Portal Demonstration Applet
This simple Java applet demonstrates the spatial model for portal
behavior described in the paper entitled "A Spatial Model for Nested
Multiscale Interfaces" by Chris Olston. In the applet's main window,
two views are provided of a canvas with three concentric circles
containing a recursive portal. The left-hand view shows the current
interface state as three frames drawn in a space-scale diagram. The
parent and child frames are drawn as blue and green rectangles,
respectively, and the portal frame is drawn as a red pyramid. The
right-hand view is the rendered view of the nested canvas as seen by
the end user.
A control panel should pop up as a separate window. The control panel
allows you to edit each of the three frames. The frame editing
controls are grouped by frame, in the order: parent frame (blue "P"),
portal frame (red "O"), child frame (green "C"). For each frame, four
buttons edit the u-v position, and the other two buttons edit either
the scale (for the parent and child frames) or size (for the portal
frame). The behavior (Boolean frame editability and dependency
properties) of the portal can be specified using the checkboxes
provided in the lower part of the control panel. If the selected
behavior satisfies our usability rules, then its tool type name from
our taxonomy is displayed at the bottom of the control panel along
with its programmability status.
NOTE: This Java applet requires a recent version of the Java Virtual
Machine. The latest version is available for download and automatic
installation here.