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Published Articles >> Table of Contents >> Abstract
IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (INFOVIS'04)
pp. 119-126
Expand-Ahead: A Space-Filling Strategy for Browsing Trees
Michael J. McGuffin, University of Toronto
Gord Davison, IBM Toronto Laboratory
Ravin Balakrishnan, University of Toronto
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DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/INFVIS.2004.21
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Many tree browsers allow subtrees under a node to be collapsed or expanded, enabling the user to control screen space usage and selectively drill-down. However, explicit expansion of nodes can be tedious. Expand-ahead is a space-filling strategy by which some nodes are automatically expanded to fill available screen space, without expanding so far that nodes are shown at a reduced size or outside the viewport. This often allows a user exploring the tree to see further down the tree without the effort required in a traditional browser. It also means the user can sometimes drill-down a path faster, by skipping over levels of the tree that are automatically expanded for them. Expand-ahead differs from many detail-in-context techniques in that there is no scaling or distortion involved. We present 1D and 2D prototype implementations of expand-ahead, and identify various design issues and possible enhancements to our designs. Our prototypes support smooth, animated transitions between different views of a tree. We also present the results of a controlled experiment which show that, under certain conditions, users are able to drill-down faster with expand-ahead than without.
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 Additional Information
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Index Terms- tree browsing and navigation, focus+context, expandahead, automatic expansion, space filling, adaptive user interfaces
Citation:
Michael J. McGuffin, Gord Davison, Ravin Balakrishnan,
"Expand-Ahead: A Space-Filling Strategy for Browsing Trees,"
infovis,
pp. 119-126,
IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (INFOVIS'04),
2004
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