The problem is that it s not immediately apparent to a user when they should stop zooming, as the program doesn t limit it. A user can all to quickly zoom all the way out or in and see nothing but blank space all around, which could cause them to quickly get lost and frustrated. It would seem logical that the system should prevent zooming beyond a certain scope. Creating some bounds would make the system more useful, but still allow all the flexibility currently afforded. Another benefit to the Jazz system is that information is rendered differently when viewed at different levels of zoom.
Information is either compressed, grayed, or even faded based on the effect desired by the author.
With the fading feature, information can be very densely packed into one area of the space, with objects fading in and out as the user zooms in further, yet leaving a clean appearance when zoomed out. If information hiding wasn t performed, spaces would look cluttered with lots of little dots or gray blocks representing text or other objects that are only visible when at a higher level of zoom. However, the downside to this is that the user must zoom and physically traverse the space in order to reach the desired information. This takes time, and for a space that is often used by the user can lead to slight frustration in having to always wait and traverse to particular parts of the space. There s no obvious answer to eliminating the traversal time, other than having short-cut links.