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GUI Software Linux

3D File Manager on Linux Wins NSF Prize 283

Posted by CowboyNeal from the new-ways-of-looking-at-old-stuff dept.
MadFarmAnimalz writes "Science Magazine's reporting on the results of the NSF's Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge and the first prize in the Illustrations category has been claimed by the Innolab 3D File Manager, which was developed on linux. Apparently this involves arranging data in a ferris wheel type structure." The data is arranged by its relationship with its content, rather than by its physical position on a hard drive or its file system.
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3D File Manager on Linux Wins NSF Prize More

3D File Manager on Linux Wins NSF Prize

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  • ls -R / (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 ) <travis&utk,edu> on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:04AM (#6951386) Homepage Journal
    /: bin boot cdrom dev devs etc floppy home initrd lib lost+found media mnt music opt proc root sbin tmp usr var vmdebian vmlinux vmlinux26 /bin: arch bash cat chgrp chmod chown cp cpio csh date dd df dir dmesg dnsdomainname echo ed egrepe-- false fgconsole fgrep fuser grep gunzip gzexe gzip hostname kill ksh ln loadkeys login ls lspci mkdir mknod mktemp more mount mt mt-gnu mv nc netcat netstat pidof ping ps pwd rbash readlink rm rmdir run-parts rzsh sed setserial sh sleep stty su sync tar tcsh tempfile touch true umount uname uncompress vdir zcat zcmp zdiff zegrep zfgrep zforce zgrep zless zmore znew zsh zsh4

    And the list goes on. One HELL of a ferris wheel.

    • Re:ls -R / (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nutshell42 ( 557890 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:40AM (#6951524) Journal
      Well, if you look at the image in the article, it *is* one hell of a ferris wheel and while I can't say how effective it is without trying it, it really doesn't look less cluttered than a normal file-list but it could be useful in distinct parts of a file system where a maximum of *visual* organisation is necessary (in a cvs-tree perhaps, to see what files influence which others if you change them, just an idea)

      And just to get my daily flamebait rating: Who modded the parent offtopic? It's a valid questioning of the usefulness of the program mentioned in the article

  • ferris wheel type structure (Score:5, Funny)

    by bathmatt ( 638217 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:05AM (#6951388)
    Apparently this involves arranging data in a ferris wheel type structure.

    Does this mean that you have to wait for your files to get back down to the bottom to be able to read them???

  • OT: 3d file manager (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ArmorFiend ( 151674 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:06AM (#6951394) Homepage Journal
    No, I didn't RTFA, and I'm sure I'll get modded Offtopic, but the thought occurs to me:

    Why are we, the free software community, busting ass to integrate pseudo-3d technologies to the desktop (AA-fonts, SVG-icons, real alpha blending), while it seems obvious that the next step is going to be a fully 3d-enabled desktop, with 3d icons placed in the current 2d-metaphor? Already new computers with new accellerators can push so many polys that the overhead is not measurable by users.
    • i disagree. 3d is only a natural progression from 1d and then 2d. i guess you could consider the command line 1d, but that isn't a way of representing anything at all. so, why is 3d the natural next thing? data still isn't organized any better than it was before. in fact, since the amount of ways to arrange stuff in a 3d desktop is *so* much higher, it is much easier to lose stuff, just like in the real world. arguably, the desktop metaphor has problems, but going 3d won't really solve that.

      plus, antialias
      • I'm not thinking about logically arranging data in 3d, I'm thinking about drawing the desktop using a 3d api instead of a 2d api with various hacks/patches that ultimately utilize the 3d hardware in an ad-hoc way.

        This is why I think of AA-fonts and transparent menus as a fundamentally 3d job -- they're best done by the video accellerator, not the cpu.

        Similarly, SVG rendering seems to be just a special case of OpenGL rendering with a flat orthographic projection. Since OpenGL can render a superset of what
        • Still, what is the point? Eye candy? What good is 20 layers of documnts, notes, editor panes, file manager windows and icons on a narrow (gasp) 21" monitor? The one that represents how much of your true field of vision? Why would pseudo 3D make it any easier, if most of the metaphors that would be dragged into it are crippled?
          • The Open source guys are targeting 1 ghz machines with a TNT video card, not a 2 ghz machine with a Geforce video card. That's okay, that's what the rest of the industry is doing to. It simply suprises me that they're not taking the opportunity to leapfrog a generation and go straight for something recently-produced computers are easily capable of.

            Your above post is no less true if you replace "pseudo 3D" with "SVG". Which is my point really.

            All these little "quality of life" improvements bought with s
      • plus, antialiasing has nothing to do with 3d. it is a pseudo-analog (vs. digital) not psuedo 3d technology; furthermore, alpha blending is just eye candy.

        anti-aliasing is not pseudo analog, it increases the effective resolution. And good eye candy isn't just any old eye candy. Alpha blending during a drag and drop operation is unquestionably good, whereas translucent xterms, well who knows. So there.

      • I disagree. 3d is only a natural progression from 1d and then 2d.
        I protest. Never underestimate the power of 0d!!!

    • Re:OT: 3d file manager (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dashing Leech ( 688077 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:22AM (#6951462)
      At my work, anybody who asks these types of questions has automatically volunteered to lead the solution.

      So I expect you to have this 3D desktop on my ... umm ... desktop by tomorrow morning.

    • Re:OT: 3d file manager (Score:4, Funny)

      by Netsnipe ( 112692 ) <netsnipe@gm a i l . com> on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:23AM (#6951466) Homepage
      Do you want to keep putting on your 3D goggles everytime you want to browse your filesystem and having to take them off after you launch an application?

      We'd need an interactive hologram system before we can really have a truly 3D desktop.

      • Re:OT: 3d file manager (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Nooface ( 526234 )
        This article in Reuters [reuters.com] describes the Heliodisplay [io2technology.com], a device that creates a two-dimensional image which appears to hover in mid-air and can be seen from several angles. Similar to the Fog Screen [nooface.com], the Heliodisplay projects the image into a cloud of "benign" particles that it sprays into the air. The developer states that he was directly influenced by the hologram communicator [lbstone.com] shown in the "Star Wars" movies. Here is a set of video clips [io2technology.com] demonstrating the device in action, and there is more detail about the d
      • I think you can actually rotate the structure, zoom in & zoom out. Homeworld the space sim has a similar interface that works very intuitively after a few tries. While each eye doesnt get the same picture the rendering of the picture follows the rules of 3d space.
    • Probably because most people see the open source desktop as being some kind of cheap Windows rip off?

      Personally I don't think 3D will be of much use until the input method is figured out. I certainly don't want to stick on gloves and wave my arms around to use a computer, far too much effort.

      Anyway, we still write letters on flat paper, books are still 2D. What good will a 3D text file be? there are many limitations on what 3D applications will work. I think we'll just end up with a 3D desktop management
      • If we could get all the geeks to wear gloves and wave their hands we would have less overweight geeks. Just think of the possibilities! They'd be able to get jobs at the FBI, the IT guy won't be huffing and puffing and all out of breath before he arrives at my desk, etc...

        I'm all for the glove...you should be able to burn 800 calories on an 8 hour work day.

    • Re:OT: 3d file manager (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Trigun ( 685027 )
      The biggest problem with a 3D desktop is that our input devices are still stuck in 2D.
      Maybe it would take a 3D desktop to foster innovation in pointing devices, but most likely it will take both, at the same time. I'm waiting for the Minority Report style interface, with virtual keyboards, multiple desktops, and overexaggerated gestures. Add some weighted wristbands to the mix, and just maybe I'll get a good cardio workout while trolling Slashdot as well.

    • I run OpenBox to avoid the overhead of KDE or GNOME, as well as for its better interface.

      If a 3d interface is begun, it won't be an openbox/blackbox style system in which one can quickly and easily do what's needed after learning the controls. It will be a feature-barren, "dumbed down" interface like KDE or GNOME that for all intents an purposes is designed to look like winshit.

      I have nothing against KDE and GNOME, they show how beautiful X can be and help entice new users. We already have 3d in the

      • Re:it's still overhead (Score:5, Funny)

        by ArmorFiend ( 151674 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:39AM (#6951523) Homepage Journal
        I run OpenBox to avoid the overhead of KDE or GNOME, as well as for its better interface.
        You use graphics and windows? Ugh, the bloat! The overhead! I used to only program using the linux console. No pesky bloated bitmapped graphics there, no sir-e-bob! But then I realized I was wasting countless processor cycles redrawing a 2d grid of characters. That's when I stepped up to a truly responsive system - the line editor! Its the shit, man! I can get 1,400,000 frames per second on my Pentium4/3200mhz with Geforce4 Pro Titanium Ultra. It is RESPONSIVE!!!
        • Actually, yeah. If, and only if, you get the same usability for less resources, why shouldn't you run that? I like line editors but I do use a GUI program for drawing (Sodipodi), and I sometimes use Blender and other GUI modellers.

          I'm quite puzzled to why Gnome has to be so slooooow on my iBook 500/66.
        • He never mentioned bloat or overhead. What he was getting at is how terribly inefficient an unintuitive that stuff is. Maybe the initial learning curve is smaller (wow, God forbid somebody takes the, what, 1/2 hour it takes to read through something like the ROX manual), but the end result is an painfully inefficient, inconsistent, disorganized MESS of an interface.

          Linux uses files for everything. The GUI should reflect that. ROX does a very nice job (application folders, for example). ROX does have

    • Re:OT: 3d file manager (Score:5, Insightful)

      by digidave ( 259925 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:47AM (#6951549)
      Have you ever used a 3D desktop? Maybe all the 3D desktops on Windows (try shellcity.net for a few links) are just bad implementations, but they are a lot more cumbersome to use. Remember that it's better to be able to launch apps quickly than it is to fit a million icons on a screen.

      One Windows 3D desktop I remember was like Quake. You'd walk around this map and launch apps on the wall. To focus an app, you walk up to the wall and hit an action button. Cool, but not practical.

      Another was a sort of empty 3D area with floating icons and a ground as a reference point so you don't get lost. The floating icons were just cubes with the 2D icon textured on each side, but it was functional. The trouble was that you either ended up organizing all these 3D icons within your field of vision as if it was a 2D desktop or you wasted half your time turning around and flying towards whichever icon you wanted to click on.

      Any 3D desktop that works will have to be extraordinarily revolutionary just to be useable.
      • My original post was misleading. What I'm interested in is why we're using 3d-accelleratable technologies like SVG, AA-fonts, and translucent menus in an ad-hoc way, when a unified, OpenGL-based approach would seem more, well, unified.

        I was still imagining the basically Mac System 1 2d interface, just rendered with all the power of a modern video card.
      • "Any 3D desktop that works will have to be extraordinarily revolutionary just to be useable."

        Which makes me wonder.....do we even need a 3D desktop at this point? Why not let there be a 2D desktop projected into 3D space, and still enable the machine to display other apps in full 3D when necessary.

        Just because a display has the ability to display true 3D objects (or simulated I guess) doesn't mean it should display EVERYTHING in 3D. A 2D desktop might be the most efficient design of a desktop, and mayb

    • I would agree with you!

      Actually rather than fully poligonal icons and windows, I'd like to see texturing and lightning effects going realtime on current X' windows. I mean.., actual lightning effects, not pre-rendeered stuff. And of course, nice 3D transformation effects on the oppening and closing of windows.

      Maybe this could be achieved with a couple more people working on the transluxent [uni-karlsruhe.de] project, and making it go beyond the extremely outdated alpha effects. For Heavens..it had been cool to show off a
    • while it seems obvious that the next step is going to be a fully 3d-enabled desktop

      What, kinda like 3dwm? [3dwm.org]
    • How do "AA-fonts, SVG-icons, real alpha blending" have anything to do with 3D visualization? They're all 2D optimizations, so it's not obvious anyone is busting ass on 3D desktop tech.

      I agree with another poster's reply, 3D file and desktop management are on hold pending true 3D display technology. Even then it's not immediately apparent that current computer data structures are better served by 3D visualization, or that humans would be more efficient using them. More dimensions are not automatically bette

      • How do "AA-fonts, SVG-icons, real alpha blending" have anything to do with 3D visualization? They're all 2D optimizations, so it's not obvious anyone is busting ass on 3D desktop tech.

        Simple: they're all accellerated by a 3d graphics card.

  • pr0n ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Krunch ( 704330 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:07AM (#6951397) Homepage
    Browsing your pr0n collection will never be what it used to be again.

  • Can it be downloaded and taken for a test drive? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Proudrooster ( 580120 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:08AM (#6951401) Homepage
    This looks really cool. Anyone know if it can be downloaded so we can take it for a test drive? Please post a download link if you have one. The article doesn't provide any links except to a static image of how the program visually organizes the files.

  • This is strange (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rkz ( 667993 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:09AM (#6951404) Homepage Journal
    Rather than having a software layer which groups files by content rather than tree structure, why not impliment a SQL type of system to access ReiserFS after all it is a database underneeth.

    Doing this through the filesystem strikes me as alot more efficient than a quick hack of a filemanager.

    Even Microsoft are working on a file system based
    • There is a number of different projects to make a filesystem more database-like.

      WinFS is one of them, Storage [slashdot.org] another,reiser4 [namesys.com] has a number of interesting concepts (such as a file being at the same time a directory containing the attributes of the file) which could be used in a similar way

    • Re:This is strange (Score:3, Insightful)

      by uberdave ( 526529 )
      The philosophy of linux and unix-like OSs is to have small programs that do single tasks well, and link them together to do complex tasks. Changing how a program at the beginning of the chain can have profound implications to the rest of the chain, whereas changes to the end of a chain have little impact at all. Writing a file manager/browser application doesn't interfere with any other software. It is an application running on top of the OS. The filesystem, however is a fundamental part of the operatin

  • I don't buy it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nurgled ( 63197 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:10AM (#6951407)

    I'd have enough trouble interpreting that render (in the article) if it were made of real objects floating in front of me, but a 2D projection of it would just be hell.

    It seems to me that the claim they make about the relationships not being displayable in 2D is false; the parent/child relationships are easy, and we've already got that sorted. The "related by some arbitrary, unspecified characteristic" (grey and yellow folders) can be represented by another pane in the 2D browser for "Things that are related to this elsewhere", which Windows XP already does for lots of its "special folders" as a substitute for actually putting them in a sensible heirarchy in the first place.

  • 3D GUIs? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by immel ( 699491 )
    Some people have wondered in the past "What happened to the 3-D GUIs that were promised to us in the past from movies like 'Jurassic Park'?" Well, here it is. But really, what are the advantages of this system that cannot be offered by a 2-D GUI? It's really cool and all, but don't you think this would be a slight waste of CPU or GPU power?

    • Re:3D GUIs? (Score:5, Informative)

      by slug359 ( 533109 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:14AM (#6951425) Homepage
      The Jurassic Park Park GUI is actually a real filemanager for IRIX called FSN.

      3D File System Navigator for IRIX 4.0.1+ [sgi.com]

    • Re:3D GUIs? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Glock27 ( 446276 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:18AM (#6951439)
      It's really cool and all, but don't you think this would be a slight waste of CPU or GPU power?

      For an interactive system (the only place a file browser matters) the GPU is always completely available to service what you're looking at. It has no other function.

      If you're not using it, it's just sitting there being a waste of space. The one valid point here, though, is that power consumption might be higher if you're using every bell and whistle.

    • Re:3D GUIs? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by wjsteele ( 255130 )
      It's really cool and all, but don't you think this would be a slight waste of CPU or GPU power?

      That's got to be the stupidest comment I've ever heard. Why the hell do you people think that we could possibly "waste" CPU or GPU power??? What the hell did we put such powerful processors in these computers if we don't write software to use them?

      In my opinion, it's about time someone writes some software that looks good and uses the full capabilites of the hardware we're running it on, all the while makin

  • Not New... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Swannie ( 221489 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:13AM (#6951424) Homepage
    ...They use 3D file system technology like this to run big theme parks. I know for a fact they use something similar to this over at Jurassic Park. :)

    • Re:Not New... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by goatbar ( 661399 )
      No kidding... not too different than what Fourth Planet [fourthplanet.com] was selling with their nScope product. Did that about 1997/1998 or so. Also saw a number of programs like this in the Stanford Computer Graphics labs back in 95/96 in Levoy and Hanrahans' classes. Ah... the joys of watching network traffic with etherman (??) on IRIX 4.x. Also very similiar to the winner.

      Okay, okay... I entered and didn't win with xcore [schwehr.org]. Not quite as flashy, but I thought I'd have a good chance.

      Congrats to all the winners. Th

  • 3D Directories for OS X (Score:5, Interesting)

    by afflatus_com ( 121694 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:14AM (#6951427) Homepage
    If you are on OS X and would like to sample 3D navigation of disk drive content, there is a nice free project that does this, aptly named 3DOSX.

    It uses Open GL to make the file system into 3D rotatable platters, and the platters are linked together. Can swim around the platters looking at the different documents.

    Some screenshots are here:
    3DOSX Screenshots

    The project homepage is here:
    3DOSX Homepage [uiuc.edu]

    It is an interesting look into alternative ways of doing things.

  • Another Linux 3D file manager (Score:5, Informative)

    by Krunch ( 704330 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:15AM (#6951429) Homepage
    I just found another 3D File manager [icewalkers.com] for Linux. From the page:
    Quake style controls enable the user to navigate their file system.
    Yeah I can now frag my /mnt/windows directory.

    • Re:Another Linux 3D file manager (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nooface ( 526234 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:50AM (#6951557) Homepage
      My site [nooface.net] has been collecting 3D UIs for some time.

      Here are links to some of the 3DUIs that are available today:

      - FSN [sgi.com] (pronounced "fusion") produces a cyberspace rendering of a file system. This was the original 3D file system navigator shown in Jurassic Park [monash.edu.au] ("Hey, this is UNIX. I know this!").
      [Screenshot [monash.edu.au]] | [Download [sgi.com]] (IRIX)

      - FSV [sourceforge.net] is modelled after FSN, but runs on Linux. FSV lays out files and directories in 3D, geometrically representing the file system hierarchy to allow visual overview and analysis.
      [Screenshot [sourceforge.net]] | [Download [tucows.com]] (Linux)

      - Xcruise [nooface.com] lets you fly through a filesystem in 3D as if it were interplanetary space. Directories are represented as galaxies, files are represented as planets (whose mass is determined by the file size), and symbolic links are represented as wormholes.
      [Screenshot [titech.ac.jp]] | [Download [unixuser.org]] (Linux)

      - TDFSB [hgb-leipzig.de] is a 3D filesystem browser for Linux. Take a walk through your filesystem!
      [Screenshot [hgb-leipzig.de]] | [Download [hgb-leipzig.de]] (Linux)

      - Visual File System [nooface.com] is a 3D file system visualizer for Windows. The tool scans a drive selected by the user, and then models the contents of the drive in 3D, based on the directories that are selected in a tree browser on the side of the display.
      [Screenshot [manann.tng.de]] | [Download [manann.tng.de]] (Windows)

      - 3Dtop [nooface.com] is an extension for Windows that represents desktop icons in 3D, letting you to fly around your desktop. You can create coloured spotlights, background and floor textures, "paintings" (bitmaps), clocks, and "flags" that represent shortcuts.
      [Screenshot [3dtop.com]] | [Download [3dtop.com]] (Windows)

      - ROOMS [nooface.com] turns a Windows desktop into a 3D world. You can see the world either through a first person perspective or with a map view, and you can populate the world with sounds, animated images, and 3D icons.
      [Screenshot [rooms3d.com]] | [Download [rooms3d.com]] (Windows)

      - CubicEye [2ce.com] organizes windows into a navigable cube. Cubes can be arranged by thematic or functional subject matter, and can be explored either individually or collectively as part of a more comprehensive structure of multiple cubes representing various areas of interest.
      [Screenshot [2ce.com]] | [Download [2ce.com]] (Windows)

      - Vizible WorldViewer [vizible.com] distributes windows across the exterior and interior surfaces of spheres, providing the means to visualize and navigate large numbers of web pages and data sources simultaneously.
      [

    • Don't forget 3Dwm (Score:3, Interesting)

      by axxackall ( 579006 )
      3Dwm [3dwm.org] is the most promising to really alterate our human-computer interaction.

  • Link here... (Score:5, Informative)

    by watzinaneihm ( 627119 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:16AM (#6951433) Journal
    When it is an opensource product , it is bad manners not to give a bittorent link with a story posting. while Ican't do that either , here is an actual download [tuwien.ac.at] page ... Kinda slow

    • Re:Link here... (Score:3, Informative)

      by broeman ( 638571 )
      Just tried it (as he said later, remove the pdf in the link, and download 3dfm [tuwien.ac.at], configure, make, make install). It is quite nice done, pretty fast and a nice overview. It looks like most of the features already are done, and there is also preferences ... Since it compiled that easy, I will propose it to Gentoo.

  • Pretty-printing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ewn ( 538392 ) <ernst-udo.wallenborn@freenet.de> on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:17AM (#6951435) Homepage

    This is more pretty-printing than real innovation. They claim to arrange data by relation but the thing still knows active folders, parent folders and subfolders. And the color scheme (subfolders are blue) focuses on the hierarchical structure of the folders and not the relation of the data. So they took one way of organizing and presenting files that works for most people most of the time but has a few big shortcomings, pretty-printed it in a somewhat confusing way and added relational sugar that can only add to the confusion.

    Pretty, but not impressive.

  • No screen shots? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Awptimus Prime ( 695459 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:18AM (#6951440)

    Wait a minute.. Where are screenshots? How about a link to the project? I remember reading about 3D interfaces, getting excited, then seeing them and thinking 'oh crud'. I'd like to see the 'award winning' one, please.

    • Uhh read the article (click results) their's a small screen shot right their.
      • Thanks. I went straight to the 'results' site expecting a screen shot there.

        For others who didn't find it the first time, here's a decent shot:

        http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/301/5 63 9/1476/F1

        Doesn't look very practical, but I'm always negative.

  • That structure looks unwieldly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jea6 ( 117959 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:18AM (#6951444)
    One problem with this type of arrangement is that it requires thoughtful meta-description of all content (which scientists do but PHBs don't). What you have an interesting way of representing "degrees of separation", not a "triumph of Linux on the Desktop." The challenge ( http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/events/sevc/overview.htm [nsf.gov]) was:

    "This new international contest is designed to recognize outstanding achievements by scientists and engineers in the use of visual media to promote understanding of research results."

    So for the visual representation of linked data structure, sure this looks great. As a GUI, heck no. "File Manager" seems like a misnomer here.
  • i want to give this a go, can i download it , no links to official site or anything

  • Dock (Score:5, Insightful)

    by igabe ( 594295 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:19AM (#6951450) Homepage
    In Mac OS X you can set the dock to magnify the programs your mouse is over.

    This is how I am guessing this new 3D navigation works, by magnifying as you move around.

    I turned my dock's magnification off. :-) The fact that list view has been here for so long should say something. People like lists where everything looks the same. Having things pop up from unreadable sizes out of nowhere seems a little unnatural.

    I am inclined to say that the revolutionary idea that will change how we look at our computer desktop has not yet come.
    • Magnification

      Still stupid!

      I just imagine my self running like crazy over icons to find the right one.

      Best approach is still 2D

      I am inclined to say that the revolutionary idea that will change how we look at our computer desktop has not yet come.

      Yep, if this one was the best, I agree this year missed the point

      • Re:Dock (Score:4, Insightful)

        by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:45AM (#6951540)
        I think the magnification is meant to help by:

        1) Providing reinforcement - "if you click now, you'll do this thing here, the one that's all magnified and obvious now"
        2) Fitt's law - the button you're trying to click on gets bigger when you get near it, so it's easier to hit.

        • Re:Dock (Score:3, Interesting)

          by justsomebody ( 525308 )
          Sorry, my bad.

          After reading my post again I realised where the trouble is.

          What I ment was:
          With or without magnification this approach to file system is still stupid. I just can't imagine troubles people would have with 3D fs layout, when there's a lot of users that have problems with 2D, which is far more simpler to imagine than 3D.

          This representation is feasssible in some movie to produce high tech feeling, but in real life is unusable

        • Re:Dock (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Minna Kirai ( 624281 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @11:16AM (#6951882)
          1) Providing reinforcement
          Yes, it gives reinforcement. But there are other ways to do that- color change, make it bounce or vibrate, etc. But any change which alters the size of their area sensitive to mouse-clicks should be a big no-no.

          2) Fitt's law - the button you're trying to click on gets bigger when you get near it, so it's easier to hit.

          That doesn't really work... it's circular reasoning. After all, the computer doesn't know which button you want to hit. Some button gets bigger and easier, but not necessarily the right one. If it knew which button you wanted, it could be large all the time.

          Changing the size or position of GUI elements in response to mouse motion should generally be avoided (unless you've moved to a whole other paradigm than the regular "windows, buttons, and scrollbars" layout. OSX has made no drastic transition like that. Besides the Dock and Apple menu, it's all the same).

          The user should feel assured that moving the mouse doesn't do anything- only clicking (or drilling) it has an effect. The GUI should partially emulate a consistent, physical world- predictable cause/effect, etc.

  • WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by spoonist ( 32012 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:20AM (#6951452) Journal

    How is this [sciencemag.org] easier to use than this [konqueror.org]?

    I'm already storing data by topic. I use a concept commonly called "directories". For example, all my pr0n is held in the ~/pr0n directory all my tunes are held in the ~/Tunes directory and all my pictures are held in the ~/Pictures directory.

    I haven't looked at data based on physical location in eons. I used to read data sector by sector off floppy drives. Yeah, that did suck. Data wasn't necessarily organized by topic. But since the advent of filesystems, I've been able to organize by topic through use of these so-called "directories".

    • Re:WTF? (Score:2)

      by Cyno ( 85911 )
      Yep.

      Some people call them "folders" too.

    • Re:WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Minna Kirai ( 624281 )
      How is this easier to use than this?

      The picture you reference (the white and yellow boxes in a big circle) is a classic example of a computer algorithm mistake: naive connectivity graph generation.

      What happens is a programmer notices that some set of data has relationships between the elements, so he decides to draw them onscreen for the user as boxes connected by lines.

      But it turns out it can be quite tricky to construct a graph layout that'll be easy for a human to understand. You'd want to minimiz

  • Secret of Mana Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mister G ( 75589 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:20AM (#6951455) Homepage Journal
    Does this look like a souped up ring interface from the classic Secret of Mana published by Square-Enix (nee Square)?

    It does to me...

  • uh, why the excitement? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jpr1nd ( 678149 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @09:27AM (#6951480)
    i don't see the big hubbub... this is an illustration prize. no one said this is a useful or even remotely useable filemanager. The screen snapshot the team submitted from the program is "visually striking," says panel of judges member Boyce Rensberger. the judging was on how their screenshot looked as far as i can tell. the runners up were a watercolor painting of a macrophage and the cover of a book. whoopee, a pretty filemanager.

  • Practical 3D Operating System Apps (Score:3, Funny)

    by tony1c ( 610261 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @10:07AM (#6951602) Journal
    Very interesting. But I think that 3D OS management apps peaked with that mod where you could kill your processes by shooting them in Doom. Nothing since has even close...

  • Memory Palace of Simonides (Score:3, Interesting)

    by handy_vandal ( 606174 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @10:16AM (#6951637) Homepage Journal
    Summary of the competition principles, from the NSF web site [nsf.gov]:
    "Photographs, pictorial and diagrammatic illustrations, computer graphics, and animations are now an essential aspect of communicating research findings. These new avenues prompt discussion of different techniques, and encourage innovative approaches to visual communication. This competition was created to reward these new techniques and ways of communicating."
    It's interesting that the ancients were well aquainted with and made extensive use of similar principles of communication, in the form of mnemonic metaphors used by orators:
    "In the ancient Greek arts of rhetoric, memory was a science. The science has an origin in what is surely myth. The poet Simonides of Ceos was hired by the noble Scopas to attend a formal banquet as a paid performer, singing a poem of praise of his host. As was the custom, Simonides began by first praising a pair of gods. After the performance, Scopas informed the poet that he would only get half of the agreed-upon fee, the other half he should get from the gods who had stolen the limelight.


    "At that point, a messenger came in and told Simonides that a couple of athletic men on horseback were outside waiting for him. Simonides went outside, but nobody was there. But, while he was outside, the gods destroyed the banquet hall to teach Scopas a few lessons about respect. (The lessons being pay the poet; don't mess with the gods; and, memory palaces are a gift from above.)

    "The banquet hall was so badly destroyed that none of the diners could be recognized. Simonides was able to remember the exact location of every guest at the banquet, using the principles of the Method of Loci, the science of memory. Later, Cicero (106-43 B.C.) wrote a few pages on the science in his classic work, De Oratore. [See De Oratore, II. lxxxvi. 350- 353]. The definitive treatment in Greek literature, however, is the work of an unknown author previously attributed to Cicero in the classic work Ad Herennium.

    "The principles of the science are fairly simple, at least using our modern hindsight. A person who wished to memorize a large work, say an address after dinner or the closing argument of a legal proceeding, would begin by constructing a memory palace. While novices constructed a palace by going to a real one and memorizing the rooms, the memory palace could just as easily be any structure that can be imagined."

    Source: Mappa Mundi [mundi.net]
  • is what is a realistic expectation for when this could be usefully integrated with Mad Hatter from Sun (or croquet) and with a database filesystem (which I think is something Reiser is working on). I would LOVE to test to test out a 3D filesystem and 3D desktop environment and it sounds as if the pieces required are starting to reach usable development positions. If someone were to get them integrated together, we truely would have an instance of Linux leapfrogging MS in the Desktop environment.

  • Anyone remember the 7 year old kid grabbing the joystick looking at some 3D file manager like thingy in Jurassic Park I. Made me laugh and weap at the same time.
  • Yes....

    The data is arranged by its relationship with its content, rather than by its physical position on a hard drive or its file system.

    Well...
    *****DUH!!*****

    Please, dont mod this up..ppl get so aggravated

  • the 3d interface you love (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sniggly ( 216454 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @10:44AM (#6951760) Journal
    Lessons learned from gaming?

    One of the few 3d interfaces I love to use is the Homeworld / Homeworld2 [sierra.com] interface for rotating and zooming in space.

    The build & research manager in Homeworld is 2d though.

    For most types of data representations the 2d tree interface is ideal. Maybe we are far too used to it; we don't now really see what we can do with a 3d interface that we can't do just as efficiently as in 2d. Even in a lot of movies 3d is just an enhanced use of 2d displays.

    What we do most is deal with text. Text is very typically a 2d thing because its on paper or a representation of paper (slashdot textarea box). Text in 3d space... doesnt make sense. We'd have to learn a language of 3d space to understand references. Once we learn such a language it might be extremely efficient though, I guess time will tell.

  • Hee hee hee... (Score:2, Funny)

    by 8tim8 ( 623968 )
    Hee hee hee, they're playing right into my hands. Now to contact my lawyers and have them finish my patent for filesystems based on carnival rides. I just need to figure out how to initiate the shutdown process using less than ten balls...
  • I'm not sure about the "ferris wheel", but a lot of "3d" representations could be done in 2d, e.g. showing lines between folders and scaling according to focus or size of folders/ files...

  • Evolution's VFolders -- for file systems (Score:5, Informative)

    by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @11:33AM (#6951941) Homepage
    If you smiled, you probably get it and can skip the next paragraph.

    Data has to first be organized in a meaningful way; how it is displayed -- 3D, 2D, a list, ... -- is output not content. Get angry; In 0.21 seconds Google! can find just about anything on the planet, yet the local network or the computer in front of you may take hours of effort and asking people to pull out the one important detail you need at the moment. Personally, I've spent months attempting to get basic documentation on systems I'm working on...not because it doesn't exist, but because nobody knows where it is!

    Here are five ways to organize and retrieve data using computers;

    1. Manual; you put the data in one place and the computer holds it for you till you need it next.
    2. Search; you organize the data and run a query on a specific subset of all the data.
    3. Virtual; you run a query and save the specific query off as if it were the real thing (like Evolution's VFolder).
    4. Ad-hoc query; Do not spend much time to organize the data but spend more time on the query (like a search engine or Google!'s appliance).
    5. Automatic: Do not spend any time organizing or searching; specific data is already organized.

    Right now, file systems are handled by manual and basic search tools. (Minor frustration: Why doesn't Windows by default have something like the unix-style 'find -amin or -cmin'? Is it the tools or the file system?)

    The next step should be system-wide VFolders and unlimited Ad-hoc queries. To be truely valuable, the results should show up as real and potentially persistant objects not as fake tool-specific or GUI-only results.

    Unfortunately, in the name of 'ease of use' the Automatic structure that is tool-specific will probably become dominate in both Windows and MacOS...leading to more data being ignored and eventually lost.

    Gnome and KDE developers are moving in the right direction with virtual file systems (VFS, ioslave) though the device concept is specific to the UI or the supporting libraries and has no reality at the file or device level.

    • Really interesting stuff there. I remember reading about the GNU "Storage" filesystem and something like that would be quite useful.

      What I'd like is something like a CVS based filesystem; i.e., one that can automatically track changes to my documents/files/etc.. If I perform some upgrade and everything breaks, I could then retrieve a 'tagged' version of the OS. The same would apply to individual files; per-document versioning systems would be obsolete as the filesystem itself would take care of everything.
  • The "amusement park" interface metaphor could really be taken places if you start expaning your thinking! Why not a "log flume" like interface? Or themed versions, like "Pirates of the Carribean"? Or for true filesystem navigation thrills, roller-coaster interfaces: the Revolution! Shockwave! The Viper! Superman Ultimate Flight!

  • tab-completion 3d visual paradigms (Score:3, Insightful)

    by demo9orgon ( 156675 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @01:45PM (#6952620) Homepage
    As my cthonic(yet loving) wife often tells me, "Hey, -widgetx- is in the null-space accessed through a shimmering rift next to the Nth pan-dimensional eddy across from the lobed nodulus of Quron."

    I should be used to such amphormous replies but even with those concise instructions I'm as visually imparied by the wonderous layering of semi-solid and even obdurite objects in a visual world as any meat-monkey. Worse yet, unless there's some squirt of delicious abject horror from the object once I've cast my withering stare upon it, how am I going to pick it out of the mess? How would visualizing my otherwise concise access to stupid digital objects make my life easier? Intuitively I know the answer, it won't. Most computer users look at the whole visual 3d-paradigm file-system as the close cousin to "AI" that it is. I applaud such wise beings.

    Why anyone would want to visit some visual strucutre cluttered with the noise of everything including their target when they're looking for something like a script, "userthwack.pl", that's easily found by typing

    userth[TAB]

    in the appropriate folder at the command-line eludes me. Even the seething greed masters of Microsoft have begun their quest to sieze the glory of tab completion. What the image in the article reminds me of is an interface in some filthy Microsoft development package that presented circular tree diagrams that you could grab and sworl around. It was fun, but ultimately useless.

    Humanity is just smart enough to know when something works and stupid enough to think they need to twist that into something "visual" when it shouldn't be. The command-line requires the user to bring something to the table, namely a brain and some knowledge on how to use the available tools. We need to appreciate and value the knowledge we have as users and we should rail against anyone or anything determined to make us nothing more than button-monkeys. Yes, most of userspace is populated by eye-cattle button-monkeys, but that doesn't mean I want to be treated like that.

    When the machines are sophisticated enough to perform complex bio-electro-chemical analysis combined with adaptive filters that genetically shape their responses to the user in some kind of B.F.Skinner "wet-dream" of a causal negative-feedback loop associativity so that as a user approaches the machine the computer can seamlesly deliver exactly what the user wants (Porn, online-store, report a thought-criminal,share something) to do then a visual file-system is exactly what we should have.

    Until that day, the intelligent computer user will enjoy the command-line and fall-back to a GUI when it's the only offered means, and the veal will let their corporate masters mold and shape them into the banner-add pop-up eye-cattle button-monkeys they deserve to be.

  • If we were four-dimensional beings... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PurpleBob ( 63566 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @02:59PM (#6952942)
    then we could use a three-dimensional interface.

    The point of 2D is that you can see all of your viewing area at once, without stuff getting in the way, and you can interact with anything in your view, again without stuff getting in the way.

    There's a reason we play two-dimensional board games, and things like 3D Chess end up being simply awkward novelties.

    As 3D beings, we would have less control over a 3D system than we do over a 2D one.

    And then we come to this piece of crap interface which is getting an award for some reason. They could have put lists of "related files" (not like those are going to be useful; who ever navigated by the "What's Related" menu in Netscape anyway?) in a 2D list, and it would have been more functional than this big huge ferris wheel displayed on a 2D screen where most of the things end up being so far away that they're a couple of pixels in area.

    An interface in the physical meaning (the surface that divides two regions of space with different properties) can't possibly be 3D. An interface in the computer meaning, one between human space and information space, shouldn't be 3D either.

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