STRETCH home

STRETCH is a patented Java based technology which allows for visualization of large amounts of information at once (trees that consist of 10,000's nodes). With STRETCH understanding and managing information becomes easier: patterns in data structures are readily apparent, disorientation in the data space is eliminated, and navigation is efficient. The interface is elegant and intuitive; hierarchical information is mapped naturally from top, the root, to bottom - as the tree branches out and down. Please see Demos for some sample Java applets that highlight our capabilities.

BayCHI BROWSE-Off
STRETCH competed in a Browse-Off at the August 12, 1997 BayCHI meeting against the Hyperbolic Browser (developed at Xerox Parc) in an informal usability study in front of a live audience. The Hyperbolic Browser was the hands-down winner against six other competitors at a previous Browse-off held at SIGCHI 1997. The expert and novice rounds consisted of a set of timed tasks which involved finding items in a hierarchy of "knowledge in the world". The tree consisted of about 7,000 nodes with 6 main branches. STRETCH performed comparably with the Hyperbolic Browser in both rounds. Since the Browse-off, our implementation of STRETCH has been significantly refined and optimized. (The final score was STRETCH: 19 and Hyperbolic Browser: 21 for the expert category and for the novice category, STRETCH: 9 and Hyperbolic Browser: 10.)

Platform Requirements
Recommended:
PCs: A 166 machine or faster running Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator or HotJava.
Sparc stations: an Ultra-1 or faster running HotJava.

Implementation and API
The current implementation of STRETCH is pure Java. Programming with the provided STRETCH classes is simple. The following is the code for the demonstration applet: StretchTest.java.

Some documentation for the package is also available: STRETCH API.