The Next Computer Interface

BoarderPhreak was among the several readers who pointed out "an interesting article on the various alternatives to storing your files using a 'desktop' metaphor" at TechReview.com. "New styles like time-indexing, 3D sphere ala SGI's file manager, and even a 3D virtual 'task gallery' from Microsoft. Screenshots available in the article." All of these have been floating around for a while; hopefully soon some radically different interfaces will actually gain widespread acceptance.

Comments

Just one catch...

[Millennium]

In the end, the only way any of these are going to replace the desktop metaphor is if they can be shown to be better then the desktop. All of these fail at that task.

Although the idea of chronological storage is intriguing, and will work well for small groups of files, it breaks down completely once the user starts manipulating many files. This can be mitigated by storing them hierarchically, but this then ceases to offer much advantage over a desktop list view that's sorted reverse-chronologically by date.

3-D has two main disadvantages, both stemming from this notion of "space" as a way of managing files, as opposed to a flat "surface". The first is speed. Because there is more area (or, to be more accurate, volume) to navigate, the user has to spend more time looking for stuff. Second, as the article points out, things become easier to lose in 3-D space. You can alleviate some of this if you add the notion of "hallways" and "rooms" in which to organize things, but if you do, then you're still thinking in hierarchical terms, and that puts you right back on the Desktop.

Then, there's that funky sphere idea. Somewhat less of a problem than true 3-D, because you're still dealing with only one surface rather than a space Less easy to lose things. However, with all the spinning and zooming that you'd need to do, you lose speed, big time.

Microsoft's task-oriented stuff just doesn't work out. It's well-suited to carrying out actions, but not for organizing files. You just get dumped onto the Desktop.

It's true that the desktop metaphor has its flaws. In fact, truth be told, it's pretty bad. But it's like democracy in that regard: the only thing worse is everything else we've come up with so far.

Re:What I Use For General Navigation Stuff

[ewhac]

...I've been using The Brain, which treats documents, programs, shortcuts, program groups, etc as "thoughts" which you can link to any other thought. Pretty cool.

After looking through the site, it reminds me a bit of Ted Nelson's ZigZag, only with a much prettier user interface.

ZigZag basically lets you set up arbitrary "axes" of meaning and drop nodes on them. Any node can contain anything, and be a member of any number of axes. All axes are orthogonal to all other axes. The user interface lets you move along any axis from any node. Thus, information is locally coherent but, if you step back, it's a rat's nest.

For example, for organizing things on your computer, you might create an axis named "Games," and link Quake, Starcraft, and Solitaire to it. Solitaire is published by Micros~1, so you might also set up a Micros~1 axis, which contains Solitaire, IE, Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. Solitaire would be a member of both "Games" and "Micros~1", but not of the "Network-aware" axis, which would contain Quake, Starcraft, IE, Outlook, etc.

ZigZag is very primitive right now, but the concept is very intriguing. Written in Perl and runs under Linux. Check it out.

Schwab