World Wide Web 3D Browser for Surfing the Internet

摘要

Windows-based browsers that support intuitive point-and-click interaction, suchas NCSA's Mosaic and NetScape, are quickly becoming the defacto standard user interface to the World Wide Web of information available on the Internet 'information highway'. Add-on modules such as WebSpace allow viewing and interaction with 3D graphical representations of information. This effort addresses the problem of how to overcome the reduced space contention exhibited by these 2D windows-based graphical user interfaces that often leave users frustrated, feeling like they are looking through a 'small keyhole' at a very large amount of unstructured information. The proposed W3D Phase 2 effort will develop a 3D modeling, representation, and control capability that supports navigation, retrieval, and manipulation of information ('Web') objects available via the Internet. Specifically, this effort will: (1) develop W3D Browser client and VRML based server software that integrates human memory extension (HME) technology for doing information ranking with a 3D windows-based interactive graphic user interface for doing information (meta-data) visualization; (2) develop Web agents for establishing and maintaining W3D databases of Web meta-data; and (3) make W3D prototype software available via the Internet and also on CD-ROM (with a prebuilt W3D database of Web meta-data) for evaluation by potential customers.