page_title: Archy
section_title: Zoomworld
hierarchical_section_title: Archy / Features / Zoomworld
caption_attribution_description: English: Example of a Zooming User Interface. Notes See :Image:ZUI example without text.png for a version without text (for translation). --Foofy 20:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
context_page_description: Archy is a software system whose user interface introduced a different approach for interacting with computers with respect to traditional graphical user interfaces. Designed by human-computer interface expert Jef Raskin, it embodies his ideas and established results about human-centered design described in his book The Humane Interface. These ideas include content persistence, modelessness, a nucleus with commands instead of applications, navigation using incremental text search, and a zooming user interface. The system was being implemented at the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces under Raskin's leadership. Since his death in February 2005 the project was continued by his team, which later shifted focus to the Ubiquity extension for the Firefox browser.
  Archy in large part builds on Raskin's earlier work with the Apple Macintosh, Canon Cat, SwyftWare, and Ken Perlin's Pad ZUI system. It can be described as a combination of Canon Cat's text processing functions with a modern ZUI. Archy is more radically different from established systems than are Sun Microsystems' Project Looking Glass and Microsoft Research's "Task Gallery" prototype.
context_section_description: Archy's Zooming User Interface (ZUI) element is called Zoomworld. It is a spatial, non-windowing interface: an infinite plane expanding in all directions and zoomable to infinite detail. Extra information on an item is provided by "flying" closer to inspect it, and the destinations of hyperlinks are inserted in-place instead of being represented by textual reference. Browsing in this Zoomworld can be done with a mouse; leap functions are used as a search facility.
  Archy's project developed some guidelines for Zoomworld and a working proof of concept, but the built prototype did not include code for zooming.
  Project members claim that a similar, but limited, zooming interface was tested in real world applications with remarkable success. With a single minute of training, novices were competent and comfortable with the system. Computer experts reportedly took longer, since they had more preconceived expectations to unlearn. The zooming hospital information system is described in The Humane Interface, including some screen shots.
caption: Example of a ZUI
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