Elastic presentation space

Abstract

A method for displaying visual information on a display screen of a computer, comprising the steps of scaling the visual information to produce a scaled representation to fit on the display screen the scaled representation containing the entire content of the visual information; selecting a region of interest within the scaled representation; applying a transformation to the scaled representation to improve the visual detail in the region of interest; and, displaying the transformed presentation on the display screen.

Description

[0001] This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 978,773, filed Oct. 18, 2001, and incorporated herein by reference, which claims priority from Canadian Patent Application No. 2,323,569, filed Oct. 18, 2000, and incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The invention relates to the field of computer graphics processing, more specifically, the invention relates to a system and method for applying detail-in-context viewing techniques and elastic presentation space technologies to online and electronic presentation of viewable media, such as newspapers, telephone directories, and maps. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] Display screens are the primary visual display interface to a computer. One problem with these visual display screens is that they are limited in size, thus presenting a challenge to user interface design, particularly when larger amounts of information is to be displayed. This problem is normally referred to as the “...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0011] According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for displaying visual information on a display screen of a computer. The method comprises the steps of scaling the visual information to produce a scaled representation to fit on the display screen the scaled representation containing the entire content of the visual information; selecting a region of interest within the scaled representation; applying a transformation to the scaled representation to improve the visual detail in the region of interest; and, displaying the transformed presentation on the display screen.

Problems solved by technology

One problem with these visual display screens is that they are limited in size, thus presenting a challenge to user interface design, particularly when larger amounts of information is to be displayed.

While these solutions are suitable for a large number of visual display applications, these solutions become less effective where the visual information is spatially related, such as maps, newspapers and such like.

In this type of information display, panning, zooming and / or scrolling is not as effective as much of the context of the panned, zoomed or scrolled display is hidden.

One shortcoming of current Electronic Presentation Space (EPS) graphics technology and detail-in-context presentation methods is that they are computationally inefficient.

Images