Roy Schestowitz wrote:
__/ [TheLetterK] on Sunday 12 February 2006 20:19 \__
Roy Schestowitz wrote:
__/ [John Bailo] on Sunday 12 February 2006 17:52 \__
Roy Schestowitz wrote:
"...But the biggest surprise is the new graphic interface which uses
OpenGL to create effects which you are all too familiar with, like
window transparency, switching desktops using a large rotating cube, or
creating a thumbnail view of a window."
The thing is, people have been "featuring" crap like that for years.
As to whether it enhances the GUI experience, or information delivery,
or anything useful -- is really unknown.
My opinion: A well designed 2-D interface is far more useful.
I agree. As long as a third domension is not supported by interaction
peripherals (4 arrows on keyboard, 2-D mouse motion), that third dimension
is an overinflation that cannot be used.
Now, imagine a mouse that had a notion of /depth/. I saw one on TV when I
was about 12. You could then grab a window that is hidden beneath another
windor that shows up on front. You could trivially push and pull windows.
If an O/S vendor took forward this paradigm of HCI and nurtured it, that
would become a huge selling point.
I know how you could do it with existing mice. Use the mouse wheel for
traversing the z-axis. Not hard at all. Certainly less cumbersome than
the UI shown in that video. Alternately, you could start using the
keyboard for level navigation. Or you could use a gyroscopic mouse, that
detects z-axis motion (these already exist).
A gyroscopic mouse is what I was reffering to all along. Anything else is an
emulation of the z-axis, which amateur users will find counter-intuitive.
I think they'd find it more intuitive than a gyroscopic mouse. How would
you get fine control with a gyroscopic mouse, and how would you keep it
from tiring the arm out after prolonged usage? You try having your
average American straighten out their arm and hold a two ounce weight
for half an hour.
One flaw comes to mind, still. With 3-D environments and 3-D mice, you would
still need good 3-D diplays or exploitation of stereo vision, at one level
or another.
I still don't think it would have any concrete advantages, save possibly
being easier to conceptualize.
I suppose you could use mouse pointer size to indicate depth, but it's far,
far from ideal. Meanwhile, one could think of virtual desktop as a /stack/
of desktops, lying one above the other, much like layers.
That would be one way to use it. Another would be a zooming UI, which
would work perfectly well with 'z-axis emulation'.
It gives you
pseudo-3D. The convention, however, is to treat them similarly to the way
they are stored in a memory frame or (virtual) frame buffer. We think of
them as one extended rectangle, which probably simplifies matters.
I don't think people would have much trouble thinking of layered virtual
desktops--at least, not any more than they do a planar arrangement.
All in all, I think that a sphere (of let us say 6 desktops) would only
confuse users. Think of the globe vs. map analogy. One day our children will
laugh at us for thinking that the desktop was bound to be flat.
I'm not really sure what would be gained from a fully 3d interface.
There are some advantages to treating windows as 3d objects, but
treating the objects within the 'window' in a 3d manner seems like it
would just add unnecessary movement.
--
"There is nothing I understand." - Shit
|
|
