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Existing augmentations of web pages are mostly small cosmetic changes (e.g., removing ads) and minor addition of third-party content (e.g., product prices from competing sites). None leverages the structured data presented in web pages. This paper describes Sifter, a web browser extension that can augment a well-structured web site with advanced filtering and sorting functionality. These added features work inside the site's own pages, preserving the site's presentational style and the user's context. Sifter contains an algorithm that scrapes structured data out of well-structured web pages while usually requiring no user intervention. We tested Sifter on real web sites and real users and found that people could use Sifter to perform sophisticated queries and high-level analyses on sizable data collections on the Web. We propose that web sites can be similarly augmented with other sophisticated data-centric functionality, giving users new benefits over the existing Web.

Video game players often learn to map their physical actions (e.g., pressing buttons) onto their on-screen avatars' actions (e.g., wielding swords) in order to play. We explored the experience resulted from eliminating this mapping by modeling the screen as a "window" through which virtual objects enter the player's physical space, and the player interacts with them directly without the mediation of an avatar. We define this interaction as "Blended Reality" (BR). We designed, developed, and evaluated a BR game prototype called "Apple Yard" in which the player was to use a wand to hit apples flying out of the screen. A camera was used to track the positions of the player's eyes and wand, and the 3D game scene was rendered accordingly to create the illusion of looking through a window. A user tests experiment conducted on this prototypes indicated BR's potential in camera-based entertainment.

In the absence of manual organization of large digital photo collections, the photos ' visual content and creation dates can help support time-based visual search tasks. Current zoomable photo browsers are designed to support visual searches by maximizing screenspace usage. However, their space-filling layouts fail to convey temporal order effectively. We propose a novel layout called time quilt that trades off screenss-pace usage for better presentation of temporal order. In an experimental comparison of space-filling, linear timeline, and time quilt layouts, participants carried out the task of finding photos in their personal photo collections averaging 4,000 items. They performed 45% faster on time quilt.Furthermore, while current zoomable photo browsers are designed for visual searches,this support does not scale to thousands of photos: individual thumbnails become less informative as they grow smaller. We found a subjective preference for the use of representative photos to provide an overview for visual searches in place of the diminishing thumbnails.

Dialog boxes that collect parameters for commands often create ephemeral, unnatural interruptions of a program's normal execution flow, encouraging the user to complete the dialog box as quickly as possible in order for the program to process that command. In this paper we examine the idea of turning the act of collecting parameters from a user into a first class object called a user interface continuation. Programs can create user interface continuations by specifying what information is to be collected from the user and supplying a callback (i.e., a continuation) to be notified with the collected information. A partially completed user interface continuation can be saved as a new command, much as currying and partially evaluating a function with a set of parameters produces a new function. Furthermore, user interface continuations, like other continuation-passing paradigms, can be used to allow program execution to continue uninterrupted while the user determines a command's parameters at his or her leisure.

1. OVERVIEW In this demonstration we present Haystack, an environment that allows users to easily manage their documents, e-mail, appointments, tasks, and other information [1]. Haystack uses a semistructured data model to describe the connections between different documents in a user’s corpus as well as the metadata concerning each document. This amalgamation provides users with a unified framework for managing all of their information, e.g., documents, e-mails, etc., through a single interface. Furthermore, Haystack’s user interface exposes general tools for navigating the various kinds of information found in users’ corpora.