In this paper we review studies of the growth of the Internet and technologies that are useful for information search and retrieval on the Web. We present data on the Internet from several different sources, e.g., current as well as projected number of users, hosts, and Web sites. Although numerical figures vary, overall trends cited

This paper presents some methods for implementing efficient and general non-linear magnification transformations. Techniques are provided for combining linear and non-linear magnifications, for constraining the domain of magnifications, and for combining multiple transformations. In addition piecewise linear methods are introduced which allow greater efficiency and expressiveness than their continuous counterparts. Keywords Distortion, Magnification, Fisheye, Hyperbolic, Information Visualization, Piecewise Transformation This work was supported by US Dept. of Education award number P200A502367. 1 Introduction Since the introduction of the video display terminal, computer users have had to deal with the problem of limited screen space. This problem is becoming increasingly significant as modern computer systems and applications become more graphics oriented. Although current screen sizes of 1000 \Theta 800 pixels are increasingly common, they are still not adequate to completely...

This paper proposes Degree-of-Interest trees. These trees use degree-of-interest calculations and focus+context visualization methods, together with bounding constraints, to fit within preestablished bounds. The method is an instance of an emerging "attention-reactive" user interface whose components are designed to snap together in bounded spaces.

. We demonstrate the H3Viewer graph drawing library, which can be run from a standalone program or in conjunction with other programs such as SGI's Site Manager application. Our layout and drawing algorithms support interactive navigation of large graphs up to 100,000 edges. We present an adaptive drawing algorithm with a guaranteed frame rate. Both layout and navigation occur in 3D hyperbolic space, which provides a view of a large neighborhood around an easily changeable point of interest. We find an appropriate spanning tree to use as the backbone for fast layout and uncluttered drawing, and non-tree links can be displayed on demand. Our methods are appropriate when node or link annotations can guide the choice of a good parent from among all of the incoming links. Such annotations can be constructed using only a small amount of domain-specific knowledge, thus rendering tractable many graphs which may seem rather densely connected at first glance. 1 Motivation and Context Software s...

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We present a discussion and initial empirical investigation of user interface designs for a set of three Web browsers. The user study demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of two conventional 2D browsers, as well as that of XML3D, a novel browser that integrates an interactive 3D hyperbolic graph view with a more traditional 2D list view of the data. A standard collapse/expand tree browser and a Web-based hierarchical categorization similar to Yahoo!, were competitively evaluated against XML3D. No reliable difference between the two 2D browsers was observed. However, the results showed clear differences between XML3D and the 2D user interfaces combined. With XML3D, participants performed search tasks within existing categories reliably faster with no decline in the quality of their responses. It was informally observed that integrating the ability to view the overall structure of the information space with the ability to easily assess local and global relationships was key to successful search performance. XML3D was the only tool of the three that efficiently showed the overall structure within one visualization. The XML3D browser accomplished this by combining a 3D graph layout view as well as an accompanying 2D list view. Users did opt to use the 2D user interface components of XML3D during new category search tasks, and the XML3D performance advantage was no longer obtained in those conditions. In addition, there were no reliable differences in overall user satisfaction across the three user interface designs. Since we observed subjects using the XML3D features differently depending on the kind of search task, future studies should explore optimal ways of integrating the use of novel focus + context visualizations and 2D lists for effective information retrieval. The contribution of this paper is that it includes empirical data to demonstrate where novel focus + context views might benefit users over and above more conventional user interface techniques, in addition to where design improvements are warranted.

Never before in history has data been generated at such high volumes as it is today. Exploring and analyzing the vast volumes of data has become increasingly difficult. Information visualization and visual data mining can help to deal with the flood of information. The advantage of visual data exploration is that the user is directly involved in the data mining process. There are a large number of information visualization techniques that have been developed over the last two decades to support the exploration of large data sets. In this star report, we provide an overview of information visualization and visual data mining techniques, and illustrate them using a few examples.

In this paper we address the problem of finding the best viewpoints for three-dimensional straight-line graph drawings. We define goodness in terms of preserving the relational structure of the graph, and develop two continuous measures of goodness under orthographic parallel projection. We develop Voronoi variants to find the best viewpoints under these measures, and present results on the complexity of these diagrams.

We describe an algorithm producing circular layouts for trees, that is drawings, where subtrees of a node lie within circles, and these circles are themselves placed on the circumference of a circle. The complexity and methodology of our algorithm compares to Reingold and Tilford's algorithm for trees [11]. Moreover, the algorithm naturally admits distortion transformations of the layout. This, added to its low complexity, makes it very well suited to be used in an interactive environment.

A number of three-dimensional information visualization designs have been invented during the last years. However, comparisons of such designs have been scarce, making it difficult for application developers to select a suitable design. This paper reports on acase study where three existing visualization designs have been implemented and evaluated. We found that the three information visualization designs have inherent problems when used for visualizing different data sets, and that certain tasks can not be supported by the designs. A general methodology for evaluation is presented, which comprises evaluation of suitability for different data sets as well as evaluation of support for user tasks.