Enhancing mobile browsing and reading

Abstract

Although the web browser has become a standard interface for information access on the Web, the mobile web browser on the smartphone does not hold the same interest to mobile users. A survey with 11 mobile users shows that only 18% of the participants like mobile web browsers, whereas 82% of them like other mobile applications. This research focuses on understanding mobile users' difficulties and proposes innovative ideas to enhance mobile web browsing. This research enhances mobile browsing and reading in three directions: (1) dynamically generating mobile web sites for browsing (2) using orientation sensor information to detect natural interactions and text-to-speech (TTS) to continue reading between different activities, and (3) providing a speech interface to ease web navigation and supporting dialog programming for repetitive tasks. The Read4Me Browser is a prototype system built to demonstrate the proposed ideas.