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No offence intended to thebrain.com, it's a very nice looking navigation system. (Similar to that found on the very cool Visual Thesaurus) However, it's functionality is really equivelent to that of those relatively simple expanding hyperlink menus you have been able to see on many sites for quite awhile. My old high school's website is the only example I can think of off the top of my head.

As for use of the forward button (or back for that matter), well, I wouldn't know - everything is a tab for me.

One interesting one is TouchGraph, best known for the google set vista.

Plumb Design also has the Visual Thesaurus, which is cool looking even if it's not really practical.

One interesting one is TouchGraph, best known for the google set vista.

Plumb Design also has the Visual Thesaurus, which is cool looking even if it's not really practical.

This reminds me of the Virtual Theasaurus. Seems like it's doing about the same thing, but it a much simpler way.

This has always been one of my favorite tools on the web. Not only is it pretty, it's also very, very useful.

I think we need to contract our focus here: in reading Gelerenter's manifesto, think about the UI rather than the underlying machines. What Gelerenter is proposing is a new way of interacting with the machines we have; a way of making human-machine interation more intuitive for the average user. To a user, accessing a document by asking for "that picture I took of my kids last sunday at the lake" rather than "kidpic.jpg" is as big a leap as asking for "kidpic.jpg" instead of "0:3:0x45FF3F2". What Gelerenter wants is a computer that's not a computer. He wants a computer that thinks for him, that sorts the files he inputs in a way that's closer to the way his mind sorts them than to the way his mind tells his filing cabinet to sort them. He wants to throw out a hierarchical structure in favor of a distributed structure based on content. When I try to see the type of organization that Gelerenter describes, I visualize something like a Visual Thesaurus, with directories being replaced by abstract nodes, eg "lake", "kids", "photos", and files being appropriately connected t o those nodes through their content. Yes, this can be achived through links and directories, but what Gelerenter wants is something to do it for him, something that will organize a filesystem for the average user. So despite all his anti-Linux hndwaving, what Gelerenter really wants isn't a whole new paradigm, but just a whole new UI. A UI that thinks for the user so that (s)he doesn't have to.

IMHO Whats needed is to get some real expertise in man-machine interfaces involved - I am sure there are a great number in the academic community ( psychology / human perception / cybernetics graduates and lecturers ) who I believe would be more than happy to give their input on taking the GUI in a whole new direction, and try and get away from the Desktop interface model entirely. The model in itself is/was good - but is limited when the information being used is no longer local or centralised, but distributed. An example of one of my favourite non - 2D / Desktop/Folder interfaces is the PLUMBDESIGN THESAURUS. It would be nice to see something more intuitive at a basic level than the desktop. Klik