Skip to main content
Log in

An adaptive web page layout structure for small devices

  • Regular Paper
  • Published:
Multimedia Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The limited display size of current small Internet devices is becoming a serious obstacle to information access. In this paper, we introduce a Document REpresentation for Scalable Structures (DRESS) to help information providers make composite documents, typically web pages, scalable in both logic and layout structure to support effective information acquisition in heterogeneous environments. Through this novel document representation structure based on binary slicing trees, the document can dynamically adapt its presentation according to display sizes by maximizing the information throughput to users. We discuss the details of this structure with its key attributes. An automatic approach for generating this structure for existing web pages is also presented. A branch-and-bound algorithm and a capacity ratio-based slicing method are proposed to select proper content representation and aesthetic document layouts respectively. A set of user study experiments have been carried out and the results show that compared with the thumbnail-based approach, the DRESS-based interface can reduce browsing time by 23.5%.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Badros, G., Borning, A., Marriott, K., Stuckey, P.: Constraint cascading style sheets for the web. In: Proceedings of UIST'99, pp. 73–82. Asheville, USA (1999)

  2. BickMore, T.W., Schilit, B.N.: Digestor: device-independent access to the world wide web. In: Proceedings of WWW'97, pp. 655–663. Santa Clara, USA (1997)

  3. Björk, S., Holmquist, L.E., Redström, J., Bretan, I., Danielsson, R., Karlgren, J., Franzén, K.: WEST: A Web Browser for Small Terminals. In: Proceedings of UIST'99, pp. 187–196. Asheville, USA (1999)

  4. Borning, A., Lin, R.K., Marriott, K.: Constraint-based document layout for the web. ACM Multimedia Syst. J. 8(3), 177–189 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Buyukkokten, O., Garcia-Molina, H., Paepcke, A., Winograd, T.: Power browser: efficient web browsing for PDAs. In: Proceedings of CHI'00, pp. 430–437. Hague, Netherlands (2000)

  6. Chen, J.L., Zhou, B.Y., Shi, J., Zhang, H.J., Wu, Q.F.: Function-based Object Model towards Website Adaptation. In: Proceedings of WWW'01, pp. 587–596. Hong Kong, China (2001)

  7. Chen, L.Q., Xie, X., Fan, X., Ma. W.Y., Zhang, H.J., Zhou, H.Q.: A visual attention model for adapting images on small displays. ACM Multimedia Syst. J. 9(4), 353–364 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Chen, Y., Ma, W.Y., Zhang, H.J.: Detecting web page structure for adaptive viewing on small form factor devices. In: Proceedings of WWW'03. Budapest, Hungary (2003)

  9. Cohoon, J.P., Paris, W.D.: Genetic placement. IEEE Trans. Comput. Aided Design (6), 956–964 (1987)

  10. Fuchs, M.: An evolutionary approach to support web page design. In: Proceedings of 2000 Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 1312–1319. Piscataway, USA (2000)

  11. González, J., Rojas, I., Pomares, H., Salmerón, M., Prieto, A., Merelo, J.J.: Optimization of web newspaper layout in real time. Comput. Netw. 36(2–3), 311–321 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  12. González, J., Rojas, I., Pomares, H., Salmerón, M., Merelo, J.J.: Web newspaper layout optimization using simulated annealing. IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybernet. – Part B: Cybernet. 32(5), 686–691 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Gu, X.D., Chen, J.L., Ma, W.Y., Chen, G.L.: Visual based content understanding towards web adaptation. In: Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web Based Systems, pp. 164–173. Malaga, Spain (2002)

  14. Han, R., Perret, V., Naghshineh, M.: WebSplitter: A unified XML framework for multi-device collaborative web browsing. In: Proceedings of CSCW'00, pp. 221–230. Philadelphia, USA (2000)

  15. Hori, M., Kondoh, G., Ono, K., Hirose, S., Singhal, S.: Annotation-based web content transcoding. Comput. Netw. 33(1–6), 197–211 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Milic-Frayling, N., Sommerer, R.: SmartView: flexible viewing of web page contents. In: Proceedings of WWW'02. Honolulu, USA (2002)

  17. Opera Small Screen Rendering. http://www.opera.com/products/smartphone/smallscreen/

  18. Sarkar, M., Brown, M.H.: Graphical Fisheye views. Commun. ACM 37(12), 73–84 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Song, R., Liu, H., Wen, J.R., Ma, W.Y.: Learning block importance models for web pages. In: Proceedings of WWW'04. New York, USA (2004)

  20. Suhit, G., Gail, K., David, N., Peter, G.: DOM-based content extraction of HTML documents. In: Proceedings of WWW'03. Budapest, Hungary (2003)

  21. Wobbrock, J.O., Forlizzi, J., Hudson, S.E., Myers, B.A.: WebThumb: interaction techniques for small-screen browsers. In: Proceedings of UIST'02, pp. 205–208. Paris, France (2002)

  22. Xie, X., Zeng, H.J., Ma, W.Y.: Enabling personalization services on the edge. In: Proceedings of ACM Multimedia 2002. Juan-les-pins, France (2002)

  23. Yang, Y.D., Zhang, H.J.: HTML page analysis based on visual cues. In: Proceedings of ICDAR'01. Seattle, USA (2001)

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xing Xie.

Additional information

This work was performed when the second and the third authors were visiting students at Microsoft Research Asia.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Xie, X., Wang, C., Chen, LQ. et al. An adaptive web page layout structure for small devices. Multimedia Systems 11, 34–44 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-005-0188-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-005-0188-1

Keywords

Navigation