Zooming User Interface
Encyclopedia
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
, a zooming user interface or zoomable user interface (ZUI, pronounced zoo-ee) is a graphical environment
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
where users can change the scale of the viewed area
Viewport
A viewport is a rectangular viewing region in computer graphics, or a term used for optical components. It has several definitions in different contexts:- Computing :...
in order to see more detail or less, and browse through different documents
Electronic document
An electronic document is any electronic media content that are intended to be used in either an electronic form or as printed output....
. A ZUI is a type of graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
(GUI). Information elements appear directly on an infinite virtual desktop
Virtual desktop
In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the size of a computer's desktop environment is expanded beyond the physical limits of the screen's real estate through the use of software, This saves space...
(usually created using vector graphics
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
), instead of in windows. Users can pan
Panning (camera)
In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device...
across the virtual surface in two dimensions and zoom
Page zooming
In computing, page zooming is the ability to zoom in and out a document or image at page level. It is usually found in applications related to document layout and publishing, e.g...
into objects of interest. For example, as you zoom into a text object it may be represented as a small dot, then a thumbnail of a page of text, then a full-sized page and finally a magnified view of the page.
ZUIs use zooming as the main metaphor for browsing through hyperlink
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
ed or multivariate
Multivariate statistics
Multivariate statistics is a form of statistics encompassing the simultaneous observation and analysis of more than one statistical variable. The application of multivariate statistics is multivariate analysis...
information.
Objects present inside a zoomed page can in turn be zoomed themselves to reveal further detail, allowing for recursive
Recursion
Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion. The term has a variety of meanings specific to a variety of disciplines ranging from...
nesting
Nesting (computing)
In computing science and informatics, the word nesting may denote several different constructions and activities where information is organized in layers or objects contain other similar objects. The rather general term is thus used in quite specific ways for various situations and concepts...
and an arbitrary level of zoom.
When the level of detail present in the resized object is changed to fit the relevant information into the current size, instead of being a proportional view of the whole object, it's called semantic zooming.
Some experts consider the ZUI paradigm as a flexible and realistic successor to the traditional windowing GUI, being a Post-WIMP
Post-WIMP
In computing post-WIMP comprises work on user interfaces, mostly graphical user interfaces, which attempt to go beyond the paradigm of windows, icons, menus and a pointing device, i.e. WIMP interfaces....
interface. But little effort is currently spent developing ZUIs, while there are ongoing efforts for developing GUIs.
History
The longest running effort to create a ZUI has been the Pad++ project started by Ken PerlinKen Perlin
Ken Perlin is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University, founding director of the Media Research Lab at NYU, and the Director of the Games for Learning Institute. His research interests include graphics, animation, multimedia, and science education...
, Jim Hollan, and Ben Bederson at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
and continued at the University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...
under Hollan's direction. After Pad++, Bederson developed Jazz, then Piccolo, and now Piccolo2D at the University of Maryland, College Park
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, which is still actively being developed in Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
and C#. More recent ZUI efforts include Archy
Archy
Archy is a software system whose user interface poses a radically different approach for interacting with computers with respect to traditional graphical user interfaces. Designed by human-computer interface expert Jef Raskin, it embodies his ideas and established results about human-centered...
by the late Jef Raskin
Jef Raskin
Jef Raskin was an American human-computer interface expert best known for starting the Macintosh project for Apple in the late 1970s.-Early years and education:...
, and the simple ZUI of the Squeak
Squeak
The Squeak programming language is a Smalltalk implementation. It is object-oriented, class-based and reflective.It was derived directly from Smalltalk-80 by a group at Apple Computer that included some of the original Smalltalk-80 developers...
Smalltalk
Smalltalk
Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...
programming environment and language. The term ZUI itself was coined by Franklin Servan-Schreiber and Tom Grauman while they worked together at the Sony Research Laboratories. They were developing the first Zooming User Interface library based on Java 1.0, in partnership with Prof. Ben Bederson, University of New Mexico, and Prof. Ken Perlin, New York University.
Previous to the availability of ZUI toolkits, the virtual desktop
Virtual desktop
In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the size of a computer's desktop environment is expanded beyond the physical limits of the screen's real estate through the use of software, This saves space...
s feature of many window manager
Window manager
A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment...
s provided some of the organizational benefits of ZUIs. Virtual desktops differ from ZUIs in that they don't provide a physical metaphor of continuous zooming but a collection of separate, fixed size desktop containers. Virtual desktops functions are available by default in KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
, GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
and Mac OS X Leopard, and through an add-on in Microsoft Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
.
GeoPhoenix, a Cambridge, MA, startup associated with the MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
, founded by Julian Orbanes, Adriana Guzman, Max Riesenhuber, released the first mass-marketed commercial Zoomspace in 2002-3 on the Sony CLIÉ PDA handheld, with Ken Miura of Sony.
In 2006, Hillcrest Labs
Hillcrest Labs
Hillcrest Labs invented Freespace motion-control technology and the first motion-controlled remote for television. Freespace allows users to control images on a screen by using natural motions, allowing for a new way of interacting with television content...
introduced the HoME television navigation system, the first graphical, zooming interface for television.
Most recently, Microsoft's Live Labs has released a zooming UI for web browsing called DeepFish for the Windows Mobile 5 platform.
Apple's iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
(premiered June 2007) uses a stylized form of ZUI, in which panning and zooming are performed through a touch interface. It is not a full ZUI implementation since these operations are applied to bounded spaces (such as web pages or photos) and have a limited range of zooming and panning.
Recently Franklin Servan-Schreiber founded Zoomorama, based on work he did at the Sony Research Laboratories in the mid-nineties. The Zooming Browser for Collage of High Resolution Images was released in Alpha in October 2007. Zoomorama's browser is all Flash based. Development of this project was stopped in 2010, but many examples are still available on the site.
ZUI projects
- 3D Topicscape3D Topicscape3D Topicscape, a software application, is a Personal Information Manager that provides a template loosely based on mind-mapping or concept mapping. It presents the mind map as a 3D scene where each node is a cone . It can also display in a 2D format...
: 3D concept mapConcept mapFor concept maps in generic programming, see Concept .A concept map is a diagram showing the relationships among concepts. It is a graphical tool for organizing and representing knowledge....
ping software for organizing information. - DasherDasherDasher is a computer accessibility tool which enables users to write without using a keyboard, by entering text on a screen using a pointing device such as a mouse, a touchpad, a touch screen, a roller ball, a joystick, a Push-button, a Wii Remote, or even mice operated by the foot or head...
: A zooming interface for text insertion. - fsnFsnfsn pronounced as "fusion" is an experimental application to view a file system in 3D, made by SGI for IRIX systems....
: File System Navigator, a pseudo-3D file manager that appeared in the movie Jurassic ParkJurassic Park (film)Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck...
in 1993. - Google MapsGoogle MapsGoogle Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...
: Zoomable world map with integrated search. - Google EarthGoogle EarthGoogle Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...
: Zoomable world. - Piccolo (formerly Jazz): ZUI toolkit for Java and C# (no longer actively maintained).
- Piccolo2D: Piccolo's successor.
- PreziPreziPrezi is a cloud-based presentation software and storytelling tool for exploring and sharing ideas upon a virtual canvas. Prezi is distinguished by its Zooming User Interface , which enables users to zoom in and out of their presentation media...
Online zooming presentation editor made with Adobe Air - Seadragon SoftwareSeadragon SoftwareSeadragon was a team within the Microsoft Live Labs. Seadragon is a web optimized visualization technology that allows graphics and photos to be smoothly browsed, regardless of their size...
: A technology used in Microsoft's Photosynth
See also
- A Focus-plus-context screenFocus-plus-context screenA focus-plus-context screen is a specialized type of display device that consists of one or more high-resolution "focus" displays embedded into a larger low-resolution "context" display...
is based on the idea of focus+context, to provide both details and an overall view at the same time. - SpicyNodesSpicyNodesIn concept mapping and information visualization, SpicyNodes is a method for displaying hierarchical data in which a focus node displays rich information, and the surrounding nodes display related information .- Main idea :...
uses a variation of the radial treeRadial treeA radial tree, or "radial map", is a method of displaying a tree structure in a way that expands outwards, radially. It is one of many ways to visually display a tree., with examples extending back to the early 20th century...
approach, with a focus nodes zoomed in, and other nodes zoomed out.