Presentation of large objects on small displays

Abstract

A method for presenting at least a part of an object is shown, comprising at least partially dividing at least one object into a plurality of sub-objects, presenting the plurality of sub-objects in a first representation, making at least one sub-object of the plurality of sub-objects an active sub-object, and in response to a user operation on the at least one active sub-object, presenting at least one of the at least one active sub-objects in a second representation. The at least one object may be a 2D object, e.g. a Hypertext Markup Language HTML page or a page of a text document, or a 3D object, e.g. a Virtual Reality Markup Language VRML object, and said display may be integrated in a portable electronic device. The invention further relates to a device, a system, a computer program and a computer program product.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] This invention relates to a method, a computer program, a computer program product, a device and a system for presenting at least a part of an object on a display. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] The ongoing miniaturization of multi-media devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) or mobile phones in recent years appears to be only bounded by the perceptual limits of the human user. This particularly applies to the design of the displays of multimedia devices, with a remarkable trend to increase the relative area of the device that is consumed by its display. However, the display sizes of, for example, hand-held devices are necessarily significantly smaller than the display sizes, for which content is usually designed. If for instance content of the World Wide Web (WWW), i.e. web pages formatted according to the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or derivatives thereof (such as Extensible HTML (XHTML)), is to be displayed on the display of a ha...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0019] According to the present invention, it is also possible that several objects are at least partially divided into sub-objects. These several objects may for instance be pages of a text document, slides of a presentation, several web pages, several 3D objects or any other accumulation of information-carrying objects. When dividing said several objects into sub-objects, not necessarily each sub-object corresponds to one object. For instance, several objects may correspond to a sub-object, or only parts of an object may correspond to a sub-object. At least partially dividing several objects into sub-objects that are presented in a first representation and then, upon user operation, at least partially in a second representation allows the user to comfortably gain an overview on information that is spread across several objects and thus naturally difficult to perceive.

[0021] With said plurality of sub-objects being presented in first representation, it may be possible to reduce the original presentation size of the at least one object down to a size that lends itself for portrayal on a small display. However, even in this first representation, 1D, 2D or 3D scrolling may be required (in one, two or three dimensions of a Cartesian or spherical coordinate system, respectively) to explore sub-objects of said plurality of sub-objects in said first representation. Even when the content of one or more sub-objects in said first representation may no longer be clearly visible, a viewer gets an overview on the structure and contents of the at least one object, wherein the required amount of 1D, 2D or 3D scrolling may be eliminated or at least reduced. The same holds for the presentation of more than one object by dividing the objects into sub-objects and displaying said sub-objects in a first and a second representation, which allows the user to gain a structured overview on information that is spread across several objects.

[0027] The present invention obviously allows for an improved presentation of large objects on small displays by breaking down at least one object into a plurality of sub-objects, which are presented in a clear first representation that may grant the viewer an overview on the structure of the at least one object, and, via the possibility to select active sub-objects in said first representation via user operation and then to view said selected sub-objects in a second representation, also may allow to present relevant sub-objects of the at least one object in adequate size. In contrast to state-of-the-art techniques, it may be possible to skip the necessity of a complex original layout mode. The amount of scrolling, panning and zooming required to get an overview on the at least one object and to explore its content can be significantly reduced, so that less user interaction is needed and one-hand usage is facilitated.

[0041] According to a method of the present invention, in said second representation, said at least one active sub-object is scaled to a size that is larger than its size in said first representation. In said first representation, the selected sub-object is scaled, cropped or indicated by an icon, or modified according to any combination of these techniques, wherein the size of said first representation of said selected sub-object may be smaller than the original presentation size of said selected sub-object in order to allow a compact presentation of the object (or parts thereof) on said display. In contrast, in said second representation, said selected sub-object is scaled or enlarged to a size that is larger than said size of said selected sub-object in said first representation, so that an improved portrayal of the contents of said selected sub-object is possible. In said second representation contents of an sub-object may be additionally zoomed in and out. This may be done so that zooming affects size of contents of a sub-object shown in second representation. Alternatively, the zooming may be applied to all sub-objects (in first and second representation). In addition to this, there might be a separate zoom for sub-objects that are shown in said first representation.

Problems solved by technology

However, the display sizes of, for example, hand-held devices are necessarily significantly smaller than the display sizes, for which content is usually designed.

Viewing web pages on a small display requires horizontal and vertical scrolling with scroll bars, which is generally experienced as uncomfortable or even annoying for the user.

This method of rendering the page so that it fits the width of the device's display causes at least the following problems: Rendered pages get very tall, so a lot of vertical scrolling is required.

The structure of the web page is not preserved well by the rendering process, for example form elements like input fields frequently get separated far away from each other if they are aligned using tables.

Even when such an original layout mode is provided by the browser, there arise further problems: As the web page area is big, a lot of panning and zooming is needed to explore the entire content of the web page.

On a small display, it is difficult to figure out the structure of a large page, i.e. the viewer may lose an overview of the entire web page.

Text paragraphs in the original layout usually are wider than the display width, so that paragraphs in the original layout mode on a small display are often difficult to read.

Quite similar problems are encountered when instead of two-dimensional (2D) objects (such as pages), three-dimensional (3D) objects are to be presented on a display.

There currently exists no technique to clearly present such usually large 3D objects on a small display.

Images