We introduce "fisheye menus" which apply traditional fisheye graphical visualization techniques to linear menus. This provides for an efficient mechanism to select items from long menus, which are becoming more common as menus are used to select data items in, for example, e-commerce applications. Fisheye menus dynamically change the size of menu items to provide a focus area around the mouse pointer. This makes it possible to present the entire menu on a single screen without requiring buttons, scrollbars, or hierarchies.
A pilot study with 10 users compared user preference of fisheye menus with traditional pull-down menus that use scrolling arrows, scrollbars, and hierarchies. Users preferred the fisheye menus for browsing tasks, and hierarchical menus for goal-directed tasks. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-2000-31) (Also cross-referenced as HCIL-TR-2000-12)