The common desktop interface of personal computing-clicking links, file names, and tabs to navigate everything from the Web to Microsoft Word-works fine on your PC but not on the tiny screens of handheld devices, which rely on cumbersome adaptations like drop-down menus and scrolling. Now, the first interface that completely replaces these methods with the simpler method of zooming-alternating levels of magnification-is headed to the handheld market.

Users initially see a bird's-eye view of icons or text blocks representing basic information categories. They click to get a closer view and more information and pan between categories, without needing tools like the "back" button or drop-down menus, says Maximilian Riesenhuber, chief science officer of GeoPhoenix of Cambridge, MA, which is bringing the product, called Zoominator, to market this summer. The GeoPhoenix move follows a zooming trend. Already familiar in common tools like Web-based maps, zooming is showing up in more applications. For example, Windsor Interfaces of University Park, MD, a startup founded by University of Maryland computer scientist Ben Bederson, plans to market a photo browser that allows users to pan across, and zoom in on, hundreds of thumbnail images, even if they are located in different folders. As a result, users won't have to remember individual photos' names; they will be able to identify them quickly by looking at their thumbnails.