Wireless Web access on handheld devices

Mobile access to information is a key to individual productivity. Handheld devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones are becoming more crucial in our daily lives. In this thesis we address problems of interacting with the World-Wide Web through wirelessly connected small devices. These problems include bandwidth limitations, screen real-estate shortage, battery capacity, and the time costs of pen-based input. We provide several techniques to efficiently navigate through information, explore information and enter information on handheld devices. One technique supports navigation, improving user performance for browsing tasks. Another technique provides dynamically generated Web site search, and automatic search keyword entry completion. Another technique, “accordion summarization,” helps users analyze individual Web pages on their small device. The technique provides syntactic and structural page summarization, and a progressive mechanism for gradually revealing the contents of a Web page. Finally, our last technique provides easy form filling and email entry. We propose a design for displaying and manipulating HTML forms on handheld devices. We also utilize the user knowledge and application semantics of email to enable easy and fast email entry on pen-based devices.