Generating Expressive Window Thumbnails through Seam Carving

Information

• Publication Type: Bachelor Thesis
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Visual Information Foraging on the Desktop
• Date: 2017
• Date (Start): June 2016
• Date (End): February 2017
• Matrikelnummer: 1325492
• First Supervisor: Manuela Waldner

Abstract

Thumbnails are used to display lists of open windows or tabs when switching between them on computers and on mobile devices. These images make it easier to recognize the opened applications, and help to find the needed window quicker. Thumbnails however only display a screenshot of the windows, so they get potentially confusing if there are more opened windows or if the same application is opened multiple times. Depending on the resolution of the display, the screenshot size decreases as the number of opened windows increases. Furthermore, within the same application (like MS Office World) the screenshots are similar in appearance (e.g. : white paper and tool bar), but the important text is not readable. There are several approaches that filter the important areas of the images to enhance the main region. In this bachelor thesis an application is implemented that uses the above methods on screenshots. Screenshots of windows are reduced by cropping the irrelevant elements of the margin area using seam carving, i.e. by eliminating the non-important pixel paths; and by common down-sampling. As a result the thumbnails show only relevant information, which makes them more expressive and easier to fulfill their purpose.

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BibTeX

@bachelorsthesis{Koszticsak-2017-ewt,
  title =      "Generating Expressive Window Thumbnails through Seam Carving",
  author =     "Rebeka Koszticsak",
  year =       "2017",
  abstract =   "Thumbnails are used to display lists of open windows or tabs
               when switching between them on computers and on mobile
               devices. These images make it easier to recognize the opened
               applications, and help to find the needed window quicker.
               Thumbnails however only display a screenshot of the windows,
               so they get potentially confusing if there are more opened
               windows or if the same application is opened multiple times.
               Depending on the resolution of the display, the screenshot
               size decreases as the number of opened windows increases.
               Furthermore, within the same application (like MS Office
               World) the screenshots are similar in appearance (e.g. :
               white paper and tool bar), but the important text is not
               readable. There are several approaches that filter the
               important areas of the images to enhance the main region. In
               this bachelor thesis an application is implemented that uses
               the above methods on screenshots. Screenshots of windows are
               reduced by cropping the irrelevant elements of the margin
               area using seam carving, i.e. by eliminating the
               non-important pixel paths; and by common down-sampling. As a
               result the thumbnails show only relevant information, which
               makes them more expressive and easier to fulfill their
               purpose.",
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
               University of Technology ",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2017/Koszticsak-2017-ewt/",
}