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PARC's Popout Prism Aids Web Navigation

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the interesting-ideas dept.

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.

4 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Does anyone really need this? by TSMABob · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Have we all lost the ability to scan for information that we need on a webpage or any other source. Next they'll develop books that have the "keywords" you enter into your pda come off the page and slap you in the face.
    Just another technology to help those of us with tech-driven ADD[slashdot.org]

  2. Re:How long before this is hijacked for ads? by Treacle+Treatment · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Those were my thoughts exactly. How long will it be before everything "important" pops out. As if pop-up ads were not bad enough...

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  3. I think that the people... by nicodemus05 · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Who are asking whether this will be implemented in future versions of IE are asking the right question, since it dominates the browser market. (Please note that I am not in any way implying that this is justified before you flame me.)

    When Google converts a PDF file to HTML it highlights your search terms in different colors. I myself have often resorted to the Edit, Find (on This Page) options in IE.

    I agree that this shouldn't be a necessary feature, that the web designers should construct their pages to be searched easily, but the reality is that many people who have valuable information to post on the internet aren't able to lay out a webpage (a researcher is not necessarily a good graphic artist or may not have the time to do much more than stick his data on the web.)

    Anyway, while this idea is hardly innovative or practically implemented (who's going to switch to a new browser just for this feature?), it's a decent idea.

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  4. that's not all... by mblase · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The "popout prism" itself is a kind of sidebar which displays the entire unscrolled page in thumbnail form, with a box highlighting the area you're currently looking at. If you use thumbnails in Adobe (Acrobat) Reader or the navigation panel in Photoshop, you've seen the same sort of thing.

    In addition, it lets you type in keywords above the thumbnail and highlight those words in the thumbnail for you to navigate to quickly. That's what makes the popout useful for pages that contain more words than images.