Content-Aware Free-Space Transparency

We present content-aware free-space transparency, an approach to viewing and manipulating the otherwise hidden content of obscured windows through unimportant regions of overlapping windows. Traditional approaches to interacting with otherwise obscured content in a window system render an entire window uniformly transparent. In contrast, content-aware free-space transparency uses opaque-to-transparent gradients and image-processing filters to minimize the interference from overlapping material, based on properties of that material. By increasing the amount of simultaneously visible content and allowing basic interaction with otherwise obscured content, without modifying window geometry, we believe that free-space transparency has the potential to improve user productivity. (Authors: Edward Ishak, Steven Feiner, Columbia University. Please visit http://www.edwardishak.com for more information.)

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• transparency
• screen
• interaction
• techniques
• content
• disambiguation
• space
• management
• pie-menu
• content-aware

[osakanone]

It'd be nice if (web)pages were aware of what was used space and what was not:

For example, the central column of Youtube but not the stuff at the edges.

[dhammy0110]

Would this render web pages and 3rd party app windows differently than desktop windows? Either way, I'll be sticking with alt-tab thank you.

[phonique]

nice idea :o)