/etat

Every Thing All the Time - seamless visual material viewer

Primary LanguageJavaApache License 2.0Apache-2.0

eTaT - Every Thing All the Time

Purpose

eTaT is a collection viewer for visual material with a heavy focus on seamless shifts from overview to details, avoiding context switches and keeping material context in the form of related material.

eTaT is about exploring collections with only a vague idea of the expected outcome. Consequently it works poorly for focused search where the user expects a specific singular result.

eTaT is an experiment from https://labs.kb.dk by Jesper Lauridsen (@justjspr / jla@kb.dk) & Toke Eskildsen (@TokeEskildsen / toes@kb.dk) - feedback is welcome.

Principles

  • A complete overview of all material is available at all times in the form of a zoomable collage.
  • There is only a single view, with high-res renders and metadata for the individual material becoming gradually available using zoom & pan.
  • All material is available all the time: Searching or filtering only changes the overall layout, it never removes material.
  • Visual grouping is the dominant mechanism for accessing subsets of the collection.
  • Material first: Display of the material takes precedence over metadata, navigation elements and other non-material layout elements.

For inspiration see zoom and juxta.

Layout mechanism

  • A fixed size rectangle containing the full collage of material. The rectangle should be as large as possible, preferably the full browser window. See Lunch for inspiration.
  • Subsetting the collection by searching results in hits being grouped in an area in the middle of the collage, with non-matching material being positioned outside of the area. Higher ranked material is at the center of the area.
  • Groups are repesented with different background colors.

Technical notes

  • The project aims for collections ranging from thousands of elements to a few million.
  • The development focus is on full color images.

Status

Absolutely at the initial idea state.