New Browser Shows Web in 3-D

P H I L A D E L P H I A, March 5 -- An architect and virtual reality designer'soutside-the-box idea for a Web browser turned out looking like theinside of a box.

The user-friendly concept of the inside of a room actually ishow Mike Rosen, chief executive officer of 2ce Inc., envisions hismethod of displaying six or more Web pages while being able toinstantly interact with any of them. Instead of opening and minimizing separate browser windows,2ce's CubicEye browser shows the pages as if they were on theinside walls of a cube. A user can flip the cube to work on any page. Pages on thewalls, ceiling and floor of the cube are not fully legible, butthey are live and the user can see changes and click on prominentfeatures. The page directly in front can zoom to full-screen sizefor detailed or extended work. "A lot of information comes at you at once, and what we did waswe came up with an organizational structure that allows you to takethe information overload and organize it in a way that people canrelate to it in a very simplistic fashion," Rosen said.

The Internet Browser Game

Just as Internet browsing previously transformed from dealingwith on-screen text to organizing information in pages or windows,Rosen envisions his browser as a transition to a gaming- orvirtual-reality-oriented three-dimensional approach to the Web,though some experts question whether users want such anevolutionary step. "It may be a misapplied metaphor, the idea that because peopleare familiar with a room they will be comfortable with gettinginformation off the walls, ceiling and floor," said PaulSonderegger, an analyst for Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge,Mass. Rosen called the cube "a simple shape that people arecomfortable with. If I told you look, you're in a room, and theroom has a floor, ceiling and four walls ... you get that. Youunderstand that without me having to teach you too much about yourenvironment." Users gain versatility because they no longer have to navigatefrom page to page in a linear fashion, Rosen said, taking theCubicEye for a spin on his office computer to show how he couldflips from screen to screen without retracing his path.