Visualizing the Structure of the World Wide Web in 3D Hyperbolic
Space
Next: Introduction
Visualizing the Structure of the World Wide Web in 3D Hyperbolic
Space
Tamara Munzner
The Geometry Center, University of Minnesota
Paul Burchard
Department of Mathematics, University of Utah
Abstract:
We visualize the structure of sections of the World Wide Web by
constructing graphical representations in 3D hyperbolic space. The
felicitous property that hyperbolic space has ``more room'' than
Euclidean space allows more information to be seen amid less clutter,
and motion by hyperbolic isometries provides for mathematically
elegant navigation. The 3D graphical representations, available in the
WebOOGL or VRML file formats, contain link anchors which point to the original
pages on the Web itself. We use the Geomview/WebOOGL 3D Web browser as
an interface between the 3D representation and the actual documents on
the Web. The Web is just one example of a hierarchical tree structure
with links ``back up the tree'' i.e. a directed graph which contains
cycles. Our information visualization techniques are appropriate for
other types of directed graphs with cycles, such as filesystems with
symbolic links.
Tamara Munzner
Tue Nov 21 23:43:05 CST 1995