http://csce436spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/03/paper-reading-19-local-danger-warnings.html
WildThumb: A Web Browser Supporting Efficient Task Management on Wide Displays
Shenwei Liu, Cornell University
Keishi Tajima, Kyoto University
IUI’10, February 7–10, 2010, Hong Kong, China
Summary
This paper describes a new system designed by the authors to allowing easier tab switching than the currently available systems for web browsers on wide screen monitors. It uses the extra space to display "augmented thumbnails" instead of traditional tabs, making the pages more visible and easier to click.
The thumbnails themselves consist of an image of the top of the page, with the site logo overlaying the upper left and the most prominent image on the page overlaying the lower right. The basic idea is clearly illustrated in the image below, taken from the paper.
A 9-user study conducted with experienced web browser users led to the conclusion, both from timing operations and from questionnaires issued to the subjects - that the system provided for a minor increase in switching speed.
Discussion
This idea was very interesting (which I think will be illustrated by the length of this discussion section!) if, in my view, somewhat flawed. The idea of making improvements to the tab system is of course broadly applicable and would be quite useful to anyone.
The concerns I have are as follows. First, look at the above screenshot. While the contents of the unopened tabs are more clear, the trade off is that they are also quite distracting, drawing the eye away from the primary focus. Second, the excess space being utilized here is going to vanish as more and more websites allowing widescreen browsing, meaning that you will be paying an increased price in terms of readability to get these augmented sidebar thumbnails. I am also somewhat concerned about the auto-page grouping algorithm, as I prefer to maintain control over the positioning of my tabs myself and find that the widely available click and drag functionality is quite adequate for this. This concern could be allayed by simply allow that algorithm to be toggled off. I must also note that I have caught the first grammatical error I can recall in one of these papers: in the 2nd sentence of the introduction "are" should be "is".
On a positive note, the augmented thumbnails do live to their billing, and could improve many different pages/functions that use thumbnails. The Chrome homepage, for instance.
In the future, two functions I want to see are the ability to view two different tabs from the same browser at one time (presumably, each taking up half the screen by default), and the ability to have a function otherwise similar to "favoriting" save and open multiple tabs at once.
It is an interesting idea. Overall I would say that it would come down to a preference thing, where there would not be one way that proved superior to the other. It would be nice if a browser were to implement this to be able to toggle this action off or on.
ReplyDeleteI also read this paper, and I definitely agree with you in most of your points of view. I also prefer to manually organize my tabs, that's what personalization is all about. One interesting thing is that you caught the grammatical error, there is actually another one where instead of writing "the" they just wrote "th".
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