Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
sification system. Later on, with the Internet - a
global system of networks consisting of computers
connected by communication channels, and the
World Wide Web - one of the services running
on the Internet, a network-based design reflected
diversity, decentralization, and nonlinearity of
data. Internet computer networks use the standard
Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve bil-
lions of users. Web browsers bring information
resources to the users, as they allow to access
from the web servers the web resources, such as
text documents linked by hyperlinks and URLs.
Browsers (for example, Chrome, Firefox, Safari,
or other browsers) settle the server-name portion
of the URL (for example, w3.org) into an Internet
protocol IP address. Web browsers, put in service
by the users, must have the capability to view the
modeling languages that describe the data. The
web developers are working on the web's uni-
versality - the ability to publish regardless of the
software, the computer, the language, the wired
or wireless system, and the sensory or interaction
mode (W3C, 2012), which would enable accessing
the web from any kind of hardware that can con-
nect to the Internet - stationary or mobile, small
or large. W3C facilitates this blending via the
international W3C standards that define an Open
Web Platform for web design and web applica-
tions developments (such as HTML, CSS, SVG,
or Ajax). According to Lima (2011), thinking
about and drawing network visualization requires
a scientific background, and pragmatic, utilitar-
ian approach, so guiding principles are needed to
improve existing methods and techniques.
For the Web-search result visualization, visual
exploratory techniques for representations of the
Web-search results go beyond charts and graphs
and encourage the user interaction and the use
of current tools and applications. Many times,
visualization over the web requires creating col-
laborative groups organized to work together, all
in different Internet locations, involving the data
providers, the visualization service providers,
and of course, the users. Search engines on the
web can be constructed using the HTML forms,
VRML, and a CGI script (the Common Gateway
Interface). The VRML, Virtual Reality Modeling
Language is a file format - the ISO standard for
3D graphics over the web, and Java applets run-
ning in a web browser. This language describes
multi-user interactive simulations - virtual worlds
networked via the global Internet and hyper linked
within the web. The HTML language may serve
for displaying information as Image Maps in the
form of the 2D and 3D graphics, for example,
glyphs (small graphic symbols). 3D animated
GIF images or JPEG interactive graphics on the
network require a navigation system that combines
the 3D input and a high performance rendering
capabilities. For example, web-based 3D inter-
face allows navigation of the German Brockhaus
Encyclopedia through a geospatial metaphor by
browsing of encyclopedia content by geographi-
cal context.
Web-search result visualization can also be
done in a glyph form. A glyph is a graphical
unit that portrays many variables by adapting
its many properties; just helping to overview,
examine details, and abstract information about
the very large, multi-variable data sets. This
information-rich way of graphical representation
allows displaying more data in a small space. H.
Chernoff posed that humans interpret information
encoded into facial features and developed in
1973 an early glyph application; he represented
data through face expressions: different values
could be shown by changes in the face shape,
length of the eyes, nose, or mouth, the angle of
the eyebrows, etc. Later on, several methods have
been developed of automatic mapping from the
data to emotional features of the face expression,
so values could be shown by changes in the face
characteristics. By observing data points repre-
sented as a glyph, such as a sphere or a “bubble,”
one can determine the quality and quantity of the
links within a website, because they are displayed
in five dimensions: by a position (x, y, and z),
size, shape, and color.
