WildThumb: A Web Browser Supporting Efficient
Task Management on Wide Displays

1,2Shenwei Liu, 1Keishi Tajima
1Kyoto University, 2Cornell University

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Background Multi-task on Web browsers
 Web as a universal access of information
 Web as a platform Web as a social space Prevalence of wide displays

Page Switching Problems
 Page identification
 Linear scan of page lists
 Page pointing
 Fixed position Small size

 Lack of page organization
 Frequent interruption [Czerwinski, CHI04]

Ineffective Use of Screen Space Most Web pages have white margins on widedisplays

Our Approach Augmented thumbnails
 Pointing problem
 Identification problem

 Relevant thumbnails emphasis
 Linear scan problem
 Page organization problem

Related Work
 Rooms [Henderson, TOG86]
 Visual Snippets [Teevan, CHI09]
 Scalable Fabric [Robertson, AVI04]
 GroupBar [Smith, OZCHI03]
 Content-Aware Layout [Ishak, CHI07]
 RelAltTab [Oliver, IUI08]
 SWISH [Oliver, IUI06]
 TaskTracer [Dragunov, IUI05]
 Clipping Lists [Matthews, CHI06]
 Web page “caricatures” [Wynblatt, ICMCS98]

Ordinary Thumbnail
 Pros Easy to recognize
 Easy to point at

 Cons Ineffective for pages fraught with text
 Less recognizable if pages are scrolled to lessdistinctive parts

Augmented Thumbnail
 Overlay logos and featured images
 Advantageous situations: Logo： same subject, different websites
 Featured image： different subjects, same website

Heuristic Extraction
 Method Utilize both static HTML attributes and renderedattributes

 Results
TotalAccuracy

Logo

Featured Image

626283%76%(Note: we used top 100 traffic-based ranking from Alexa.com as test sample.)

Emphasizing Relevant Thumbnails
 Benefits of multiple virtual workspace
 Page organization
 Resumption of tasks

 Automatic page organization
 Eliminate manual management overhead One-to-many relationship for pages and tasks

Estimation of Inter-Page Relevance Apply Markov model to switching history
 Apply sliding window to history
 Bonus score
 Referrer page and linked page
 Recent two or three switched pages

Two Modes for Emphasis Dynamic-size mode Dynamic-opacity mode=> Relieve linear scan problem

User Study Task Switch to randomly presented pages

 Test conditions
 Tab, thumbnail, augmented thumbnail
 7 pages & 15 pages
 For 7 pages, we expect users to remember positions of all
thumbnails

 Measurement
 Page switching time

 Participants
 Eight males, one female

User Study (Continued)

User Study Results
 Switching time Augmented Thumbnail < Thumbnail < Tab Further discussion
 Augmented thumbnail are the most efficient even whenparticipants remember all thumbnail positions
Switching time (ms)Number of pageTabThumbnail

Augmented Thumbnail

Semi-structured Interview
 Usage scenario Multi-task with interruption

 Results
 (+) Augmented thumbnails were favored (-) Problems with dynamic-opacity mode
 (-) Position changes in dynamic-size mode

disfavored Going deeper Importance of spatial memoryFuture Work Improve extraction with machine learning Hybrid relevance estimation
 Content-based relevance History-based relevance New emphasis interface Leverage spatial memory

Contributions
 Augmented Thumbnail
 Automatic task management by emphasis Two emphasis modes Effectiveness confirmed by user study

Thank you!
 Question?
 Acknowledgement
 Anonymous reviewers and participants Contact info: Name: Shenwei Liu
 Email: sl2277@cornell.edu