Effectively View - Navigable Structures

Certain fundamental properties are necessary for informations structure to be effectively view-navigable as they get larger. View-navigation here means the familiar method of moving from one locally visible part of the information structure to another until a target is found. Fundamental properties needed include: views of the structure must be small, connecting paths must not be too long, and the paths to targets must be discoverable by a Navigator. This paper explores concepts useful in understanding these constraints, including that of the viewing graph of a structure, as well as to-sets and residue. I. INTRODUCTION The World Wide Web (WWW) is the most recent popular example of a vast online information world. All who have use it are impressed by the range and richness of the content accessible simply by view navigation , i.e., wandering around and clicking on things they see on the screen. Soon after users are also typically struck by how hard it is to find anything specific by such navigation. In these initial stages of the evolution of the WWW, its structure has not been supportive of any form of targeted navigational search.