Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  How to build a better web browser (20 Dec 2004) For example, where does the visualization go? Browsers are confined to framing the page, since as we noted earlier, most of the user’s time is spent reading or using the web page itself. People do not spend most of their time navigating around (Despite how most visualization research projects are designed). This means that any visualization must be one or more of: compact, transparent, interstitial, or easily movable: all things that work dead against 90% of the visualization and navigation prototypes I’ve ever seen. So, sorry I’m a reformed optomist (and a sad skeptic) on this one. I spent so much time exploring, prototyping and playing with different visualization techniques, that as much as I’d like to see something that pays off, I think there are too many constraints in real browser usage for these things to make a big difference. The compact simplictiy of a back button and a decent history list are just very hard to beat (though even the perennial "back button algorithm optimization debate" always seems worth exploring). Article URL: http://www.uiweb.com/issues/issue37.htm Read 41 more articles from UI Web sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Situate Follow-Ups in Context     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy