LensList: Browsing and Navigating Long Linear Information Structures

Abstract

Abstract..List is a simple and useful graphical user interface (GUI) component for organizing linearly structured information when it contains only a few elements. However long lists are difficult to use because only a small part of the list is shown each time, to gain an overview or select elements from a long list the user usually needs to scroll the list many times. This problem becomes more serious as the list gets longer. This paper presents a novel solution, LensList, by applying the focus and context technique to the view of a list. LensList dynamically changes the elements to bigger sizes to form a focal area around the mouse cursor while keeping the elements in the peripheral area in smaller sizes as context. This enables it to display a longer list within the same screen area. Therefore it can be more efficient for performing browsing and navigation tasks.