We're going to be using a browser to view the contents of a page. Computers allocate to browsers a certain amount of memory for page content, and browsers can show us any of that content, or parts of it. The amount of memory computers allocate to browsers for this purpose is surprisingly large. We can put something like 100 photographs in this allocation, and the browser can show us all those images at once or parts of them, even small parts of them, at will.
But, that is the limit. The browser cannot display more than some number of photographs in this way, and in my experience that limit has been in the area of 100. Computers with more memory will be able to handle more photographs at once, but there will still be an upper limit, and it will not be exceedingly large.
I have also had the experience of loading a page of this sort and hearing the computer rev up, as it worked to display the very large image - in effect - I was asking it to explore for me. It was an interesting experience. I had found a way to make the computer work very, very hard ... and it did the job with great aplomb, suggesting that the job I gave it was extremely rational ... but ... still ...
The math I've described is designed to allow the computer to manage a very large number of image on a page, an infinite number, even, without a large allocation for browser cache, and without working extremely hard. The computer will work hard - this is a way to make computers work hard - but it will not be required to work infinitely hard, which is the direction things were headed in in my experiments.
This system creates a two dimensional virtual reality world. It's the equivalent of a super-giant scrapbook page, which you can view, in your browser, and you can move in very close - infinitely close - to see minute details of things you've pasted on it - pictures - and zoom out until you can see the whole page and everything you've pasted onto it at once. You can paste any number of pictures onto it, in columns, film strips, clouds, and view any of them in minute detail or view groups of them any way you like, and the browser can handle this with a very limited amount of cache.
