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PARC's Popout Prism Aids Web Navigation
sulo writes "Popout Prism is a Web Browser that reduces the amount of time users end looking for information in Web pages. By creating visual "popouts" that emphasize critical elements in Web pages, Popout Prism draws users' attention to the right information." Not a very complicated idea, but one that could be useful.
It's already in there. ctrl+f's search just selects the text, but if you use type ahead find (/text) its a bright green background.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
...you can still get some info and a download here (well, for the moment anyway).
FWIW, Opera has a special version of their browser, with the ability to render the usual webduhsigners fixed width websites on small screens. Check out Opera's Small-Screen Rendering.
Qoute from the page:
How do we do it?
Opera's Small-Screen Rendering technology enables access to all the content available on the Internet today. Even before this innovation, it was of course possible to browse the Web with Opera. The problem is that most sites are designed with fixed widths that make them hard to navigate on small handheld devices.
As an example, most news sites have a center column where the main article text is located. This column is usually 468 pixels wide (due to the standard ad-banner sizes) and the text is set to fill this width. This means that to read an article, you would have to scroll back and forth for every line of text.
With Small-Screen Rendering?, the page is reformatted to fit inside the screen width and eliminate the need for horizontal scrolling. All the content and functionality is still available, it is only the layout of the page that is changed. This innovation is the key enabler for surfing on a mobile device.
Actually it was just around 1000 years ago that perspective was first formulated by al-Haytham, and a few hundred years later that people began to apply it to the arts.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Just hit "/", type the word you are looking for, and *BAM*, it gets highlighted and jumps to the next instance of the word.
Okay, so it may not be the same thing, but it is a superior alternative.
If you are using windows its probably a path problems. I've noticed that some large name Java aplications (such as eclipse) completely ignore your JAVA_HOME variable and just look for the first JRE it can find in your path.
Be very careful though because 1.4.1 installs a java wraper (javaw.exe) in your windows system directory. So in order for it to find the correct JRE you need to make sure that you put it first in your path infront of the windows system directory. If find this both obnoxious and dangerous.
"Everybody knows the moon's made of cheese," Wallace.
Opera has a lot of neat features when it comes to finding the goodies on a page. E.g., you can force your own stylesheets on a page, even multiple ("User Mode"). So I have a standard b/w stylesheet that underlines and colors links no matter what the designer intended, and another one to switch off all images (except those that are links).
...
Also, you can zoom in and out pages: 25% gives a nice "thumbnail" style overview, while 400% should be enough for even the smallest, err, details. Bonus: Images and Flash movies are resized as well, so this is much better than IE's feature. Press "W" to move from headline to headline (assuming the designer actually used H1 and not just f****ng bold). Pressing [ctrl][j] brings up a window that shows all links on the page. Just select those you want and open them in a background window etc. etc.
And just pressing F12 will give you a Popup menu to switch off all that nonsense that often keeps you from reading: GIF animation, background Audio, Java, Popups
Also, Opera will allow heavy customization. Almost every element of the UI can be tweaked and moved around. Whether you want a minimalist, near-fullscreen browser or a large set of custom stylesheets, search engines etc. at your fingertips, new keyboard shortcuts or Google Toolbar style Bookmarklets: Just tweak a few INI files.
PS: If it's only highlighting you want: When you're on Windows, the Google Toolbar is very helpful. Also, there's Text Spotlight, which does the same thing system-wide, not only in the browser.
I'm familiar with the details of the development of this project.
.bat file at your Java 1.3 java.exe file, and then reinstall any newer versions of Java.
So, a couple of points:
1) It's a research demo. Unfortunately, that means it won't work well on all platforms. But, it's available primarily so that you, the public, can see how the technology works.
2) It's written in Java, but it embeds Internet Explorer. So, the installer is a Windows installer, because it wouldn't run anywhere else anyway.
3) The installer is, unfortunately, not very robust. It's hard to find Java reliabily on a Windows system, and, because of bugs in an external library at the time Popout Prism was written, Popout Prism only runs in Java 1.3. If you have trouble installing it, you should uninstall any Java versions above 1.3, run the installer, point the