We propose new interaction techniques that support better browsing of
large HTML tables on small screen devices, such as mobile phones. We
propose three modes for browsing tables: normal mode, record mode, and
cell mode. Normal mode renders tables in the ordinary way, but
provides various useful functions for browsing large tables, such as
hiding unnecessary rows and columns. Record mode regards each row (or
column) as the basic information unit and displays it in a record-like
format with column (or row) headers, while cell mode regards each cell
as the basic unit and displays each cell together with its
corresponding row and column headers. For these table presentations,
we need to identify row and column headers that explain the meaning of
rows and columns. To provide users with both row and column headers
even when the tables have attributes for only one of them, we
introduce the concept of keys and develop a method of automatically
discovering attributes and keys in tables. Another issue in these
presentations is how to handle composite cells spanning multiple rows
or columns. We determine the semantics of such composite cells and
render them in appropriate ways in accordance with their semantics.
mobile Web access, Web accessibility, cellular phone, PDA, semantics of tables, relation, matrix, key, attribute, header detection
Publishd in Proc. of ACM UIST, pp.259-268, Oct. 2008, Monterey, CA
(MPEG1 movie, 42MB, 4min.)
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