apfejes
April 21st, 2008, 10:31 PM
I was just thinking that we have a great opportunity to come up with a very different user experience, which could be more productive.
I personally think I can be much more productive when my work space is 3d - I can remember which side of the cube holds the windows I need, and spend less time shuffling through expose-like environments, so why not apply that throughout the workspace?
1) Keep windows with tabs, but use the tab as a "floating window manager" over-top of a cube, with each new tab becoming a new face of a cube (or square faced polyhedra, as necessary.) Thus, it would be as if each application had it's own mac-like dock (with each side of the cube being an icon on the dock), and you could use the dock to quickly find each face of the cube.
This would also simplify grouping windows, and allow the user to navigate these "ribons" of docks, not just the 3D representations - of course, some people will like one, some will prefer the other (and undoubtedly, some people would like both! Yay software freedom!)
of course, using 3D windows would require moving away from our current desktop, which has 2,3,4 or more faces. Which brings me to...
2) Instead of using a cube as a desktop, why not make each desktop the wedge shaped space between the current "face" of our cube and the middle of the cube. This would allow for all of our windows to be permanently 3D, and allow our desktop to remain in a configuration more like the shift-switcher, where we can "juggle" our applications at any time, or bring several forward (filling the screen), as necessary.
Nearly all of the work we do is two dimensional, because we're unable to find a clean way to work on a 3D environment on a 2D surface. However, compiz has the means to break that limitation, if they can advance past the 2D face of the cube, and do something innovative with it.
If anyone is interested in pursuing this, I can make sketches or concept drawings that would illustrate what I have in mind.
I personally think I can be much more productive when my work space is 3d - I can remember which side of the cube holds the windows I need, and spend less time shuffling through expose-like environments, so why not apply that throughout the workspace?
1) Keep windows with tabs, but use the tab as a "floating window manager" over-top of a cube, with each new tab becoming a new face of a cube (or square faced polyhedra, as necessary.) Thus, it would be as if each application had it's own mac-like dock (with each side of the cube being an icon on the dock), and you could use the dock to quickly find each face of the cube.
This would also simplify grouping windows, and allow the user to navigate these "ribons" of docks, not just the 3D representations - of course, some people will like one, some will prefer the other (and undoubtedly, some people would like both! Yay software freedom!)
of course, using 3D windows would require moving away from our current desktop, which has 2,3,4 or more faces. Which brings me to...
2) Instead of using a cube as a desktop, why not make each desktop the wedge shaped space between the current "face" of our cube and the middle of the cube. This would allow for all of our windows to be permanently 3D, and allow our desktop to remain in a configuration more like the shift-switcher, where we can "juggle" our applications at any time, or bring several forward (filling the screen), as necessary.
Nearly all of the work we do is two dimensional, because we're unable to find a clean way to work on a 3D environment on a 2D surface. However, compiz has the means to break that limitation, if they can advance past the 2D face of the cube, and do something innovative with it.
If anyone is interested in pursuing this, I can make sketches or concept drawings that would illustrate what I have in mind.