Enriching the Web through virtual reality

Abstract

Despite the many advances that web browsers have gone through over the years, they retain more or less the same approach that was employed during the 90s. Since then, the WWW has grown to staggering proportions, which calls for new methods to both analyze and organize the mounds of data on the Internet. This project explores the feasibility of using visualization techniques from Virtual Reality to make the WWW easier to navigate. Instead of having a flat, tabbed view as is common with most web browsers, web pages are rendered to planes in a 30 environment. This eliminates the need for having tabs in the browser, as the windows can be dragged around the space and removed if desired. A user might choose to split up a website into its visual components called 'blocks', move them around in the 30 environment or remove them a/together. An arrangement of components can then be saved in a 'layout' for future use. These layouts shall also be publicly distributable. The results obtained show that Thorium, the browser created in this project, has the potential to bring something fresh to the competitive browser market. There is nothing like it which is currently available for use. The application would certainly excel on tablets such as the iPad if a touch interface were to be implemented. We believe that this approach will eventually lead to a community-driven browsing experience as well as provide implicit feedback to developers in order to improve the 'default layout' of their websites.