Speed-dependent Automatic Zooming

Today’s computer environment requires frequent browsing of documents too large for the viewing window. The current scroll and zoom interfaces are slow and inefficient. We present a new navigation technique called speed-dependent automatic zooming (SDAZ). It couples rate-based scrolling with automatic zooming. Zooming occurs automatically as the scroll speed increases, keeping the visual flow across the screen constant. This allows users to efficiently scroll a document without having to manually switch between zooming and scrolling or becoming disoriented by fast visual flow. We have designed two SDAZ interfaces — a map browser and a document browser. An evaluation of these interfaces against traditional interfaces showed that SDAZ is significantly faster and preferred by participants