A Negotiation Architecture for Fluid Documents

The information presented in a document often consists of primary content as well as supporting material such as explanatory notes, detailed derivations, illustrations, and the like. We introduce a class of user interface techniques for fluid documents that supports the reader’s shift to supporting material while maintaining the context of the primary material. Our approach initially minimizes the intrusion of supporting material by presenting it as a small visual cue near the annotated primary material. When the user expresses interest in the annotation, it expands smoothly to a readable size. At the same time, the primary material makes space for the expanded annotation. The expanded supporting material must be given space to occupy, and it must be made salient with respect to the surrounding primary material. These two aspects, space and salience, are subject to a negotiation between the primary and supporting material. This paper presents the components of our fluid document tec...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: UIST
• Authors: Bay-Wei Chang, Jock D. Mackinlay, Polle Zellweger, Takeo Igarashi
• Keywords: Material Makes Space, Primary Material, Software Engineering, Supporting Material, UIST 1998