By default, the space allocated to a directory's plateau is proportional to the total number of files belonging to it and all of its subdirectories. As will be discussed later, this mapping can be changed interactively by the user. The ordering of children atop a plateau can be based on alphabetical, chronological, or other criteria. Here, colour coding is used to indicate a file's type, but could also be mapped to age, or any of a number of other characteristics. Navigating the pyramid landscape towards the ivis96 subdirectory.
Users can freely navigate around the pyramid landscape.
As pyramids are approached, more details are revealed. Figure 3 shows a close-up of a particular pyramid, the ivis96 subdirectory and its children. A bird's eye view of the pyramid landscape provides a visual overview. A bird's eye view of the pyramid landscape provides a space-filling, freely zoomable overview. Mapping total file size to plateau area results in a graphical disk usage utility.