Image browsing: A space-time trade-off

Browsing is defined as the assessment of content, and is different from searching. Whereas the browsing of text can be tedious and difficult, the browsing of images can often proceed more easily and at a much faster rate. For example, while images may well occupy more space than the associated descriptive text, their adequate appearance need only be brief. For this reason, the space that would be required to fully and continuously display a number of images can be traded for a much smaller space if those images are capable of being riffled, each image being displayed only momentarily. The space-time trade-off is illustrated by the example of a video-store whose contents can be browsed.