In computing, a Zooming User Interface or ZUI is a graphic environment that allows users to interact with system objects. It is a fairly evolutionary outgrowth of the graphical user interface, or GUI. A ZUI can represent different levels of scale and detail, and the user can change the scale of the viewed area in order to show more detail.

In Zooming User Interfaces, information elements are shown directly on an infinite virtual desktop (usually created using vector graphics), instead of in windows. Users can pan across the virtual surface in two dimensions and zoom into objects of interest. For example, as you zoom into a text object it may be represented as a small dot, then a thumbnail of a page of text, then a full-sized page and finally a magnified view of the page.

The ZUI is an interface paradigm that is seen by some as a flexible and realistic successor to the traditional windowing GUI. However, compared with ongoing GUI development efforts, the resources devoted to creating ZUIs is small.

History

The longest running effort to create a ZUI has been the Pad++ project started by Ken Perlin, Jim Hollan, and Ben Bederson at New York University and continued at the University of New Mexico under Hollan's direction. After Pad++, Bederson developed Jazz and later Piccolo ^* at the University of Maryland, College Park, which is still actively being developed in Java and C#. More recent ZUI efforts include Archy by the late Jef Raskin, and the simple ZUI of the Squeak Smalltalk programming environment and language.

GeoPhoenix a Cambridge, MA, startup associated with the MIT Media Lab, founded by Julian Orbanes Adriana Guzman, Max Riesenhuber, released the first mass-marketed commercial Zoomspace in 2002-3 on the Sony CLIÉ PDA handheld, with Ken Miura [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GZQ/is_3_44/ai_96795300 of Sony.

External links

ZUI projects

• Pad++ (defunct)
• Piccolo ZUI toolkit for Java and C#.
• AutoBAHN
• mjoo
• ZoomDesk An experimental zooming desktop.
• Zoomable Visual Transformation ZUI toolkit for Java.

Examples

• PhotoMesa Zooming photo browser.
• Flash ZUI Uses content from independent servers.
• Relevare A notable implementation for web navigation.
• Google Maps Zoomable world map with integrated search.
• 3D Topicscape 3D concept mapping software for organizing information.

User interface | Zooming User Interface