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Title
Real-Time Space-Efficient Synchronized Tree-Based Web Visualization and Design

Authors
Adrian Rusu
Department of Computer Science
Rowan University
Glassboro, NJ 08028
E-mail: rusu@rowan.edu

Radu Jianu
Department of Computer Science
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912 USA
jr@cs.brown.edu

Confesor Santiago
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rowan University
Glassboro, NJ 08028
E-mail: santia09@students.rowan.edu

Abstract

Although the World Wide Web is popularly referred to as "cyberspace", the extent to which it constitutes a space in the everyday sense of the word is questionable. While looking for information on the Web, regular users are quickly lost in the
cyberspace. Hence, it is important that one be able to categorize, understand and present Web data efficiently to the users. The structure of the World Wide Web can be modeled as a graph: the nodes are HTML pages, and a hyperlink from one page to
another is represented as a directed edge. However, trees have much simpler structures than graphs, which make it easier to display trees in an aesthetically pleasing manner. In this paper we present a novel Web browsing and visualization
method with an innovative combination of features: (i) Web data is retrieved and displayed in real-time (i.e. Web data is not pre-recorded), (ii) browsing and visualization are synchronized together in the same interface, (iii) tree-based
visualization engine, (iv) space-efficient display of visualization, and (v) the amount of resources needed from the host computer is limited. In addition, the tree-based rings engine used to create the visualization displays the information
in a smaller area than previous systems, thus either taking smaller screen space or displaying more information to the user. Even though in this paper we apply it on visualizing Web data, our method can be applied to portray any information
hierarchy.