Mapping and browsing the web in a 2D space
Mao Lin Huang, Wei Lai, Yanchun Zhang · 1999
The current generation of web browsers excites people because of the structure of hyper-document that provides users with an effective and convenient way to move in cyberspace. However, this arrangement does not give users a visual "map" to guide the users in their web journey. It does not provide a sense of "space" while the user is exploring the (cyber) space, instead it only gives a series of lists. Most existing visualization techniques and current research interests emphasise "site mapping". That is, they try to find an effective way of constructing a structured geometrical map for one web site (a local map). This can only guide the user through a very limited region of cyberspace, and does not help users in their overall journey through the cyberspace. In this paper, the authors look at the whole of cyberspace as one graph; a huge and partially unknown graph, and they use their new on-line exploratory visualization technique to maintain and display a subset of this huge graph incrementally. Visual Web Browser provides the user with a dynamic graphical map for guiding the web journey.