Bier, E., Stone, M., Fishkin, K., Buxton, W. & Baudel, T. (1994). A taxonomy of see-through tools. Proceedings of CHI '94, 358-364.


A Taxonomy of See-Through Tools

Eric A. Bier, Maureen C. Stone, Ken Fishkin, William Buxton(1), Thomas Baudel(2)

Xerox PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94304
(1)University of Toronto, CSRI, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 1A4
(2)Universite de Paris-Sud, LRI, 91 405 Orsay Cedex, France

E-mail: {bier, stone, fishkin}@parc.xerox.com, willy@dgp.toronto.edu, thomas@lri.fr

ABSTRACT

In current interfaces, users select objects, apply operations, and change viewing parameters in distinct steps that require switching attention among several screen areas. Our See-Through Interface(TM) software reduces steps by locating tools on a transparent sheet that can be moved over applications with one hand using a trackball, while the other hand controls a mouse cursor. The user clicks through a tool onto application objects, simultaneously selecting an operation and an operand. Tools may include graphical filters that display a customized view of application objects. Compared to traditional interactors, these tools save steps, require no permanent screen space, reduce temporal modes, apply to multiple applications, and facilitate customization. This paper presents a taxonomy of see-through tools that considers variations in each of the steps they perform. As examples, we describe particular see-through tools that perform graphical editing and text editing operations.

CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: I.3.6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology and Techniques - interaction techniques; H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces - interaction styles; I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation - viewing algorithms; I.3.4 [Computer Graphics]: Graphics Utilities - graphics editors

Key Words: user interface, control panel, transparent, multi-hand, viewing filter, button, lens, menu, macro

INTRODUCTION

With software applications becoming more complex, it is difficult to organize user interfaces so that application functionality is easy to find, easy to learn, and quick to use. Limited screen space encourages the use of tools such as pop-up menus and hierarchical menus, which take time and attention to activate, and temporal modes, which cause confusion. Users must often select objects, apply operations, and change viewing parameters in distinct steps that require switching attention among several screen areas. In addition, the non-dominant hand is often relegated to trivial activities, such as holding down a modifier key, that do not make full use of its capabilities. A new user interface paradigm, the See-Through Interface(TM) system, addresses these issues.

Our interface allows users to interact with applications through a set of movable semi-transparent tools, called see-through tools or click-through tools. These tools are organized onto a sheet, called a Toolglass(TM) sheet. Tools may include graphical filters, called Magic Lens(TM) filters, that present a modified view of the shapes underneath them. The toolglass sheet can be positioned with the non-dominant hand and triggered with the dominant hand. For example, a right-handed user may translate and resize the sheet using a trackball and thumbwheel with the left hand and apply the tools by positioning a cursor using a mouse in the right hand. Together, the cursor, toolglass sheet, and applications create a three-layer interface as shown in figure 1. Tools are grouped into units called tiles. A toolglass sheet displays one tile at a time, just as a HyperCard stack [10] displays one card at a time.

 Figure 1. The three layers of our interface.

Click-through tools are used in two, possibly simultaneous, steps. First, the user positions the tool over an application object. Second, the user clicks on that object, through the tool, with a cursor. For example, in figure 2, the user has placed a color-changing tool (shown in thick lines) over a circle and a triangle (shown in thin lines). The triangle in the upper left corner of the tool shows the color that it applies. The user applies the color to the circle by clicking a mouse button while the cursor arrow is over both the tool and the circle.

Figure 2. A click-through button is used to change the area color of a circle.

Click-through tools can save steps relative to traditional interactors. For example, the tool in figure 2 selects both an operation to apply (change color) and an object to apply it to (the circle) in a single two-handed gesture. This can save time and reduce cognitive load, because the user can combine more steps into a single mental "chunk" [6]. Initial user studies show performance improvements and user preference for click-through tools [13].

Toolglass sheets can be moved from application to application, providing a common interface to several applications. For example, the same button can be used to change the color of a shape in a graphical editor or a word in a text editor. In addition, our interface alters the traditional relationship of application programs and data; instead of loading a document into an application program and then working within the limitations of that program, the user can bring applications, in the form of see-through tools, to the document.

See-through tools make good use of the coarse-positioning skills of the non-dominant hand, which have been described by Guiard [11]. However, unlike interfaces that require holding down modifier keys, this interface can be used, with reduced speed, when only one hand is available; the user can drag a tool into place with the mouse cursor and then apply it.

These tools have many other potential advantages. Toolglass sheets take up no permanent screen space. See-through tools replace temporal modes, which can be difficult to get into and out of, with spatial modes, which are entered and exited by moving the sheet. They allow the user's gaze and the mouse cursor to remain in the work area. They can be rearranged by copying or dragging. They can be composed by overlapping, providing users with a visual way to create their own macros. They can be added incrementally to a user interface based on traditional interactors. Finally, when a tool includes a magic lens filter, it provides the user with a modified view of the application objects that helps in the use of that tool.

The discovery of many examples of useful see-through tools has made it clear that they define a large new design space for user interfaces. In this paper, we describe some tools that we have found interesting and instructive. We also describe a taxonomy of see-through tools, which provides both an overview of the see-through interface system for those interested in understanding its potential, and an understanding of the ways that these tools may vary that will aid implementors of such tools. We structure this material as a taxonomy because our own exploration of the see-through interface paradigm proceeded by discovering particular tools and then categorizing them. A previous paper on this interface describes its implementation and its uses for graphical editing and visualization [4].

See-through tools have been implemented on several platforms. Most of the tools described here are implemented in the Multi-Device Multi-User Multi-Editor (MMM) framework [3] in the Cedar programming environment [22], which runs on SunOS. Tools for visualizing maps and editing graphics are implemented in C++ in the X Window system. An implementation on the Apple Macintosh is in use for human factors studies [13]. The tools of figures 5, 6, 11, 14 and 15 are envisionments of tools that will be implemented in the future; the rest are existing tools.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. We describe related work. Then we describe five basic steps in the operation of a see-through tool. The next five sections describe a set of see-through tools that illustrate variations in each of these five basic steps. In addition, each of these sections describes one or more types of variation of a given basic step and expresses each type of variation as an axis of our taxonomy. The remaining sections summarize the taxonomy and present conclusions and plans for future work.

RELATED WORK

Our work on see-through tools builds on a large body of previous work in a number of disciplines, including two-handed interfaces, movable tools, transparent tools, and visual filters. In addition, the taxonomy presented here relates to previously published taxonomies of user interface components.

Two-handed interfaces. As in VIDEOPLACE, our interface allows the use of two hands simultaneously [14]. However, our tools make an asymmetric use of the hands, with the non-dominant hand defining a coarse frame in which the dominant hand works. As noted by Guiard, such asymmetric bimanual activity is both natural for people and very common in everyday activities [11]. Buxton and Myers showed in a scrolling and text selection activity that users tend to overlap the use of both hands [7]. Our interface takes advantage of this insight to support a general-purpose user interface paradigm.

Movable tools. Previous systems allow the user to position commands over the application work area. For example, Macintosh tear-off menus [16] can be dragged by their borders and positioned for later use. Our tools differ in that the tool and cursor can move independently.

Transparent tools. Many CAD tools display partly-transparent stationary menus on top of the application work area. The Markup graphics editor displayed a semi-transparent pop-up menu of modes [17]. Recent work allows menus to be made transparent in X windows [1]. One author has proposed the use of transparent windows [20]. Our tools are unique in that they are both two-handed and use the position of the cursor over a tool and over the underlying application to determine the result of an interaction.

Visual filters. Many window systems include a movable pixel magnifier to enlarge a region of the screen. Recent image processing systems support a wide variety of filter operations including composition of overlapping filters [19]. A portal in the Pad system can present a modified view of the part of the workspace seen through it [18]. Related work on visual filters has been described in more detail [4]. Previous systems did not allow the filter to be moved with the non-dominant hand nor to be combined with click-through tools.

Taxonomies. In their classic paper, Foley and Wallace describe the value of virtual devices and identify pick, button, locator, and valuator as categories of tools [9]. See-through tools blur some of these categories. A click-through button can also be a pick because the user can click on a button and an application object at the same time. Likewise, a button can also be a locator because the user can click on a button and specify an application position at the same time. While their taxonomy is concerned almost exclusively with function, ours includes issues of triggering, appearance, motion, and instantiation.

OPERATION OF SEE-THROUGH TOOLS

The toolglass sheet is a layer between the cursor and the application, as shown in figure 3. A tool on the sheet intercepts input from the user and delivers modified input to the application. Likewise, it intercepts display requests from the application and produces a modified image on the screen. The tool can be moved relative to both the application and the cursor.

Figure 3. Information flow in a see-through tool.

The italic labels in figure 3 show four steps in the operation of a see-through tool: receiving a triggering event from the user (Trigger), computing an action based on that event and having an application perform that action (Action), computing the appearance of the tool and the application as seen through it (Appearance), and moving over application objects (Motion). A fifth step, instantiation on a toolglass sheet (Instantiation), is not shown. This section defines and describes these five steps.

Trigger. As with traditional tools, the user can trigger a see-through tool with a variety of actions including mouse clicks or pen gestures. Any trigger may come to a tool via another see-through tool that overlaps it.

Action. In response to a triggering event, a see-through tool produces a command to be executed. This command may be executed by the tool itself or passed to the application underneath it. The action may cause data to flow from the tool to the application and/or from the application to the tool, as indicated by the bidirectional arrows in figure 3. While many actions consist of a short message, actions may contain a large quantity of data, such as an entire disk file. The action produced may be applicable to only a single application, or may be expressed in an application-independent format. Application-independent commands implemented in our system include selection, creation, deletion, and modification of graphical properties, such as font and color. When several see-through tools are composed by overlapping them, the action may include contributions from each of these tools.

Appearance. Like traditional tools, a see-through tool may draw a picture that identifies its boundary and function. However, because it overlaps underlying applications, a tool's picture often contains elements that are transparent, translucent, or small in order to avoid obscuring the application underneath. In addition, a tool may modify the appearance of the application underneath using a magic lens filter [4][5][21]. For example, a tool that selects text characters may display visible symbols to distinguish SPACEs from TABs. A related paper describes many uses of movable filters in user interfaces [21]. Thus, we discuss filters only briefly in this paper.

Motion. In general, a toolglass sheet and all of its tools translate as a unit under the control of a 2D valuator such as a trackball and resize as a unit under the control of a 1D valuator such as a thumbwheel. However, some tools may change their relationship to the sheet (and to other tools), e.g., by translating, rotation, or resizing. This relative motion may be triggered either by an explicit request or in response to the presence of particular applications or application objects below the tool.

Instantiation. Before it can be used, a see-through tool must be instantiated on a toolglass sheet. The tool may appear whenever this sheet is used, only when this sheet is in a particular temporary mode, or only when this sheet is in a particular position relative to the application. The tool may be customized to a greater or lesser degree by the user. A tool may be built from any number of see-through components; a simple tool will have only one component, a complex tool may have dozens or more.

Each of the next five sections considers one of the five steps, presenting examples that illustrate variations in that step's behavior. Where several types of variation are present for a single step, each type is discussed in its own subsection. Each type of variation is an axis of our taxonomy.

TRIGGER

This section describes one axis of our taxonomy: trigger type.

The user can trigger a tool in a variety of ways, including clicking with a mouse, dragging (pressing a mouse button, moving the mouse while the button is held down and then releasing at a new position), or gesturing (e.g., drawing a stroke, character or symbol on the tool). In addition, tools can receive input from other see-through tools that are layered above them.

While the triggering events are familiar, doing them over see-through tools instead of over editors or traditional interactors allows more information to be extracted from each event; the tool and the application are both under the cursor position, so each token of the input can operate on the tool, the application or both. For example, one click on the button of figure 1 chooses a command and an operand simultaneously.

Dragging events may begin inside a click-through button and end outside of it. When applied to a shape creation palette this results in a "drop-and-drag" (not drag-and-drop) operation, as shown in figure 4. Here, each dashed shape is a click-through button. When the mouse button goes down over a shape, a copy of that shape is added to the scene, made opaque, and attached to the cursor. The object then moves with the cursor until the mouse button goes up, allowing fine positioning of the new shape.

Figure 4. Drop-and-drag from a shape palette.

Dragging may also begin outside of a tool and end inside it. For example, a shape may be dragged in a traditional way to a printer icon located on the toolglass sheet, causing the document to be printed. This is drag-and-drop with the target of the drop on the sheet.

A stroke gesture may begin in one part of a tool and end in another. Figure 5 shows a tool that combines single stroke gestures (like those used in Kurtenbach's Marking Menus [15]) with pie menus [12]. In figure 5(a), the user strokes from a graphical shape (a triangle) positioned under the circular center button of the menu to a button labelled "Fill Color", to apply the fill color of the triangle to the rectangular prototype object that is part of the tool. Conversely, in figure 5(b), the user strokes from the "Dashes" button to the circular center button to apply the dash pattern of the prototype to the triangle. Figure 5(c) shows the result.

Figure 5. Property Sampler/Applicator. (a) Sampling fill color. (b) Applying dashes. (c) The result.

A common problem with gesture interfaces is that it is hard for the system to distinguish input that is intended as a gesture from input intended as writing or drawing. Our solution is to use a see-through tool as the gesture interpreter. In figure 6, the user moves a gesture-interpreting tool (solid black lines) over a drawing and deletes a triangle with a gesture. Note that the same gestures can be used in multiple applications because the gesture interpreter can be moved from one application to another.

Figure 6. A gesture tool. (a) A deletion gesture, 'X', is made. (b) The triangle is deleted.

ACTION

This section describes seven axes of our taxonomy that are related to the action step of a tool: input transparency, data direction, data magnitude, application independence, application, operation class, and composition.

Input Transparency

Figure 7. The Lens Sampler tile.

Data Direction

Our tools can both send commands and data to applications and receive commands and data from them. Because it is positioned over the application, a tool can easily pick up application shapes from the region under it or drop shapes into this region. For example, the graphics clipboard of figure 8 picks up a shape when the clipboard is empty and the user clicks on a shape, as shown in figure 8(a). As the clipboard moves, it displays a fragment of the copied shape (figure 8(b)). The entire shape can be pasted somewhere else (figure 8(c)). Moving the clipboard leaves the new copy behind while the fragment continues to move with the tool (figure 8(d)). Clicking the square in the upper left corner clears the tool for reuse.

Some tools mostly send information to the application, such as the shape creation palette of figure 4. Others mostly receive information. For example, the Print Tool of figure 9(a) picks up application shapes, clips them to a rectangle, positions them on a page of specified size and creates a file that prints as shown in figure 9(b).

Figure 8. Graphics Clipboard.

Figure 9. The Print Tool (a) Specifying the print parameters. (b) The resulting printed page.

Data Magnitude

Some tools send only a small amount of information to the application. The color-changing button of figure 2, for example, sends two short commands, one to select the shape at the mouse coordinates and another to change the color of that shape. Other tools may send large amounts of information. For example, the Clip Art tool, shown in figure 10, can transfer an entire illustration in a single click. The bottom part of this tool is a hierarchical file browser, showing the sub-directories and files in the current directory. Pressing the UP button causes the tool to display the parent directory of the current one. Clicking on a file icon with the left mouse button drops the contents of the file into the application below. Clicking with the middle mouse button causes the contents of that file to be shown in the upper part of the tool; the tile of figure 10 shows the picture "/ClipArt/Arrows/TriangleArrows". These shapes can then be drop-and-dragged into the application.

Figure 10. The Clip Art tool.

Application Independence

Tools can be designed either to work over a single application or to work over multiple applications. In the first case, the tool and application can exchange commands and data in formats specific to that application. In the second case, the tool must either express commands and data in a standard format, or must contain software to handle the data and commands of each application over which it is used.

Application-independent tools are more valuable because the investment in learning to use them pays off in many different contexts. This is in contrast to current tools that are bound to an application, requiring, as Bruce Tognazzini put it, "having to slide your entire house inside a hammer before you can hang a picture on the wall" [8].

Application

See-though tools can be used over virtually any screen-based application, including illustrators, text editors, 3D modelers, spreadsheets, and CAD packages. Another interesting possibility is to use see-through tools over traditional tools. For example, figure 11 shows a tool that creates a graphical macro by picking up click-on buttons from a traditional control panel. Figure 11(a) shows part of the control panel of a graphics editor. These traditional iconic buttons set dash patterns and determine whether lines will have round or square ends. Figure 11(b) shows the macro tool. The upper part of this tool is a clipboard that copies buttons. The user has picked up a dash pattern button and a round-line-ends button by clicking on them through this region (recall figure 8). The resulting tool is placed over an oval shape (which originally had a solid border) and applied. The resulting oval has a dash pattern with round dots as shown.

Figure 11. Making a macro. (a) A traditional control panel. (b) Applying a macro to an oval.

Operation Class

See-through tools can perform any operation that traditional buttons can perform, plus other operations normally associated with modes. In a graphics editor for example, these tools can select, create, delete, and modify shapes. Examples of these operations are shown throughout this paper. Here we describe some unusual tools for deletion and modification.

Deletion tools can be built with magic lens filters that make it easy to find the object to be deleted and make it easy to undo a mistake. For example, a filter in the tool can show the objects that were most recently deleted. Clicking on a "ghost" object causes its deletion to be undone.

Of the many modification tools, see-through tools that modify shape, position, size, or orientation are particularly interesting because they can incorporate visual guidelines, such as the alignment lines and circles of snap-dragging [2]. Figure 14, which will be described below, is an example.

Figure 12. Color editor for fill and line colors.

See-through tools can also integrate the process of getting a current value, modifying it, and applying it. The color editor of figure 12 has four click-through buttons and six sliders. The upper-left and upper-right rectangles pick up a line color and fill color respectively. The red-green-blue sliders on the left or the hue-saturation-value sliders on the right can modify the color. The arrow in the middle shows the resulting color. The lower-left and lower-right rectangles apply this color to lines or filled regions, respectively. The shape in figure 12 is receiving a new fill color.

Composition

Some see-through tools compose with other tools when the tools are overlapped to form a stack. For example, we can combine a fill-color setting tool with a line-color setting tool to form a tool that sets both fill and line color.

To support composition, a tool must be willing to accept a command that has come from another tool and emit a modified command that blends its function into the received command. This blending may be done in several ways: A tool may append its command to end of the incoming one, prepend its command to the beginning, or modify the incoming command in a more general way. For example, a tool that protects illustrations from being edited would remove, from any command it receives, all requests to edit the objects below.

APPEARANCE

This section describes two axes related to appearance: output transparency and lens presence.

Output Transparency

Well-designed see-through tools must be visible enough to see, but simple enough so as not to clutter the user's view of the applications below. For some tools, an acceptable appearance may require using stippled, translucent, or transparent regions. Some of our translucent tools use a color-tinting magic lens filter [4] to draw their interiors.

Lens Presence

Adding a magic lens filter to a click-through tool can improve the usability of the tool by revealing information appropriate to the tool's operation. Conversely, adding input handling to a filter increases its utility, by making it possible to act on the information revealed by the filter. Figure 13(a) shows a click-through tool being used to select the hidden upper left corner of a square. Figure 13(b) shows a filter that produces a wireframe view of objects seen through it. Figure 13(c) is a tool that combines the click-through tool and the filter to create a tool that aids selection of hidden corners.

Figure 13. Three tools. (a) Vertex selector. (b) X-ray filter. (c) Vertex selector with x-ray filter.

MOTION

This section describes one axis related to motion: moves with.

The toolglass sheet moves relative to objects on other layers, including the cursor, the screen, and applications. Each of these other objects provides a reference frame that a see-through tool may move with. Most of our tools move and resize as a unit with the sheet. However, our grid tools draw their grids relative to the coordinate system of the screen (to allow inter-application alignment) or relative to a particular application.

Some tools are a hybrid, moving with the sheet some of the time and with scene objects at other times. So long as the object doesn't move into the space of other tools, these motions cause little confusion. For example, figure 14(a) shows a tool whose parts translate relative to scene objects. This alignment tool consists of two circles. When the center of the tool is positioned near a scene vertex, the circles move to snap their centers to that vertex using snap-dragging gravity [2] as shown in figure 14(b). The user can then use the circles to add a new line of known length as shown in figure 14(c). This tool is like a template that is held in the non-dominant hand while the user draws with the dominant hand.

Figure 14. An alignment circles tool.

Tools may even move with specific application objects. For example, the large rectangle in Figure 15(b) is a magic lens filter that creates a small control panel next to the left edge of each text object. The control panel displays the current font size of the text and includes arrows that increase or decrease the font size when pressed. This tool replaces traditional tools that select text, query its current size, and change that size.

Figure 15. A font-size tool. (a) Some text. (b) The filter reveals font size controls. The user makes some text larger.

Tools may move in a variety of ways including translating, rotating, or scaling. For example, we envision a text creation tool that can be rotated relative to the sheet. By rotating this tool, the user indicates the orientation that new text will have.

INSTANTIATION

This section describes our final three axes, which relate to instantiation: customization, persistence, and complexity.

Customization

See-through tools can be customized in a variety of ways. Parameters can be changed with click-on tools such as sliders, dials, and multi-valued buttons. In addition, a tool can be moved or copied within a tile by clicking on a small button in one corner of the tool with different mouse buttons. Alternatively, when two toolglass sheets are overlapped, tools can be "punched through" from one sheet to the other. If one tool is copied on top of another tool, the tools are composed, if possible, to form a macro. Customized tiles can be saved to disk and retrieved for later use.

Persistence

Some see-through tools always appear in the same place on a particular tile, or on all tiles (e.g., like the background card in HyperCard). For example, the Navigation and Trackball buttons in figure 7 appear on all tiles of our Cedar implementation.

On the other hand, to reduce screen clutter, other tools appear only when needed. For example, the radio buttons in figure 7 appear when the button named "Settings" is on and disappear when it is off. Likewise, the font-size changing buttons of figure 15 appear only when text strings are present.

Complexity

While many of the tools described here have only a small number of components, powerful tools can be built having many. For example, the color editor of figure 12 has two color lifting buttons, two color applying buttons and six sliders. Useful tools may be much more complicated than this, perhaps combining all of the functionality of existing control panels or property sheets into a single see-through tool.

SUMMARY OF THE TAXONOMY

Table 1 summarizes the axes of variation discussed in this paper. This taxonomy is not complete. There are other kinds of variation for each of the operational steps that have been discussed and other operational steps to consider. However, this taxonomy does provide an initial map of the design space for see-through tools.

While a few of these 14 axes depend on each other, they are largely orthogonal. Thus, any value on one axis can be combined with almost any value on any other axis, resulting in a large design space. The Composition and Input Transparency axes are related, in that composition rules on input make sense only if some overlapped tools are click-through. Persistence and Moves With are related in that tools that appear in response to data will most likely move with that data rather than with something else.
 

Trigger Type: Click, Drag-out, Drag-in,    Drag-out-and-in, Gesture, Overlapped tool
Input Transparency: Click-through, Click-on
Data Direction: Down, Up, Both
Data Magnitude: Simple command, ..., Database
Application Indep.:  No, Yes
Application: Graphics, Text, Other click-throughs, Traditional tools, ...
Operation Class: Select, Create, Delete, Modify, ...
Composition:  Append, Prepend, Modify
Output Transparency: Opaque, Stippled, Translucent, Transparent
Moves With: Sheet, Application, Both, Object, Cursor
Lens Presence: No, Yes
Customization: None, Parameters, Editable
Persistence: Always, Temporal mode, Appears in context
Complexity:  Single part, ..., Many parts
Table 1. 14 Taxonomy Axes and Typical Values.

As the examples in this paper indicate, interesting tools can be found throughout the space determined by these axes.

CONCLUSIONS

We have constructed a taxonomy of see-through tools by looking for variability in the ways they respond to five basic events: triggering, generating an action, drawing, moving, and instantiating. For each of these categories of response, we found one or more types of variability, producing 14 axes in our taxonomy. At the same time, we have presented over a dozen examples of novel see-through tools that motivate the different kinds of variability.

This paper does not present the only possible taxonomy of see-through tools, and none of our example tools is likely to be the best see-through tool for performing a given function. However, our examples and taxonomy do show that, far from being just a new way to present transparent menus, the see-through interface system is a vast new design space for user interface tools. Furthermore, effective tools can be found throughout the space, making it well worth exploring.

This paper should help to stimulate the imaginations of those interested in creating see-through tools. In addition it should be of value to those building toolkits for see-through tools. Each of our axes suggests a kind of tool variability that the toolkit may need to support.

FUTURE WORK

Work continues to explore and extend our taxonomy of tools, and to build and test these tools on a variety of platforms. Tools are being designed for use over new applications, including text editors, map visualizers, multi-media and spreadsheets. We are developing alternative ways to position, size, and navigate through these tools, including use with one hand. Finally, we are designing additional human factors studies to extend our understanding of how see-through tools are used in practice.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank John Tukey for stimulating conversations and for coining "Toolglass" as one word. We thank Randy Pausch for ideas and encouragement, Tony DeRose for co-inventing the magic lens filter concept, and Matt Conway for implementations of see-through tools on a new platform (X windows) and in new domains. We thank Jock Mackinlay, Polle Zellweger, Ken Pier and our anonymous reviewers for substantive comments that lead to an improved taxonomy and paper. Finally, we thank Xerox for its support.

Trademarks and Patents: Magic Lens, Toolglass and See-Through Interface are trademarks of the Xerox Corporation. Xerox is seeking legal protection for these ideas.

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15. Gordon Kurtenbach and William Buxton. Issues in combining marking and direct manipulation techniques. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '91, S. Carolina, November), ACM, 1991, pp. 137-144.

16. MacDraw Manual. Apple Computer Inc. Cupertino, CA 95014, 1984.

17. William M. Newman. Markup. Alto User's Handbook, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94304, 1979.

18. Ken Perlin and David Fox. Pad: an alternative approach to the computer interface. Proceedings of Siggraph '93 (Anaheim, August), Computer Graphics Annual Conference Series, ACM, 1993, pp. 57-64.

19. ImageVision, Silicon Graphics Inc., Mtn. View, CA.

20. Loretta Staples. Representation in virtual space: visual convention in the graphical user interface, figure 14. Proceedings of Interchi '93, Human Factors in Computing Systems (Amsterdam, April), ACM, 1993, pp. 348-354.

21. Maureen C. Stone, Ken Fishkin, Eric A. Bier. The movable filter as a user interface tool. Included in these proceedings.

22. Daniel C. Swinehart, Polle T. Zellweger, Richard J. Beach, and Robert B. Hagmann. A structural view of the Cedar programming environment. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, Vol. 8, No. 4, ACM, 1986, pp. 419-490.