Lead Inventors:
Steven Feiner, Ph.D.;
Edward Ishak, Ph.D.
Web Browsing Difficult on Mobile Devices:
As most of us can attest to, a significant portion of one's day is spent browsing digital content, be it work related or recreational web surfing. With the advent of powerful handheld devices and wireless technology enabling full web browsing on such devices methods and tools for interfacing with and navigating content on these devices is needed. They lack the physical tools (mouse/touchpad), screen size and resolution to display and navigate documents or web pages effectively. Some content providers offer mobile friendly versions of sites, but a means to handle all content thrown at such devices is needed to realize their full potential.
Web Navigation Algorithm Improves Internet Experience on Hand Held Mobile Devices:
Presented here is an algorithm to enable effective content handling and browsing on handheld or other small format devices. The technology, called Content Aware Scrolling (CAS), applies a non-linear content navigation algorithm. CAS identifies areas of interest in the content being displayed, such as text or images. It then highlights and zooms those regions while skipping over blank space in the document. It controls both the speed, and direction of navigation based on the content being displayed. Simple linear inputs found on these devices such as up/down buttons or scroll wheels can navigate in two dimensions using CAS. Unlike most methods, which reformat the document for more linear display it preserves the original layout and adapts the navigation tool.
Applications:
• Viewing documents and web content handheld devices including smartphones, and tablet PCs
• Viewing content on other small format, input constrained devices such as digital cameras or handheld GPS devices
• Content specific, tailored browsing on any device, for instance hopping between points of interest on a map or faces in an image
Advantages:
• Enables navigation of large, complex documents without modification on handheld devices
• Does not reformat the document from its original layout, preserving user familiarity
• Uses simple 1-D input device (buttons, click wheel) for 2-D content navigation
Patent Status: Patent Issued (WO/2009/026508) ~ see link below.
Licensing Status: Available for Licensing and Sponsored Research Support
Publications: Content Aware Layout,
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems archive CHI '07, San Jose, CA, USA, Pages: 2459 - 2464, 2007