Zooming user interface

In computing, a zooming user interface or zoomable user interface (ZUI, pronounced zoo-ee) is a type of graphical user interface (GUI) on which users can change the scale of the viewed area in order to see more detail or less, and browse through different documents. Information elements appear directly on an infinite virtual desktop (usually created using vector graphics), instead of in windows. Users can pan across the virtual surface in two dimensions and zoom into objects of interest. For example, as the user zooms into a text object, it may be represented as a small dot, then a page thumbnail, then a full-size page, and finally a magnified view of the page.

ZUIs use zooming as the main metaphor for browsing through hyperlinked or multivariate information. Objects present inside a zoomed page can, in turn, be zoomed themselves to reveal further detail, allowing for recursivenesting and an arbitrary level of zoom.

Researchers have described the ZUI paradigm as a Post-WIMP interface and potential successor to the traditional windowing GUI.

The term ZUI was coined by Franklin Servan-Schreiber while working at Sony Research Laboratories, in partnership with Ben Bederson and Ken Perlin of New York University.