LookingGlass

Summary

Looking Glass - If you wanna dazzle Vista wannabees, there's the package you'd want to consider. A 3D Desktop with much less requirements than Vista [WWW] LG3D Site.

Rationale

Use cases

Scope

Design

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

  • I strongly argue against all kinds of immature gimmicks like pseudo-3d desktops. Yes, they may look nice and shiny at first sight. Actually using them poses more problems than you might ever want to know about. First of all, any current GUI interaction is modeled in 2d (ignoring the time axis) and does not at all map well onto pseudo-3d. You would actually need to design & develop the whole graphical interface completely from scratch to overcome this hurdle. Then, there are some severe navigational issues with pseudo-3d which partly are connected to being pseudo (it's still on your monitor) and not 'real'. The resources (in terms of time, effort, knowledge, etc.) which would be needed to develop satisfying user interactions in this area should imnsho better be spent at enhancing and consolidating the current interface model which provides enough opportunities for improvements. You can create much more satisfaction with simpler, but well-done interface elements that *feel* and *behave* just right (amongst others, movement - which includes timing - is very important). It is a common misconception that attractive looks = good interface. But it is *behaviour* (which, unfortunately cannot be captured in a screenshot) that matters much more. [SaschaBrossmann]

BoF agenda and discussion

Comments

This spec has been proposed by lg3d as part of their SoC 2006 involvement:

http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Javadesktop/SummerOfCode2006

LookingGlass (last edited 2008-08-06 16:41:23 by localhost)