of topics, and returning documents when people want a broader view. As a result, users cannot easily determine what is in a collection, how well a particular topic is covered, or what kinds of queries will provide useful results. We have built

We have developed a novel user interface technique for hypertext, called fluid links, that has several advantages over current methods. Fluid links provide additional information at a link source to support readers in choosing among links and understanding the structure of a hypertext. Fluid links present this information in a convenient location that does not obscure the content or layout of the source material. The technique uses perceptually-based animation to provide a natural and lightweight feeling to readers. In their richer forms, fluid links can provide a novel hypertext navigation paradigm that blurs the boundaries of hypertext nodes and can allow readers to fluidly control the focus on the material to support their current reading goals.

For many purposes, the Web page is too small a unit of interaction and analysis. Web sites are structured multimedia documents consisting of many pages, and users often are interested in obtaining and evaluating entire collections of topically related sites. Once such a collection is obtained, users face the challenge of exploring, comprehending, and organizing the items. We report four innovations that address these user needs. . We replaced the web page with the web site as the basic unit of interaction and analysis. . We defined a new information structure, the clan graph, that groups together sets of related sites. . We augment the representation of a site with a site profile, information about site structure and content that helps inform user evaluation of a site. . We invented a new graph visualization, the auditorium visualization, that reveals important structural and content properties of sites within a clan graph. Detailed analysis and user studies document the utility o...

We investigate the use of elastic hierarchies for representing trees, where a single graphical depiction uses a hybrid mixture, or "interleaving", of more basic forms at different nodes of the tree. In particular, we explore combinations of node-link and Treemap forms, to combine the space-efficiency of Treemaps with the structural clarity of node-link diagrams. A taxonomy is developed to characterize the design space of such hybrid combinations. A software prototype is described, which we used to explore various techniques for visualizing, browsing and interacting with elastic hierarchies, such as side-by-side overview and detail views, highlighting and rubber banding across views, visualization of multiple foci, and smooth animations across transitions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the characteristics of elastic hierarchies and suggestions for research on their properties and uses.

Information worlds are getting ever more vast. We need, not only better environments for dealing with this vast scale, but better tools for authoring information in those environments. This paper describes a new type of tool for authoring objects in infinite pan/zoom (so-called “multiscale”) environments, like PAD++. Called the MultiScale Editor (MuSE) it provides a direct way to manipulate objects in scale, simplifying important operations for authoring with large, multiscale information worlds.

Kinetic (dynamic) typography has demonstrated the ability to add significant emotive content and appeal to expressive text, allowing some of the qualities normally found in film and the spoken word to be added to static text. Kinetic typography has been widely and successfully used in film title sequences as well as television and computer-based advertising. However, its communicative abilities have not been widely studied, and its potential has rarely been exploited outside these areas. This is partly due to the difficulty in creating kinetic typography with current tools, often requiring hours of work to animate a single sentence. In this paper, we present the Kinedit system, a basic authoring tool that takes initial steps toward remedying this situation and hence promoting exploration of the communicative potential of kinetic typography for personal communication. Kinedit is informed by systematic study and characterization of a corpus of examples, and iterative involvement and validation by designers throughout the development process. We describe the tool and its underlying technology, usage experiences, lessons learned, and next steps.

The World Wide Web has quickly become a primary source of information for a variety of real-time topics, such as news headlines, stock market data, sports scores, and weather forecasts. However, achieving a high degree of awareness for this real-time information is particularly challenging as users are often performing other necessary tasks. As a result, techniques for notifying users of new or updated information must do so in a manner that is both timely and non-intrusive to their current task. In this paper we propose a new awareness technique, called Adjusting Windows, suitable for informing users of updated information on real-time information sites. The technique has been fully implemented within a new web browser application. We conducted a small user study in order to compare Adjusting Windows against two other awareness techniques in terms of awareness time, awareness strategy, and overall preference. Analysis of the data demonstrated that Adjusting Windows provided the best balance of information awareness with intrusion, and was preferred by many of the users.

Current navigation mechanisms for the World Wide Web promote a depth-first search for information on pages in hyperspace. This search strategy frequently results in the unintentional and often undesirable behavior of "web surfing" --- a user starts off in search of some information, but is sidetracked by tangential links. We propose a set of mechanisms based on breadth-first traversal that are better suited for directed searching. We have implemented our ideas as a scratchpad by augmenting an existing browser. Such a system makes web navigation both faster and easier. KEYWORDS: World Wide Web, information navigation, hypertext navigation, search technique, user interface INTRODUCTION As the amount of information on the World Wide Web continues to grow, efficient hypertext navigation is becoming crucial. More and more people are using the web, often for directed searches in which the goal is to extract information about a predetermined topic. Subject-based exploration and fact-findin...