Screen management in hypertext systems with rubber sheet layouts
Marc Kaltenbach, François Robillard, Claude Frasson · 1991
This paper addresses the issue of screen management in hypertext systems.It presents a new way of placing windows, or any graphical object delimited by rectangular boundaries, in the context of an existing set of windows.The heart of the technique presented is a particular re-scaling of the display which changes the locations of objects while maintaining their sizes and avoiding object overlapping.This functionality has uses both for authoring and browsing hypertext documents.In particular it enables the display of hierarchically structured information at various levels of detail and complements other visual graph management functions.More generally, the objective is to attenuate the feeling of disorientation users experience when related information obtained through hypertext browsing are stacked upon a display screen.This work suggests extending hypertext systems by enabling users to create well structured information "collages" and to program animated presentations on the basis of browsing through ill or differently structured collections of documents.