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.

Comments

Re:a problem

[dj_paulgibbs]

probably the same way as you'd see a level in a game such as Unreal Tournament.

I call fluff

[sunbeam60]

This stuff wouldn't be necesary if web designers were better doing their jobs. Sure it might be warranted on all the poorly designed web pages, but when you arrive at one that is well designed, you know exactly where to go.

Re:I call fluff

[Malc]

Who cares about the web designers? Google cached pages already does highlighting. If a web designer can't produce a well-designed web page, they've wasted their time AFAIC because I will just move on to a better site.

A good application...

[GillBates0]

for this would be cellphones or PDA's, which have displays that are too small to view normal webpages designed for larger displays.

If the user is looking for specific information/keywords that are too small to read on the display, the browser could "popout" a magnified/highlighted/easier to read version of the surrounding context.

And rather than coming out with a whole new browser, maybe it could be incorporated into The Google Toolbar or something similar....they've recently added new features to make searching within a webpage easier.

How long before this is hijacked for ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this becomes commonplace, the only thing it's going to really do is make popup ads into Popup Prism (tm) ads.

Oh, and it will probably suck more bandwidth to do it, too.

Curmudgeon's Corner

[Zontar The Mindless]

Those whose idea of a Web page is a Photoshop mockup or big fat Flash banner will hate this browser, and people using this browser will hate such pages.

Those who produce well-structured and meaningfully-styled Web documents have nothing to fear from it... but people surfing such pages probably won't gain that much from using this browser.

Yet another "feature" to be abused.

[Treacle Treatment]

Flaming red banners in 1-inch fonts flashing at 5 times a second. Boxes poping up all over the screen. Boxes that follow your browsing and won't get out of the way. And now...

Advertising problems

[dysprosia]

Now this helps you actually find the content of a page, web advertisers are going to start kicking up a fuss that Popout Prism is perceptually downplaying the importance of their ads...

YYaaaawwn

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd check out the site, but it's already slashdotted. But, from the description given, it sounds like yet another useless idea. Why? How many times have you gone searching for some topic using google, or whatever search engine, only to get you to a page that does everything it CAN to try to draw your attentiona AWAY from the actual content you are looking for (which usually seems to be rahter minimal/useless anyhow) just to try to throw ads at you or get you to purchase/subscribe some product?

This'll end up being just another technology that gets hijacked to make the browsing experience WORSE, not better. And as far as the few, quality sites, I don't need anything like Popout Prism - I can find the info I want VERY EASILY on a good site.

This Popout Prism sounds to me like a complete waste of developer brain-time.

Re:JAVA incompetance

[_xeno_]

I've run into stuff like this before. I blame Sun for making it next to impossible to locate the JRE on a given system without resorting to hacks like the JAVA_HOME environment, or querying the runtime environment of whatever answers to "java".

What's really annoying is that Sun doesn't set the JAVA_HOME environment variable when you install J2SE. However, their J2EE SDK requires JAVA_HOME to be set. Various other Java utilities use the JAVA_HOME hack to make things work. You'd think Sun would - eventually - understand this and create some standard way of specifying where Java is on a given platform.

The reason I call the JAVA_HOME variable a hack is because it negates the "platform independent" nature that Java is supposed to have. If I have to write a shell script for Windows and Unix to make things work, what's the point?

What I really want is for Sun to create software that allows deploying Java apps in a truly platform-independant manor. JAR files are an improvement, in that they can be made "executable," but what I really want is a way of creating an application file that can bind itself as the editor for various file types, add itself to program menus, and do other various "GUI-ish" things, without relying on writing native code for every platform you deploy on. Likewise, for console/server code, I want to be able to create a program descriptor that has a native program automatically create the appropriate native stubs to run the Java program.

I think Java Web Start was supposed to solve the GUI application deployment, but it isn't really a complete solution in that it requires using the Java Web Start application to run any program deployed that way. It also doesn't allow a program to specify itself as the default application for loading given file types.