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Zooming user interface
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<h2 id="history">History</h2> <p><a href="/facts/Ivan_Sutherland/HDVqMT9h">Ivan Sutherland</a> presented the first program for zooming through and creating graphical structures with constraints and <a href="/facts/Class_(computer_programming)/zvzkSAtE">instancing</a>, on a CRT in his <a href="/facts/Sketchpad/BNAoP4Gp">Sketchpad</a> program in 1962.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a> </p><p>A more general interface was done by the <a href="/facts/Architecture_Machine_Group/Vhgn9KFE">Architecture Machine Group</a> in the 1970s at MIT. Hand tracking, <a href="/facts/Touchscreen/zpSKDFpe">touchscreen</a>, <a href="/facts/Joystick/cY64dGpb">joystick</a>, and <a href="/facts/Voice_user_interface/jkdI6nGy">voice control</a> were employed to control an infinite plane of projects, documents, contacts, video and interactive programs. One of the instances of this project was called Spatial Dataland.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a> </p><p>Another GUI environment of the 70's, which used the zooming idea was <a href="/facts/Smalltalk/Ru2UPVDE">Smalltalk</a> at <a href="/facts/PARC_(company)/fh2Su0k9">Xerox PARC</a>, which had infinite <i>desktops</i> (only later named such by <a href="/facts/Apple_Inc./oTJYta3k">Apple Computer</a>), that could be zoomed in upon from a birds eye view after the user had recognized a miniature of the window setup for the project. </p><p>The longest running effort to create a ZUI has been the Pad++ project begun by <a href="/facts/Ken_Perlin/9a8zKPlR">Ken Perlin</a>, <a href="/facts/James_D._Hollan/w8mzzsIm">Jim Hollan</a>, and <a href="/facts/Ben_Bederson/VummJe83">Ben Bederson</a> at <a href="/facts/New_York_University/4UnIkThy">New York University</a> and continued at the <a href="/facts/University_of_New_Mexico/7KnmajYB">University of New Mexico</a> under Hollan's direction. After Pad++, Bederson developed Jazz, then Piccolo,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a> and now Piccolo2D<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a> at the <a href="/facts/University_of_Maryland%2c_College_Park/Wmc5R1kM">University of Maryland, College Park</a>, which is maintained in <a href="/facts/Java_(programming_language)/9ScgFyAL">Java</a> and <a href="/facts/C_Sharp_(programming_language)/UC2gxeyb">C#</a>. More recent ZUI efforts include <a href="/facts/Archy_(software)/QT0msIwT">Archy</a> by the late <a href="/facts/Jef_Raskin/lKRYbYhv">Jef Raskin</a>, <a href="http://zvtm.sf.net">ZVTM</a> developed at <a href="/facts/INRIA/ruIkcapf">INRIA</a> (which uses the Sigma lens<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6"><sup>6</sup></a> technique), and the simple ZUI of the <a href="/facts/Squeak/eCP11lRC">Squeak</a> <a href="/facts/Smalltalk/Ru2UPVDE">Smalltalk</a> programming environment and language. The term ZUI itself was coined by Franklin Servan-Schreiber and Tom Grauman while they worked together at the <a href="/facts/Sony/7x4tCtBd">Sony</a> Research Laboratories. They were developing the first Zooming User Interface <a href="/facts/Library_(computing)/xRzL3P7q">library</a> based on Java 1.0, in partnership with Prof. Ben Bederson, <a href="/facts/University_of_New_Mexico/7KnmajYB">University of New Mexico</a>, and Prof. Ken Perlin, <a href="/facts/New_York_University/4UnIkThy">New York University</a>. </p><p>GeoPhoenix, a Cambridge, MA, startup associated with the <a href="/facts/MIT_Media_Lab/Vhgn9KFE">MIT Media Lab</a>, founded by Julian Orbanes, Adriana Guzman, Max Riesenhuber, released the first mass-marketed commercial Zoomspace in 2002–03 on the Sony <a href="/facts/CLI%25C3%2589/QU8ugKRC">CLIÉ</a> <a href="/facts/Personal_digital_assistant/fLTT1Uqy">personal digital assistant</a> (PDA) handheld, with Ken Miura of Sony </p><p>In 2002, Pieter Muller extended the <a href="/facts/Oberon_(operating_system)/l7NXq9Ee">Oberon System</a> with a zooming user interface and named it <i>Active Object System</i> (AOS).<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7"><sup>7</sup></a> In 2005, due to copyright issues, it was renamed to <i>Bluebottle</i>, and in 2008, to <i><a href="/facts/A2_(operating_system)/Dxheme56">A2</a></i>. </p><p>In 2006, <a href="/facts/Hillcrest_Labs/xPohC0j4">Hillcrest Labs</a> introduced the HoME television navigation system, the first graphical, zooming interface for television.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8"><sup>8</sup></a> </p><p>In 2007, Microsoft's Live Labs released a zooming UI for web browsing called <a href="/facts/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Deepfish/9WQoEKo6">Microsoft Live Labs Deepfish</a> for the Windows Mobile 5 platform. </p><p>Apple's <a href="/facts/IPhone/h5WeKRl9">iPhone</a> (premiered June 2007) uses a stylized form of ZUI, in which panning and zooming are performed through a <a href="/facts/Touch_user_interface/kvoawM0g">touch user interface</a> (TUI). A more fully realised ZUI is present in the <a href="/facts/IOS/mK5cggH5">iOS</a> home screen (as of <a href="/facts/IOS_7/LP8uLlwP">iOS 7</a>), with zooming from the homescreen in to folders and finally in to apps. The photo app zooms out from a single photo to moments, to collections, to years, and similarly in the calendar app with day, month and year views.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9"><sup>9</sup></a> It is not a full ZUI implementation since these operations are applied to bounded spaces (such as web pages or photos) and have a limited range of zooming and panning. </p><p>Franklin Servan-Schreiber founded Zoomorama, based on work he did at the Sony Research Laboratories in the mid-1990s. The Zooming Browser for Collage of High Resolution Images was released in Alpha in October 2007. Zoomorama's browser is all Flash-based. In 2010, project development ended, but many examples are still available on the site. </p><p>From 2008 to 2010, <a href="/facts/GNOME_Shell/NfkRU7yS">GNOME Shell</a> used a zooming user interface for virtual workspaces management.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:10" href="#fn:10"><sup>10</sup></a> This ZUI was eventually replaced by a different, scrolling-based design. </p><p>In 2017, bigpictu.re offers an infinite (pan and zoom) notepad as a web application based on one of the first ZUI open-source libraries.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:11" href="#fn:11"><sup>11</sup></a> </p><p>In 2017, Zircle UI was released. It is an open source UI library that uses zoomable navigation and circular shapes.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:12" href="#fn:12"><sup>12</sup></a> </p><p>In 2022, the <a href="/facts/Miro_(collaboration_platform)/o6eb6bbc">Miro collaboration platform</a>, what is a zooming user interface, reported 40 million users. It was released in 2011 as RealtimeBoard and in 2019 rebranded as Miro. </p> <h2 id="see-also">See also</h2> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Vector-based_graphical_user_interface/mYnXQqIf">Vector-based graphical user interface</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Resolution_independence/SRquytpu">Resolution independence</a></li></ul> <h2 id="external-links">External links</h2> <ul><li><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21556097">The Economist 2012 article about ZUI</a></li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>Peter Bright (13 September 2011). "Hands-on with Windows 8: A PC operating system for the tablet age". Ars Technica. <a href="https://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/09/hands-on-with-windows-8-a-pc-operating-system-for-the-tablet-age.ars" target="_blank">https://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/09/hands-on-with-windows-8-a-pc-operating-system-for-the-tablet-age.ars</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communication system <a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-574.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-574.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>Dataland: the MIT's '70s media room concept that influenced the Mac <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/24/3040959/dataland-mits-70s-media-room-concept-that-influenced-the-mac" target="_blank">https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/24/3040959/dataland-mits-70s-media-room-concept-that-influenced-the-mac</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>Piccolo (formerly Jazz): ZUI toolkit for Java and C# (no longer actively maintained) <a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo/index.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo/index.shtml</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:5"><p>Piccolo2D: Piccolo's successor. <a href="http://piccolo2d.org" target="_blank">http://piccolo2d.org</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:6"><p>"Sigma lenses: focus-context transitions combining space, time and translucence", Proceedings of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 2008 <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:7"><p>Muller, Pieter Johannes (2002). The active object system design and multiprocessor implementation (PDF) (PhD). Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich (ETH Zurich). <a href="http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:26082/eth-26082-02.pdf" target="_blank">http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:26082/eth-26082-02.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:8"><p>Popular Mechanics 2007. Retrieved November 11, 2011. Glen Derene. Wii 2.0: Loop remote lets you click by gesture. <a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/video/wii-20-loop-remote-lets-your-click-by-gesture-video-447868210" target="_blank">http://www.popularmechanics.com/video/wii-20-loop-remote-lets-your-click-by-gesture-video-447868210</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:9"><p>"iOS 7". Archived from the original on 2013-09-06. Retrieved 2017-09-19. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130906014233/http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7/" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20130906014233/http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7/</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:10"><p>"GNOME Shell, 2010-02-20 build: a Zoomable User Interface". YouTube. 2010-02-20. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12. Retrieved 2020-12-26. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN4lW_eaeO8" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN4lW_eaeO8</a> <a href="#fnref:10" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:11"><p>"bigpicture.js, a library that allows infinite panning and infinite zooming in HTML pages". GitHub. 2015. <a href="https://github.com/josephernest/bigpicture.js" target="_blank">https://github.com/josephernest/bigpicture.js</a> <a href="#fnref:11" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:12"><p>"Zircle UI: A frontend library to develop zoomable user interfaces". GitHub. 2017–2021. <a href="https://zircleui.github.io/docs/" target="_blank">https://zircleui.github.io/docs/</a> <a href="#fnref:12" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>