Slashdot Mirror
Opencroquet
zymano writes "OSnews has some information about Opencroquet, a 3d operating system worked on by Alan Kay, who also is one of the inventors of Smalltalk, one of the fathers of object oriented programming, conceiver of the laptop computer, inventor of much of the modern windowing GUI. The OS is a 3D environment running through the Squeak environment on top of another operating system. It requires a supported 3D accelerator. Squeak is an interpreted language similar to Smalltalk. Could be ssslooooww. Way cool screenshot."
Summary
.
Croquet had the working name of Tea until recently. You will see many references to Tea in the system, in the code, and even in this document. Just
assume that when you see Tea, we mean Croquet.
Croquet was built to answer a simple question. If we were to create a new operating system and user interface knowing what we know today, how far
could we go. What kinds of decisions would we make that we might have been unable to even consider 20 or 30 years ago, when the current set of
operating systems were first created.
The landscape of possibilities has evolved tremendously in the last few years. Without a doubt, we can consider Moore's law and the Internet as the two
primary forces that are colliding like tectonic plates to create an enormous mountain range of possibilities. Since every existing OS was created when the
world around it was still quite flat, they were not designed to truly take advantage of the heights that we are now able to scale.
What is perhaps most remarkable about this particular question is that in answering it, we find that we are revisiting much of the work that was done in
the early sixties and seventies that ultimately led to the current successful architectures. One could say that that in reality, this question was asked long
ago, and the strength of the answer has successfully carried us for a quarter century. On the other hand, the current environments are really just the thin
veneer over what even long ago were seriously outmoded approaches to development and design. Most of the really good fundamental ideas that people
had were left on the cutting room floor.
That isn't to say that they thought of everything either. A great deal has happened in the last few decades that allows for some fundamentally new
approaches that could not have been considered at the time.
We are making a number of assumptions:
Hardware is fast - really fast, but other than for booting Windows or playing Quake no one cares - nor can they really use it. We want to take advantage
of this power curve to enable a richer experience.
3D Graphics hardware is really, really fast and getting much faster. This is great for games, but we would like to unlock the potential of this technology to
enhance the entire user experience.
Late bound languages have experienced a renaissance in both functionality and performance. Extreme late-bound systems like LISP and Smalltalk have
often been criticized as being too slow for many applications, especially those with stringent real-time demands. This is simply no longer the case, and as
Croquet demonstrates, world-class performance is quite achievable on these platforms.
Communication has become a central part of the computing experience, but it is still done through the narrowest of pipes, via email or letting someone
know that they have just been converted into chunks in Quake. We want to create a true collaboration environment, where the computer is not just a
world unto itself, but a meeting place for many people where ideas can be expressed, explored, and transferred.
Code is just another media type, and should be just as portable between systems. Late binding and component architectures allow for a valuable
encapsulation of behaviors that can be dynamically shared and exchanged.
The system should act as a virtual machine on top of any platform. We are not creating just another application that runs on top of Windows, or the
Macintosh - we are creating a Croquet Machine that is highly portable and happens to run bit-identical on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and ultimately on
its own hardware... anywhere we have a CPU and a graphics processor. Once the virtual machine has been ported, everything else follows; even the
bugs are the same. Most attempts at true multiplatform systems have turned out to be dangerous approximations (cf. Java) rather than the bit-identical
"mathematically guaranteed" ports that are required.
There are no boundaries in the system. We are creating an environment where anything can be created; everything can be modified, all in the 3D world.
There is no separate development environment, no user environment. It is all be the same thing. We can even change and author the worlds in
collaboration with others inside them while they are operating
The existing operating systems are like the castles that were owned by their respective Lords in the Middle Ages. They were the centers of power, a way
to control the population and threaten the competition. Sometimes, a particular Lord would become overpowering, and he would get to declare himself as
King. This was great for the King. And not to bad for the rest of the nobles, but in the end - technology progressed and people started blowing holes in
the sides of the castles. The castles were abandoned. Technology does this.
summary.html
teapot.jpeg
Croquet0.1.pdf
I grabbed the summary text and screenshot as well as the Croquet user manual in anticipation of /. effect.
Thank MrHOSTBOT for the free bandwidth.
Oh, and people seemed to be labeled "karma whore" just because they post useful (mirror) links, so I guess I'll stick to A.C. in order to please the masses.
Mom, mom. My game of HalfLife is running at half the speed on this OS. ;-)
That is because the desktop is up with full 3d-acceleration, fog, per pixel lightning, stencil shadows for under the text, realtime ratracer on the taskbar reflecting the desktop at a resolution of 1600x1200.
Oh, okey!
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
I guess I'll finally have to upgrade my 486
I hope he had good birthing hips... that sounds uncomfortable.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Since the article is slashdotted, this comment might come out as a RTFA comment, but anyway:
Is the 3D desktop meant to be a proof-of-concepts or a real product? If the system i slow due to this Squeak, perhaps it could be translated into somthing that compiles?
Maybe this is a about 3D _GUI_.
I hope Smalltalk will not be the only language you can use to write programs. I think it's cool, but there's no reason I shouldn't be able to use other programming languages I know.
a pdf containing all information inclusive screenshots
I've worked with some ppl from Cincom (shouts to Peter if you're still working there), and they do tons of Small Talk applications.
This stuff is kind of addicting once you get into it, it is very radically different and just a strange concept when thinking about what we're used to.
Squeak is like a living organism of an application. It just sort of evolves as you use it, giving it tons of capabilities and flexibility.
The whole thing is wrapped around really little messages being sent around and everything being just in time / real time.
Definately look up squeak and give it a try.
Bob
(all this praise from a Perl nut even)
If the website load time is any indication of the OS run-time, I think I'll stick with a 2-D interface. My question is why not just a 3-D Xwindows interface? Or just a 3-D desktop environment? If the OS is 3-D, does that mean that the kernel is 3D, or just the GUI?
-ad105
Hmm, the main link was slashdotted, so I tried the OS's website http://www.opencroquet.org. Maybe they should change their main graphic to the "Way Cool screenshot" rather than the Monet looking Croquet game they have going on right now. They might garner a bit more interest.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Here's the screenshot
It's not too spectacular, if you ask me.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
How is croquet worse than the name windows? One is a nice solid club you can whack people with, the other is a piece of glass that breaks easily... oh wait, maybe windows fits perfectly!
I could well be missing something here - read the site and the article though, so at least I made an effort :)
What license is this code being developed under? It's called OPENCroquet, so presumably it's some kind of Open Source, but what flavour? Is it, in fact, Open at all?
I ask cos it looks interesting and I wanna play :)
P
I think I'd rather wait til we can have genuine 3d displays for this sort of thing...then this would be okay. But I think it isn't too good looking, and I've seen other programs that simply open up over the standard windows shell, and they look about the same as far as capabilities.
Insert witty Wicket joke here.
And what happens if two Croquet machines have packet collisions? Which one gets to make the croquet shot?
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
"Way cool screenshot."
That sort of link is red rag to a bull...
Slashdotted already...
Ceci n'est pas une
The OS is a 3D environment running through the Squeak environment on top of another operating system.
OK, I didn't RTFA, but...if it runs on top of another OS, it can't really be called an OS itself, can it? I mean, win95 jokes aside, isn't it just a fancy GUI then?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
If I am reading this correctly, they have made a 3D OS. Does anybody else here feel that, we (as a community) are putting way to much emphasis on the those two little characters 3 and D?
Couldn't we be spending our time trying to figure out how to make an easier to use, less complex OS? Something that isn't scary to people who have no idea how to use computers. Perhaps then we would see what a computer revolution would be all about.
Or maybe we could spend the time figuring out how to make computers more secure, so people wouldn't be afraid to put private info on it. Thus making it so that people are more likely to use them for everyday purposes.
But, no we decide we want to go 3D.
Makes you think, does the geek community really want computers to be used by everyone? Or do that want something only they themselves can understand?
Don't mod me down because you dissagree, if you disagree make a good argument about it.
Just my humble opinion,
SirLantos
The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
Like smalltalk. Early 70s, IIRC. The problem of managing increasing software complexity, which object orientation (partly) solved, became significant only much later.
I don't think 3d enviromnents are an idea whose time has come. Slowness is only part of the problem. We really don't have the software infrastructure to scale UI complexity to those levels. Maybe for special applications, but not as a general UI design paradigm.
Certainly futuristic."Hardware is fast - really fast, but other than for booting Windows or playing Quake no one cares - nor can they really use it. We want to take advantage of this power curve to enable a richer experience."
Does anyone else here read this as 'expanding the software to fill the available space (CPU-cycles & memory bandwidth)'?
Instead of focusing on enabling 'a richer experience' let us focus first on what is wrong with the current 'solutions' we're using and realize that 'doing more with less' is more than just common sense.
Don't tell me you really think that an OS like Win2k/XP or *NIX/*BSD is the 'be all, end all' of running software on a computersystem. Heck, over 10 years we'll simply laugh at those archaic things we're using (including countless hardware devices), much like we look back at using punch cards.
In other words, nothing to see here. Wait until we realize the mistakes we've been making and start from scratch again.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
<table>
spacer row...
content...
spacer...
Flash is not crap. Just most people using it relegate it to stupid intro movies. It allows the developer to create a completely self contained application, free of the shackles of the HTML dinosaur.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
It's cool to see Smalltalk getting noticed, but the misconceptions continue to run amok. Smalltalk is not typically interpreted - like Java, it's a JIT'ed language. The major commercial versions all use a JIT, and there's an experimental one for Squeak around - check the Squeak home page at http://www.squeak.org If you are curious about the commercial implementations - all of which have free downloads - check out this site: http://www.whysmalltalk.com
Talk Small and Carry a Big Class Library
Now we can enjoy the thrill of croquet, even on rainy days or in winter. I can't get to the website, because it's slashdotted, but it sounds almost as exciting as Championship Bass Fishing. Will there be a linux version?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
While I've never used a 3D GUI (other than Quake), the problem I perceive from the outside looking in (so to speak) is that a 15 inch, 19 inch, or even 24 inch computer monitor is an awfully narrow window through which to view the world. My eyes can flit about the physical 3D space of my office quite quickly, but if the virtual 3D space I want to view is larger than my screen, I can't move my eyes beyond the screen edge without using my hands.
Until this problem is overcome, either with giant screens, head-mounted displays, or some bizarre gesture-controlled scrolling (like head tilts), I can't see 3D GUIs becoming more than a curiosity because they consume too much 2D screen space without giving enough virtual space back.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
But raw execution speed isn't all that counts. Because Squeak has everything in one address space (unlike Gnome/KDE) and doesn't need to load anything on the fly (unlike Java), it's actually very responsive and uses comparatively little memory.
I don't think Squeak or anything based on it is going to replace mainstream desktops now or in the future. But it is an interesting platform for experimentation. It's also historically interesting because you can see the kinds of environments people already had available in 1980 (Smalltalk-80 is contained in Squeak).
That's really all I want to know. Why? The screen shot doesn't show me any compelling reason to want a 3d desktop and I've never seen any 3d desktop's that offer anything that will help me to increase my productivity.
So again my question is, why? Why is this a good idea?
All the best,
--Bob
Of course the phrase "3d Operating System" is a non-sequitur in the first place. But then again, are they developing an OS at all?
OK, so it's not even remotely an OS - just yet another attempt at a useful 3d GUI which could conceivably one day run on specialized hardware. Just like a lisp machine (except 3d graphics somehow play into it?) Woohoo! You can hack the OS while you write a letter to grandma! No pesky memory protection, no cumbersome file permissions! I'm freeeeee! Hey, stop reading my email!why are people so opposed to Flash on the net? Are they equally resentful that images have "invaded" their text-only HTML world? My website uses tables ... how evil am *I*?
I mean, if you have a legitimate complaint (crashes your browser) or something, then that's fine, but I'm getting a little sick of people who consistently respond with knee-jerk negativity against anything remotely commercial, regardless of how useful and innovative it may be.
It's 2003. You don't still drive 30 mph in a '55 Chevy, why would you be so resistent to modern browser plugins?
Anyway, personally I'm glad that OS research is finally turning to the 3D realm. It only seems like the next natural progression in computer environments.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Interesting idea, and I hope companies continue to test where they can go next with machine abstraction layers, but so far I'm not sold.
--madgeorge
I don't get it...
So you can "shrink" windows by increasing the "distance" to them? But you can resize windows already...
So you can layer the windows on top of each other? You can do that already -- with transparency too, if that's preferred...
Why use a 3D OS? Do you actually work faster in it, or what?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
A window that constantly moving away from you
A window that is always behind you
A spherical window
Makes all your windows bounce off each other in a low gravity environment
Actually, these all sound kind of cool.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
You still get windows behind windows, and windows far in the distance are only useful for images, not text. Then again, I can't read the article until it is available. Must be a 3D web server.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Flash as navigation? It allows you to completely destroy the usability of the site. Middle click to open in a new window? Gone. Right click to select "open in new tab"? Gone. Tab through links? Gone (or possibly there if somebody using flash has a clue, unlikely). Typeahead finding a link? Gone.
The reason people like flash for things like navigation is because they want to reimplement the interface. This is almost certainly a terrible idea from the perspective of most websites, and for most users.
It is also not supported by any search engines, so good luck having your site indexed (unless you provide a fallback, most flash developers don't even know how to do this).
Control is a four-letter word in the mouth of a web author. I don't want you to control my interface. I want to view your site how I wish. All the w3c technologies allow this, why can't flash?
I think you mean <link rel="stylesheet" ...>
Great. But basic navigation through a normal website isn't an application. Even if it was, I'd expect it to work like all my other applications.
Maybe, but bearing in mind we currently have multiple gigahertz computers, most of the 3D graphics is dealt with by hardware, and interpreters are usually at worst only 20x slower (at the very worst), this means that your program will run as slow as machine code did about 4 years ago; but the graphics will go at full speed. I'll think I'll survive.
Also, Java is "interpreted" (actually it's typically a JIT, but it behaves like an interpreter), and that's currently about half the speed of optimised C or there abouts.
Also, check out dynamo, which is a machine code interpreter that interprets the same machine code as the machine it runs on somewhat faster than the microprocessor executes it (atleast about half the time anyway). It actually performs run time optimisation like code rearrangement and stuff, it's very clever.
Anyway, interpreters are not always slow; and they are usually plenty fast enough in practice.
I think quite a lot of FPS games have interpreters in them anyway to run the game code.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I waited and waited for the screenshot to load and finally it did. I guess I expected more than transparancy tricks in the window borders. It's great that it compiles on a good number of platforms, but I don't think it's quite enough to make the masses switch.
Honestly, it reminds me of the windows alternate shell, LiteStep which also plays transparancy tricks and lives on top of another os, giving a customizable look and feel not available with the host OS. Honestly I'm surprised nobody's made this point yet.
-= Why can't I add 'Anonymous Coward' to my list of Foes? =-
And visitors care because?
People visit websites for *content* and *information*, not to drool over pixel-accurate navigation bars.
The least they could have done is making a HTML navigation bar for those who don't want/have Flash installed. But they don't even do that.
This is just Flash abuse, period.
When you put a high resolution screenshot on a server named "Minnow" you should expect nothing less
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Oh, I have no problem with the concept of flash. I think that it's great that web designers have a tool like that, to provide nifty animations.
Personally, I just find it annoying and distracting, so, even though I've heard it's now possible to get a plugin for linux/mozilla, I haven't bothered. I have java turned off for the same reason, even though I make a living coding it.
The reason I complain is that (as I mentioned) they make it a requirement, in order to access the site's navigation panel. Even with 77% penetration, that means 23% of visitors will be unable to do anything except stare at the index page (which contains only a meaningless image).
Even when you're using a relatively reliable technology like images in an integral area of the site, it's standard practice to provide an alterative for those who can't or won't see them (hence the "alt" attribute).
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
Since the screenshot is slashdotted,the image on the left I presume is the screenshot (although a little small and hard to see) Small google cache of screen shot
I am not going to try to speak for anyone else, but I know that I prefer websites stick to standards. It's reassuring to know that a page I view from home can also be viewed at work, where flash is not installed. Flash creates an enormous hassle for people who do not/can not use it, web pages with missing segments, and vital information missing. That's why there are standards, so that everyone will get the same information. That's the best explanation I can provide to you on the negative view of Flash in the browser realm.
Flash is virtually ubiquitous (77% browser penetration...)
In other words, using flash eliminates 23% of your potential audience. Not to mention that the statistics in reference probably came from a sample size of 2,000 or so, and with over 507 million internet users, i would hardly consider 2,000 representative. (The number 2,000 came from the macromedia page where they explain the browser survey)
There is a cross-plaform vector-based (3D) network aware GUI project underway, written in C and C++ and using OpenGL called Fresco. It's still in early development, but it has a couple of demos you can run.
Stick Men
I do agree with you on most of this. I do get annoyed when I'm wanting to check many aspects of a site, and have to open them left click style one by one. But there are instances where I feel it's ok for people to use Flash navigation, if they're providing a site with little important information you need, but a gimmick or portfolio style effect.
Holy shit, he must be the most hated man in the whole of computing! If I was him I'd be laying low.
I don't have flash, I cant'navigate.
The fact is you can travel NOW with a Ford T in any street.
I'm from Argentina: Tango, Asado, Mate, Gaucho, Maradona, YPF
Does flash allow people with disabilities to easily browse the web? only since version MX and I doubt everyone is using that yet.
As far as I see it, it's very simple: 2D screen, 2D pointer = 2D interface. That's the best construct as this is hardware-limited.
Likewise, 3D interface = 3D display + 3D pointer. It's no good doing a 2.5D interface.
I keep an avid watch on new interface developments, but I note with some alarm these screenshots that pop up. Alan Kay is a genius, safe to say, as is Jef Raskin. However, having a look at a screenshot for Croquet, or worse, THE, is a distinctly underwhelming sensation. THE in particular looks particularly un-humane. I understand all the theory - it just doesn't seem to pan out on first impressions.
The ideal future interface will be a successful blending of the old-school methods with some radical rethinking. We can't toss things like toolbars just yet, as there is a whole world of commerical apps that will need to be at least a little similar in operation.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Ripped straight off the side bar :
Will 3D user interfaces ever take off? With ever-growing 3D processing capabilities available on standard PC hardware, it seems only natural to pursue UI directions that take advantage of this awesome power. Moreover, the generation of users now emerging has had access to video games for as long as they could remember. As the line between video games and PCs becomes blurrier, the time may have come to think about how to apply 3D visualization techniques for more day-to-day computing tasks.
Here are links to some of the 3DUIs that are available today:
- FSN (pronounced "fusion") produces a cyberspace rendering of a file system. This was the original 3D file system navigator shown in Jurassic Park ("Hey, this is UNIX. I know this!").
[Screenshot] | [Download] (IRIX)
- FSV 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] | [Download] (Linux)
- Xcruise 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] | [Download] (Linux)
- TDFSB is a 3D filesystem browser for Linux. Take a walk through your filesystem!
[Screenshot] | [Download] (Linux)
- Visual File System 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] | [Download] (Windows)
- 3Dtop 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] | [Download] (Windows)
- ROOMS 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] | [Download] (Windows)
- CubicEye 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] | [Download] (Windows)
- Vizible WorldViewer 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.
[Screenshot]
I like the idea of this but what they say worried me;
"There are no boundaries in the system. We are creating an environment where anything can be created; everything can be modified, all in the 3D world. There is no separate development environment, no user environment. It is all be the same thing. We can even change and author the worlds in collaboration with others inside them while they are operating"
You damn well better have your security architecture sorted or Outlook would look robust by comparison. Imagine what a virus could do in a system like this.
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
Wrong. Some highways in Quebec have a minimum speed limit of 80 km/h (50 mph). The Model T's top speed is 72 km/h (45 mph), ergo, you cannot drive it on some Quebec highways.
Also, even though you could drive it on some modern roads, it would not be without causing headaches to both yourself and other motorists, due to your low speed. Analogously, you can browse that website without Flash, you're just missing out on some of the content. You saw the screenshot, didn't you? (Assuming you got there before it was Slashdotted into oblivion)?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I tried this when it was announced on nooface.com a few months ago... at that time when I tried to run it the Squeak window came up but the app itself bombed. I tried and tried and couldn't even get the shell to run. I think this project has a long ways to go before it's even at the "experimental" stage. I think 3dwm is farther along at least in try-ability, but good luck to them.
Swedish radio sent an interview with Alan Kay today. The interviewer tells him that he could have been Bill Gates and Kay responds with "But Bill Gates doesn't know anything important about computers so who'd want to be him?".
Link to real audio clip (click on "Lyssna" and go to the end of the file). The interview is about what he did at Xerox.
Squeak is an interpreted language similar to Smalltalk. Could be ssslooooww
Good grief, we just don't know what to do with all the cycles we have these days. We really don't. Windows runs at the same speed at 500MHz as it does at 3GHz. The video hardware is doing more work than the processor. Smalltalk being slow is a red herring. There will always be someone, when we have 500GHz processors, saying that all Perl scripts should be rewritten in C to make them faster.
What we have here is a failure to communicate /.) /.) Sort of like a one eyed smiling guy in a beret, like the French poets wear : I guess it can mean 'Oui mon dieu, my server surrenders!'
... be able to close it down when you needed to do some number crunching ... that would be sweet.
... but you forgot the most important one (pr0n).
Hmmm - I made a new emoticon
Anyways, if I had to vote (and no, they didn't call me to ask my opinion) I would vote to have my actual processes run faster and my UI be uglier, than to have a virtual C.Zeta Jones walking around on the other side of the glass bringing me the files I requested, drop one halfway back from the 'library' and bend over at the waist to pick it up, then lean over when handing them to me to give a good look down her blouse.
Hmmm. Scratch that. How about we get to pick at boot time : CUI interface when we need raw computational power, and the Metaverse / Library UI when we are doing regular work. Maybe be able to start the GUI processing by typing StartX at the command line
Pretty cool idea, combines most of the important things that have been the driving forces behind generations of advancements in software / hardware
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
In all non-trolling seriousness, this kind of thing puts all the didling "innovation" in desktop environments, and all the bickering between KDE and Gnome, into sharp perspective. Gotta give Mr. Kay credit for being focused on action and not just talking himself up.
The highways are made for speed, not for provide a way to go from place to place. you still must have a way to travel.
I think the idea of a web site is to provide content to the people, if you limit the audiense (don't know haw to say in english) gratis, you are making mistakes.
all I want it's a way to navigate in the site. may be an alternate content (very simple, just the link) for the people who don't have Falsh, or images.
I saw the screenshot from a mirror post in the history.
I'm from Argentina: Tango, Asado, Mate, Gaucho, Maradona, YPF
There are a few things that seem wrong with this system from looking at the acrobat... Perhaps the designers should take some tips from the 3D game worlds that exist today as experiments in navigation / segmentation. First off, STRAFING is much easier than TURNING when in tight situations. I'm very surprised that it isn't the default action for moving the mouse, but the acrobat lists no modifier key for strafing at all. Without strafing, you're steering, not walking. Second, a built-up landscape would allow for both very natural and very memorable placements. Photos could go in an art gallery space, players could spawn on a pedastal, MP3's in the downstairs den, etc. This would also allow for very natural access control metaphors. The Root user very literally could have the key to the power shed. Third, the program is not really 3D yet. The maps displayed are all 2D+, ala Wolfenstein. It would be easier from a human perspective to have multiple "floors" for various purposes, such as a work floor, a relaxation floor, a dusty old storage floor, etc.
It does appear that some of the above is being worked on. However, the current space metaphor owes a lot more to, well, wolfenstein than Descent (which offered full, true 3D movement).
One final observation... As the window was built up from the command line, so too is the world space being built up from the window.
I can't wait until this is good enough for Microsoft to steal.
The ______ Agenda
It seems to be impossible, or at least very difficult, to embed content in Flash.
:)
That is the conclusion I have reluctantly reached after careful observation of thousands of pages using Flash. I suspect that this isn't what Macromedia had in mind, but it seems to be the unfortunate case.
As such, I can only conclude that there is something wrong with Flash -- surely all the people who develop pages that use it aren't alergic to generating actual content.
scottwimer
-- Intrusion prevention for Linux servers. www.cylant.com
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
A lot of people are extrapolating from the statement about speed sans a 3D accelerator that Squeak itself is slow. Not the case. Squeak isn't interpreted, it's bytecode compiled, and the VM is quite well done. I regularily run Squeak on machines which, by today's standards are pretty slow- 75 MHz MIPS, 206 MHz StrongARM, and a 350 MHz K6-2. To me, these machines are still pretty fast and useful, Squeak making them even more so.
Squeak has two different GUI systems which you can use- Morphic and MVC. MVC is the "original WIMP," the first ever GUI system. It has deviated a bit from what came out of Xerox almost 30 years ago, but it has the same API and most of the same source code. It has Mac-like window decorations instead of the BeOS-like tabs now a days. MVC is a lot faster than Morphic for a number of reasons. It is what I will use on the slowest of the machines I use for Squeak (75 MHz). A number of GUI APIs have been modeled after MVC over the years, including Swing (MVC is much faster, don't get me wrong!) and Cocoa AppKit.
Morphic is what most folks use when they are running Squeak. It has a really cool programming model- applications can be built programmatically, with a GUI builder, or by directly manipulating the Morphs (graphical objects). A common example is the Rolodex- you can make on in Squeak without writing a line of code, just drag some Morphs around, make a few menu decisions, and there you go.
Morphic is slower than MVC, but you get what you pay for (computationally!). It is still quite usably fast on a 350 MHz K6-2 (~300 MHz PII), however.
I have not tried Croquet yet. There has been a lot of talk on the Squeak list about it, but in all honesty, 3D worlds aren't really my thing. People have been talking about the 90 MB download- most of that is media. A standard Squeak download is around 10-15 MB for the latest version, including a lot of useful classes and applications. Out-of-box memory footprint is 20 MB or so, but if you trim what you don't need, you can easily end up with a 1-3 MB image and a 2-4 MB memory footprint. This ain't Java, folks.
I am a bit of an oddity, even within the Squeak community. I use Squeak *as* my OS, my computing environment. One could think of it rather like Emacs- a lot of applications [1] are written for it, and it is readily modifiable, so that the environment works like you want it to. Don't like the way Squeak manages windows? Make a couple small changes to a few small methods. I was once a Linux user trying to do just this to my environment, making tweaks to the WM, and it was way more work than it should be. You can imagine how excited I was when I came across Squeak- the entire system is written in Smalltalk, making changes pretty easy, no matter what part of the system they affect.
[1] There are a number of applications written in Squeak. Most new apps are written for Morphic (rather than the older MVC). These apps include: two different forms of handwriting/gesture recognition, a simple web browser, a pretty good email client (although POP only), a couple IRC clients, a bunch of games, an vt100 terminal for use as an xterm or telnet client, all of the programming tools for writing Smalltalk, and more.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
A croquet is a snack here in the Netherlands.(in old official spelling, nowadays it's spelled kroket)
;)
Tasty indeed
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein
Because it's annoying and tedious (oh, yes, I'm sure your flash animation was interesting the first time, by the 23rd it's lost something).
Plus, it adds zero utility to most sites while reducing it for many people.
You don't still drive 30 mph in a '55 Chevy, why would you be so resistent to modern browser plugins?
No, it's CRAP plugins I'm resistant to.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
It is a good idea, but I think that instead of creating a whole new way to interact with the computer in 3 dimensions, we should instead spend our time and efforts on creating a 2d user interface which is more advanced. We need to start from scratch with a new 2d gui, not a 3d gui. Besides, the stuff in Minority Report was cool. When can we get to that stage?
Wow, you really don't understand the first thing about sample sizes do you?
Here's some data, assuming the population of web surfers is 507 million users:
With a sample size of 2000, you can be 95% sure the results are accurate to +-1.84%. You can be 99% sure that the results are accurate to 2.43%.
The fact of the matter is, the required sample size required to get an accurate result does not go up linearly. Probability has proven that population size is mostly irrelevant when it's this large.
And, in response to your statement about Flash denying the content to 23% of the user base, if we don't introduce new technology to the web somehow, nothing will ever evolve. Frankly, I find the idea of giving up on innovation for the sake of compatibility to be asinine. Go ahead and innovate, if your product is good enough, people will become compatible. If not, the fact your product is incompatible with existing technology will cause it to die all the faster.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
Microsoft Bob?
It sounded really nice in the description, but when I RTFA (or at least looked at the pretty pictures) I had horrible flashbacks of MS Bob.
The interface of this "OS" (It's not really an Operating System, it's more of a graphical environment) can only be kludgy. Imagine actually trying to navigate in this 3d environment. In order to get to different things you have navigate through "portals" and such like that.
I'm sorry, but this will never be practical for anything. Everyone's just going to just keep the current gui system because navigating it is a lot easier than trying to navigate a 3d environment. (I can already see the thousands of geeks frantically running about crying, "now where did I put my pr0n again?")
Download the pdf, look at the pretty pictures (saying "ooooo" and "ahhh" where appropriate) and move on.
Director's Lingo is interpreted from a token stream, From what I understand, a lot of Java is as well. These languagesw have been "fast enough" for years now.
On today's computers, I'm sure this language will be fast enough.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I'm not a huge fan of traditional multidesktop environments because they're too geographically distinct -- I have to "switch" between them, and that involves an annoying redraw penalty as well as a mental "reset" to refamiliarize myself with that environment.
I'm not sure get the 3D UI completely, but what would make sense to me would be putting the user inside of a many-sided polygon container. Each interior face of the sphere would be a typical desktop. The controls for the GUI would enable zooming out to see multiple faces/desktops simultaneously, as well as the ability to pan over desktops, in addition to being able to "lock" onto a desktop. Windows could be moved between desktops all-at-once, or dragged if you were panned over them.
It would have interesting multimonitor potential, as well -- the monitors could be assigned as geographically adjacent so that they showed adjacent polygonal surfaces/desktops, the polygonal surface could be sized to the combined monitor resolution or the monitors could be 'detatched' so that they showed different views (perhaps one zoomed out, one locked).
I don't think this would be that hard to implement, either (disclaimer: not a developer), since it wouldn't involve changes in the base GUI, just in the way that desktops as a whole are presented and navigated.
A 3D desktop environment could change the paradigm of human-computer interaction, and it is a worthy concept to be researched. However, I would like to see more research put into the actual devices with which I communicate to my computer.
The mouse is a wonderful device for a simple 2D environment, where all I want to do is select objects and move objects horizontally or vertically. Beyond that, it is crap.
Voice recognition might one day get to the point where I rarely use my keyboard, except when in a cubicle environment or when programming.
But I haven't seen the next generation of human interaction devices, and I don't even know exactly what I think they should be. I just know that the mouse will eventually be inadequate. The only truly exciting device I've seen recently was a force-feedback glove that let me select objects (round basket-ball type things) in very, very simple 3D environment.
How much information can the human mind handle before the datum become just noise?
I recall reading or seeing on TV once interviews with fighter jet pilots from the Korean War, and they were complaning to the engineers that there were too many audio alerts that were distracting them from doing their job, and could they put an off switch somewhere for those alerts?
I can see the same thing with the interface- how much data do we need to bombard ourselves with? The human mind can only subdivid our attention to so many tasks at once (I think the limit is 4 or 5).
I certainly can see places where moving into the 3rd dimention would help, but I see those as specialized tasks, not writing a letter or reading email.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
allows for absolute positioning and control
People that tries to have absolute positioning and control on websites will be among the first against the wall when I take over the world.
The whole point about html is that the layout is dynamic, adapting to what is's viewed on. The "this page best viewed at 800x600 with a huge border on 1600x1200 or scoll at the bottom at 640x480" pages are made by amateurs. Possibly former members of the printing industry that can't grasp the consept that they have no control over the size of the screen the site will be presented on
These days it seems that everybody is more interested in making stuff that looks good than in providing content with any value. And they can't understand that what looks good on their monitor might look crap in another resolution. And when they discover it they're too lazy to fix the mistakes and just say "But you're supposed to use foo x bar when you visit the site".
I've finished ranting now, thank's for listening
- We are the slashdot. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be moderated -
I did have one problem with an inefficiency with Squeak dictionary (i.e., hash table) objects, but that is independent of the compiler. (VisualWorks Smalltalk, BTW, does not have this problem with dictionaries.) Anyway, since the source code to all of Squeak is available inside the Squeak programming environment, individual problems can be fixed.
Squeak is a great open source platform, with a license that lets you use it for just about any purpose. Check out www.squeak.org.
-Mark
I dont like how flash abstracts out by NOT letting you see the URL. That reason alone turns me against FLASH.
First poster says Smalltalk is no longer slow and that Java is "dangerous", but fairly recent testing showed the truth:
Math: 20x-300x slower than C or Java.
Method calls: 5x slower.
Overall overhead from OO is at least 10x for Smalltalk over C++ (there are a LOT more messages/method calls and almost none are inlined). Also since everything is a 'live' object when people screw up their desktop they have to do the moral equivalent of reinstalling the OS.
this is just a change on how we present the information to the user, but what I would like to see is more work on how to improve (probably somplete redesign) we way we work with computers.
I get the feeling we still use the same methods we have for the last 20 years. The only improvment is the GUI.
What about getting the computers to do what we need them to do?
How is information stored/indexed/searched?
Wht the complexity to the user?
Why the featurebloat in almost every software?
Why not more modular design of software and OS?`
What progress are being made in these areas?
who shot the cat in the hat to experiment is insane
Good lord, does this look terrible. That screenshot makes me want to run and hide.
i ty-Sucks thing, just like early Linux distros.
Why? Because it slows any kind of navigation to a screeching halt.
Because it doesn't make sense that you will have to "walk around" or "fly" in some fashion inside a 3d space just because you want to open a web browser, open a spreadsheet, or do basically anything with any sort of timeliness.
Sure it's got that cool Minority Report feel. But inside a 17" or 15" screen? Sure we have 19"+, but mainstream America is still using 15"-ers by and large. This is a problem with this "solution."
3D Desktops just are not usable right now. This guy is way ahead of his time. I'll give him that. I respect all of his prior work. And the groundings for this system have to start somewhere.
But until it gets practical, until our desktop expands away from the flatscreen and the CRT (whether it be a wall-projection or cool goggles, who knows), this will be one of those I'm-Running-This-Because-It's-Cool-But-The-Usabil
Remember those early WM's? Take a look at Redhat 5.2 sometime and prepare to cringe.
That's the exact same effect this will bring in about 5 years.
If anyone wants to look at another "3D operating system" (okay, platform) then take a look at Muse. Shared virtual, media rich (movies, web, audio) environments coupled with an extensive SDK and developer community that allows users to create their own "worlds" and 3D applications. Way cooler :) screen shots here and here.
Translation: He's one of the guys who innovates. Not to be confused with one of the mega-corporations that gets rich from his ideas.
I mean, he may make a good living, but he's certainly not in Bill Gates' territory, financially, and yet he is one of the true innovators. Sad.
Flash as navigation? It allows you to completely destroy the usability of the site. Middle click to open in a new window? Gone. Right click to select "open in new tab"? Gone. Tab through links? Gone (or possibly there if somebody using flash has a clue, unlikely). Typeahead finding a link? Gone.
You're right, but for a particular instance. See, I suspect you are a technical person (coder, engineer, or possibly researcher, or all 3. whatever). You spend a great deal of time searching on the web, which is what a lot of people do. You like your standard tools for searching and arranging your information. Flash sites disable many of these tools.
Problem with this is, that Flash site should either A) not exist as a Flash site, or B) you're forcing a site to do what it doesn't want to do.
A Flash site with its own interface is just dandy for certain applications, mostly those having to do with marketing, or presentation, or conceptual visualization. Remember that Flash is just a clever animation, like Director was; it is essentially linear, with stops-and-starts, and GOTOs.
Besides, I would argue that I have found at least as many HTML sites abusing JavaScript and bad design in their navigation as Flash sites. Flash just has the capacity to do more damage. The pwoer of Flash is not a flaw.
When I have a client that tells me they want a specific font, and sound effects, and a 3d spin-around of their new shoe (for example), I say Flash every time. It's the best choice. It's a commerical, a glossy interactive brochure. It can look like any damn thing it wants.
If it was a site for weekend trips, for example, thats a PHP site with little Flash demos that launch in windows. That way you get Flash presentations (what its meant for), with searchable, right-clickable, parsable HTML content in the right framework.
My point is, don't blame the tech, and don't blame Flash for crappy navigation. It has it's place; it belongs in exploratory interfaces, not useful ones. This is of course not to say that exploratory != useful, but in situations where one wants to immerse themselves and casually browse a rich experience with sound, the right fonts, and a generally superior (depending...) experience, Flash is great.
If its something like Slashdot, or the Beeb, or SourceForge (heh, can you imagine?).. not so much.
Oh by the way, indexing is not a problem. And stylesheets, as cool as they are, cannot compete with absolute sub-pixel vector positioning. Not to mention, as a web designer, I have far less problems debugging a Flash site between browsers, as the plug-in is more consistent than the HTML engine.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
A 3D navigatable desktop? I thought VRML died for a reason?
The screenshot is officailly Slashdotted. Anyone have a mirror of it to link up?
why are people so opposed to Flash on the net?
Ask the blind.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I already posted, so I can not mod the parent post up myself.
Thanks,
Mark
I wonder if Mac OSX could be easily modified to support a 3d GUI (or at least add some useful 3d effects to the GUI)... After all, Quartz Extreme does use OpenGL for most of the rendering of the desktop, which is responsible to the speed of the OSX gui.
I wonder if we could see usability improvements by using 3d toolbars stacked on top of each other using alpha blending which could be moved by mouse gestures... very cool... Unfortunately, most of the 3d GUIs to date have only decreased usability, and been overly cumbersome.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
This has gotten me thinking and I'm rather excited my the potential of the topic.In fact I think that all of us shouldbe quite excited by the prospect of a "fresh"approach tomost of the computing concepts we've grown accustomed to.I just wish that I didn't have a real job so that I could commit years of my life to pursuing these ideas as an open source contributor, or in post/graduate studies (or maybe both).
... but it's actually a "link" which is actually a file located in ...some folder... which contains information pointing to another file, which is an executable, which is, actually the "game""... whew!
So here goes:
Although I am not a "technical" person, the idea of using a 3D environment to communicate concepts such as network elements, directory structures, files, file dependencies, processes, devices, etc. is truly exciting. A variety of things such as size, complexity, interdependence, hierarchy become much more obvious to people once they are "experienced." I have a much easier time telling my aunt ( new computer user) that the "playing cards are inside the cigar box over the coffee table in the kitchen" rather than "the shortcut to solitaire is in the games sub-menu of the accessories program launcher (start menu)
The point of the above is that I think that typical computer use has already grown beyond what the 2-dimensional "desktop" analogies can provide, so it is necessary to look at, and attempt to implement new ideas.I think this 3d-os stuff is very closely related to Microsoft's "database-File System" initiatives, both are attempts to provide a much more flexible way for users to manage the now-immense amounts of information we routinely deal with. Furthermore, I think that the implementation that will win, and basically revolutionize things over again will be the cleanest, most "obvious" one.
This is a great opportunity for the Open Source community, instead of bickering about how to clone Microsoft and apple's newest desktop-tweaks we should be pushing ahead, actually not "ahead" but in dozens of different directions, all cross-competing, communications, sharing ideas, concepts and maybe even components. This KDE/Gnome thing is a joke, same with all of the other miscellaneous stupid desktop managers. There are allot of other utterly fascinating aspects of the topic that I am going to restrain myself from mention in this single post, but let me say that this shit has to be taken seriously by all of us, and this is one way that we can all "help things."
OK, I'm overreaching, but this is slashdot, right?
Flash is a good replacement for Java on a web page, not a good replacement for HTML.
When he came to work at Apple, and did NO WORK other than re-invent Smalltalk, I didn't speak up because Apple had money to burn, and he did little harm.
When he came to work at Disney, and did NO WORK, other then re-invent Smalltalk as "Squeak", I didn't speak up, because Disney had money to burn, and he did little harm
Now, in this awful economy, he's come to HP, and is reinventing Smalltalk, AN THERE'S NOBODY LEFT TO SPEAK UP.
Best Buy can have you arrested
much more importantly for anyone in ecommerce, try bookmarking an individual product in a 100% flash site.
If the customer can't email a direct link to the product to their friends, or bookmark to return to it at a later date, there goes all hope of viral marketing...
It wouldn't be too difficult to write an "OS" that represented objects in an n-torus, projected onto 2-space (this 3d "OS" ends up projecting everything onto 2-space in order to display on your monitor). However, this wouldn't be superior to the current 2d systems for most people. The current 2d systems are pretty fast for navigation and are visually simple. 3d isn't inherently faster. Sure, you can get higher visual density, but how does it affect navicability and eye strain? Current systems of virtual desktops and layered windows provide users with "2.5 dimensional" navigation, and this seems pretty optimal. It's the same way you desk is organized, with a large stackable 2d surface with auxilary stackable 2d surfaces (drawers = virtual desktops) . Why isn't you desk a stack of clear plastic cubes? Wouldn't a 3d desk be better than current 2.5d desks? I don't see a compelling reason why this would be the case. Maybe 3d really is a panacea, and up until now 3d file browsers have just been poor implementations of an amazing idea. However, my experience so far has reminded me of WinAmp visualizations and other eye candy for 1d file browsers.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
Man, I wish there was a way to revise posts...
I have a problem when they FORCE you to use it just to navigate or see ANYTHING....
Make it optional, and they would get almost zero complaints..
Some of us just don't want to open ourselves up to more risks, or resource usage...
If you cant push your product via words and simple images, then you have no product worth pushing...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm sure the blind would also appreciate the 3d interface screenshots of the GUI discussed in this article!
How come this turned into a little flame war on Flash? The people that authored the web site for the VM just don't know how to provide alternate content to Flash, that doesn't mean it's not possible (and that there aren't a variety of different means of doing this, heck even Flash MX does some automatically!).
On another, note, what do you think of the GUI of the original post? Since we're somewhat already on this topic, how do you think the underlying structure of the VM would lend itself to accessibility for people with disabilities, such as the blind?
I find this interesting because our user interfaces are getting progressively more visually oriented. I'm not saying I want to go back to 100% CLI, but I wonder what efforts are being made in helping with accessibility of such visual interfaces. So much of what streamlines the control in GUI's is often described as "click here" or "drag this here".
I would imagine that there are linux projects out there that create such interfaces for X. Perhaps even plugins for the more popular linux GUI's. Does anybody know of any?
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
I know this is a bit off, but myself and a friend of mine really sat down and tried to explore what would make a "good" 3d interface. IE why would it be "better" to go 3d over 2d. The real answer we came to is... there is no good reason to switch to 3d space...
What you say!
The biggest question you have to ask yourself is "How does the 3rd dimension help, and how can it be used to enrich the interface experience, and save time" the problem is we could not answer that question satisfactorily!
Take a look at what Croquet here shows us. We have system with 3d images in 2d space. We already have that, its called a computer monitor, it is in 3d space, this is already done. Making the monitor its own 3d space does not help the issue of interface, and making a BETTER interface.
When you take a look at the croquet PDF file, you see basically a 3d translated world, translated to 2d. You have depth, the difference is you can "rotate" around objects, but they are still basically 2d functions, you dont actually gain any kind of usability by rotating around the picture, except to possibly confuse the user when he tries to retrieve the picture.
Also, they do fall back to the nav bar concept, where there is a 2d navigation bar at the bottom, now this isnt bad in of itself, but it accomplishes NOTHING from the usability standpoint. Again the question is "How does the 3rd dimension help, and how can it be used to enrich the interface experience, and save time" this interface does not enrich the graphical user space in any REAL fasion, it moves a 2d plain into a 3d plain, without taking any real benefit from the fact that there is a 3d plain existing.
The usability benefits of the group function, where mutliple users can get into each others space and "look" around into others space, and meet with each other, is really in of itself not a value adding attribute of the program. This can be done, and done effectively, with video confrencing, each user does not have to "look" at another user, they can represent all users on a 2d space just as easily, or incoporate some psuedo 3d elements such as bring forward or push back (IE just scaling the size) and this can be easily done in the 2d arena, its a simple matter of scaling a picture and overlaying another over or placing it behind the picture.
I think it is a great endeavor, but it still hasnt answered the question of what the 3rd dimention can be used for that isnt already adequately done.
3d is good for games, because in games you want to "move around" in the environment, and by moving around you learn things about how the environment is shaped.
The other 3d interfaces that use file folders as "rooms" and each room as a size based on its file size, doesnt actually "help" in the sense of a user interface perspective, since it just re-represents size, you dont gain any real perspective into any NEW information that could not be gleaned from a sorting algorithim. IE if I wanted to locate on my machine what parts of the disk were "larger" than another part of the disk, I would not need to represent it in a 3d space, just instead sort by the size in whatever byte measuremenat im using, and easily determine which is holding more space by where it sits in the sorted list, and can even use 2d visual cues such as bars, and colors to make distinctions.
So the real question, is can you find a good use for the extra dimention when it comes to user interface with the computer? one that would make it worth persueing? Or can you explain to me why croquet is using the 3rd dimention i a way that cannot be adequeately, and more easily done in a 2d space already?
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
By and large people aren't opposed to Flash all the time, but they are opposed to bad uses of Flash. Take the Opencroquet site: they use Flash for a trivial navigation menu. The menu could have easily been implemented with Javascript rollovers, or ever pure CSS. Both would have been faster to load and more friendly to a variety of web clients (including cell phones, text only browsers, and web browsers for the blind (both for braille displays and spoken))
Too many sites are using Flash because they're under the mistaken assumption that having their menu bar shimmer and flicker will improve their site. These people are obsessing about superficial detail and ignoring real content. If I visit your auto-dealership to consider a car purchase anything that slows down my experience is a problem. There is no need for the menus to dance, just show me the damn cars! In general, adding Flash causes a usability decrease. (The linked article is a bit old, but still valid.)
Now, there is a place for Flash. But too many clueless superficial web designers are actually detracting from the value of their web site by needlessly involving Flash.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
All very good points, and thought-provoking.
There are some bright sides to Flash. For example, a tremendous portion of all web-related traffic is simply sending text in bitmap form so a site can look "pretty". Then count in all of the very similar redundant images (in javascript rollovers), and then add in "graphically simple" images... that's a lot of traffic. All of this can, and should be replaced by much smaller and more efficient vector art.
So many people see Flash as, if nothing else, an up and coming replacement for GIF/JPG/PNG for many applications. I wish browsers allowed you to treat it more like an image and less like an "object," so it would integrate better in that role and address your right-click woes. Obviously in this role search engines are not affected.
Flash has grown quite a bit over the years; I've had the misfortune to have to do some absurdly large projects with it. It's very attractive if you want to deliver a self-contained web application (like a game) because the penetration is simply second-to-none (+95% for older versions of Flash, and +75% for the newest version, I believe - i.e., it's included in Windows!), it runs on Linux, and if you have to download it, it's ~300k (hence the former point, I think). Now, it's offering a lot of features while staying quite small... I still think its scripting system and API are abyssmal, but if you're up for abuse you can make it do amazing things.
I think it's important to use it in the right places. If you rip out an entire HTML site and replace it with flash just to make it look nicer, you probably didn't consider the tradeoffs. But on the flipside, I sure am glad it's there for times when you want to do something unconventional or impossible using traditional techniques.
Something like Flash could replace HTML eventually. If Flash evolves in the right direction, and we're willing to reconceive its integration with the browser, and really, reconsider aspects of the web altogether (and most of all, if we forget it's proprietary, which is really a deal-killer on its own). This is a funny dream some Flash proponents have. It's not realistic, but I can see why they think it, and I won't be surprised to see some Flash-like things gain importance in the web's evolution.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
I'm no Java expert, and so am wondering what was meant by the comment in the summary at the opencroquet site, calling Java a "dangerous approxmiation" of a true multiplatform system? I'm not interested in a language zealots' flame-war, or a "my language is better than your language rant." Just curious what it means.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
The greatest invention of Smalltalk is hype: co-opting and taking credit for other people's inventions.
Simula 67 was the first object-oriented language, and all practical/successful OO languages follow from it: C++, Java, C#, Eiffel, etc. But even Smalltalk experts mistakenly believe that Smalltalk invented OO. Smalltalk isn't even OO as we know it.
Similarly, the mouse was invented by Doug Englebart (movie evidence - ) along with the idea of the word processor and many other things we take for granted now. And the GUI was invented by Ivan Sutherland in Sketchpad: pop-up menus, drag and drop, etc (used a light pen).
Couple of comments,
When I have a client that tells me they want a specific font, and sound effects
Clients ask for these kinds of things all the time. I say:
* You can suggest a specific font, but if it's an unusual font, most people will see one of the more common fonts. Some people will override your font completely because they find another font easier to read. Which "normal" font do you want to use as a fallback? Not to mention the discussion of serif vs sans-serif and so on...
* Sound can be highly irritating for many end-users, especially if they aren't expecting it. Virtually no high-profile business websites use sound, so unless there is a domain-specific reason for having sound, I would recommend against it. If there is a good reason for having sound, I would recommend that it not be activated automatically.
All true. I think we agree that bad sound design and bad font choices are just, well, bad. Flash (unfortunately) enables both good and bad media. The thing I think a lot of engineers decry (not you) about Flash is just that... as in, it can do it, and you can't make annoying sound effects with plain HTML, so Flash is bad, which is odd to me. Like blaming C++ for the fact that it can totally lock up a machine, and BASIC can't.
Also, I do think its a shame more sites don't use sound, it can really enhance any experience. You've always got the option to turn it off (at the speaker if nothing else). As far as fonts, in my experience, those applying their own stylesheets and font settings are pretty rare. They maybe set the point size to 14pt instead of 12, but that's it. Which brings me to another point...
I do have a problem with applying your own stylesheets to other's work. Basically it goes like this: I designed it a specific way, I want it shown that specific way. I've likely fought tooth and nail with the client over certain very specific things, and we have reached a solution visually for these things. To take away those decisions and apply your own arbitrary, un-trained stlyes, while liberating, is a bit wrong. It undermines the work that potentially went into a 'good' design. The only situation I've seen custom user-defined stylesheets work for is blogs; mostly because the bloggers have more or less settled on a unified layout.
I agree, I never said otherwise. But website navigation with flash is usually an abuse of flash - I've certainly never seen an appropriate use of flash in this way.
Okay, well I'll put my money where my mouth is: here is my Flash site. (you'll need the Flash MX plug-in.) It uses its own navigation. You can't use the browser controls, just as you've said. Take a look; maybe it IS an abomination of usability. However, I've never had one complaint about how to use it. It is what I consider a perfectly acceptable sub-navigation for the site. Of course, like I (we both) said earlier, I wouldn't use this for a database of term papers.
Oh by the way, indexing is not a problem.
No, if you provide alternate navigation that isn't flash-based. Most people clueless enough to use flash for navigation are clueless enough to not realise they need to do this. I know of no search engine that parses, or even retrieves, swf files.
Hmm. Not sure to what you're referring; Flash MX can basically mark up (boy does it ever mark up) every last bit of text in your Flash site, in the HTML frame file. And there's robots.txt as well. MX made great strides for usability, which had the side-effect of including a lot more metadata, and therefore exposing a lot more raw functionality, in Flash SWFs. Also note that its a lot harder to program proper navigation in Flash than it is in HTML, not easier; the idea that the 'clueless' are seizing upon Flash for easy website programming is not true. It's like programming everything in JavaScript (ActionScript is almost identical syntactically).
And stylesheets, as cool as they are, cannot compete with absolute sub-pixel vector positioning.
You are merely picking one attribute of flash and claiming that stylesheets cannot compete because of it? Please explain what "absolute sub-pixel vector positioning" means, and why it is useful. Then explain how I can override it in my browser to get the look that I want.
Oooh I could pick on a lot more than that. :)
Flash is all vector-based. The sizes and positions of things in Flash can be specified to a single decimal place of a pixel (i.e. 10.3, 14.9, etc.). This offers advantages for both resolution-independance as well as animation quality. Adobe After Effects, a raster-based animation program, also offers this feature. Think of it as a Nyquist Theorem kind of thing; higher resoltions from the source result in better looking images and motion. Not to mention superior antialiasing of text and vector edges. (Now, if you want to disable it, right-click on a Flash movie and choose anything but 'highest quality', then try and read some text. *shudder*)
Flash graphics are better than the usual hodgepodge of GIFs and JPEGs. They make more sense for the web, and they are much smaller. I can say this because Flash can also incorporate the best raster-based web graphics formats (JPEG, PNG) with its own vectors.
Not to mention, as a web designer, I have far less problems debugging a Flash site between browsers, as the plug-in is more consistent than the HTML engine.
Which plug-in? You know there's more than one, right?
The Flash plug-in. I think there is also a combination Shockwave (Director)/Flash plug-in. They both behave identically on Windows and Mac browsers. That's what I mean. I don't have to debug things in Flash because they 'look right' on one browser and not the other.
Now, don't get me wrong, I basically agree with everything you're saying. It just bugs me when people (not you) blame Flash for being flexible and powerful. They should blame people who suck instead.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Pixellation, polygons, and the world's worst gay-pr0n gallery are "way cool?"
Someone needs to get out on the net more.
bruhahahaha, that cat is EVIL
Free as in mason.
Provided hooks are in for a force-feedback system or OCR to speech software, this GUI could be beneficial to blind users. Very few GUIs are built from the ground up with them in mind.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
For 3d navigation for blind peole see this (in spanish).
I'm from Argentina: Tango, Asado, Mate, Gaucho, Maradona, YPF
Free from the shackles of the HTML dinosaur?
Don't you mean free from the shackles of industry standard web-readable information...
If it has to be passed to a plugin, it's not a website.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
There are already lots of so called '3D OS'. Some samplers
Microsoft Task Gallery
3DTop
3Dwm
Win3D
LOL your sig says it all--"artsy". Flash is all about the glossies, the marketing, the slick design. It's about style over substance.
As JimDabell mentioned, when I use my browser, I like to interact with the web pages in the efficient manner afforded by the browser interface (i.e. mouse gestures, ctrl-f, ctrl-c etc.). Flash robs me of this, and I am relegated to the position of a child watching mtv. I resent this.
Flash is the panacea for obssessive designers who agonize over the fact that their web page design does't render consistently over different browsers. They cannot tolerate the fact that the pixel-perfect design which they toiled over is secondary to the content.
I wish those designers would pursue writing standards-compliant, valid html in its current form rather than authoring in flash. I would rather that the World Wide Web Consortium, not Macromedia, dictate web standards.Also, I find it ironic that some people deride others' disdain for flash as being archaic, while they themselves cite deprecated html.
I was really hoping that everyone's favorite 19th century lawn game/summer courting activity had made it to the big time of 3d comptuer gameplay. Dibs on the black ball.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
While I'd say that vector images are certainly a big missing piece for the web (I'm waiting for proper svg support in browsers), I would completely disagree that you should send text as images, vector or otherwise.
I may have a high-resolution display that is capable of rendering serifs well, so I'd want to subtitute another font for sans-serifs most of the time. CSS allows me to do this, flash does not.
Normal text is indexable by search engines and other tools, and can be searched easily within the browser. Copy & paste works fine too. Does all of this work with flash?
True. I'm specifically addressing navigation implemented with flash though. I have no trouble accepting that there are good uses for flash.
The authoring system ~v4 (I can't comment on other versions) is absolutely terrible, yes. I reminds me of the "click to program" things that were popular around 1990 - what was the one called, click 'n' play? I've played around with flash generated by php scripts, it looks promising, if a little buggy.
I really hope not. The html wg has only just managed to properly separate content from presentation, it would be madness to glom it all back together again. There was a recent discussion about this on the www-html mailing list, actually, although that was centred around a markup language, the principle was the same.
Personally, I think that flash could be completely replaced by w3c technologies today, with a massive increase in usability/accessibility/ease-of-development if only the browser support was there. Check out scripted svg, the dom, ecmascript, smil, css, and so on.
"I have far less problems debugging a Flash site between browsers"
far fewer problems...
graspee
It also says "geek." It was meant to convey that I strive for an effective balance of both. I'm curious what you think of my own site. It's primary goal is to showcase photography. Do you believe that the mechanism I use to achieve this (namely iframes) is efficient and effective, or is it overly gimmicky at the expense of usability? Do the graphics on my site detract from it's overall usability?
My point in asking this is that I believe that my site demonstrates an effective balance of both form and function, and that the two are not mutually exclusive. I strive to prove that content-rich sites needn't be boring and stuffy, and that flashiness isn't an automatic warning of a site devoid of content. What do you think? I'm sincerely interested in your opinion. At the risk of these posts being modded "off-topic," please feel free to email me at kombat@kombat.org.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
3th dimension is a dimension of depth. our screens can't show depth at all. it is just a flat screen with a flat picture on it.
:)
so everything we are talking about here is just presentation. it is about objects looking smaller and bigger to our eyes. it is about some objects covering other objects.
3d is not the same thing as "moving around freely".
why is it that every time I see a 3d application they have to include this "just walk around" paradigm?
who really wants that? if everybody would want a larger workspace than they can view at a time they could use virtual desktop much bigger than their screen and just pan around with the mouse. now how many people do you see doing that?
we already have a much better option which is called a "workspace". sadly most windows users don't even know what it is.
depth itself is not as braindead idea for a gui as "move freely" is. what i would like to see on a gui from the "3d-world" would be a dynamic resizing and overlaping of responsive workspaces controlled by key shortcuts or mouse gestures.
enlightenment has a slow, static and nonresponsive version of the idea which is nice - but it is slow and static..
i'm talking about realtime performance scaled down workspaces which I can stack four in a screen and still operate in any of them with a keyboard and mouse, press shift-alt-1 and make my workspace 1 full screen with the others aligning like dockapps on the side and still press alt-2 to transfer focus to workspace 2 and write to it while it is scaled to a docapp size.
that would be 3d fr me.
now one of you geek guys go implement it! hush!
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Post a virus to a website that is probably registered in your name, and protect your anonymity by checking "Post Anonymously" on slashdot??
I do so to make websites more usable for me. Surely one of the primary purposes of any professional website (as opposed to an artistic/personal one) is to be as useful as possible to the end-user? So, following on from that, wouldn't it be better to encourage use of user stylesheets?
The most popular user-stylesheet rules I have seen are:
body, p, a, td { font-size: 1em !important; } (to make stupid font sizes less stupid)table { width: 100% !important; } (to avoid websites that only use half your window width, or worse, double your window width)
Well I don't have the plugin installed on this machine, so all I get is a blank page. I'm sure it's decent enough, but this kind of underlines my point, really.
I don't see how it possibly can. The <meta> elements traditionally used are now ignored by virtually every search engine, and if you just dump a load of keywords into the html as content, you are liable to get blacklisted. Now if it actually put well marked-up content into the html, fair enough, but not even dedicated developer tools can do that properly. Your site, to use an example, has no text available to a search engine robot at all, besides the title of your page.
robots.txt merely tells robots what behaviour they should take, it doesn't supply them with anything to index.
I had heard this, they hired Jakob Nielsen for that. They've also opened up the swf file format, which is another good step.
I knew that flash was vector-based, I just didn't understand the difference between that and "absolute sub-pixel vector positioning". Just keyword bloat?
Anyway, I don't see the point in text anti-aliasing when it happens in my web browser "for free" when you use normal text. I don't see the point in sub-pixel rendering, because it ends up as pixels on my screen anyway.
Yeah, there's more than one. Ignoring platform-specific issues (such as the sound problem I mentioned that only exists in the unix-based plugins), you also have different versions (I remember a couple of flash applications that broke nastily in v5 when they were authored for v4), and different implementations (try using a macromedia version on a non-x86 unix).
Given the massive amount of abuse associated with flash, I don't see this happening. You want attitudes to flash to change, hit your fellow flash developers with a cluebat :)
--It's 2003. You don't still drive 30 mph in a '55 Chevy, why would you be so resistent to modern browser plugins?--
FYI
My dad had a `55 Chevy and I guarantee you it would go much faster than 30 mph. It had 265 small block V8 w/ 3 speed manual on the column. A cheap and fast car for its day. He lost a drag race to a `57 with a 283 but not by much.
As far as what this has to do with 3D OS's, I duuno, but I like fast, simple, cheap, and effective. Whether you have 3D or not the search engine in it is what counts. Maybe Google could work on that.
Because it doesn't make sense that you will have to "walk around" or "fly" in some fashion inside a 3d space just because you want to open a web browser, open a spreadsheet, or do basically anything with any sort of timeliness
So you would keep your browser in your "pocket" so that you don't have to hunt it down before using it.
3D Desktops just are not usable right now.
This is not a 3D Desktop. "Desktop" was Kay's metaphor in the 70's, when Xerox wanted a better way to deal with paper. Think bigger. It's all about people collaborating. Think of this as:
- Neil Stephenson's "Multiverse", or Vernor Vinge's "Other Plane"
- A multiuser "Morrowind", where everyone can create their own place in the world
- A way for you to do real time voice communication with distant friends
- An encrypted world-wide end-to-end peer-to-peer media distribution system
- A world wide web of active objects, not just text or lame applets
- A programming environment simple enough for anyone to get started, but deep enough to stick with
I've played around with an early version of Croquet, and it's much cooler than the screen shot implies. Those pictures are portals to other spaces. When you enable them, you see a new world happening in the portal. If you walk though the portal, you enter the world. You see other networked people as avatars, which by default look suspiciously like Tux the penguin. You can easily create new 3D objects, and script them to give them life.
This guy is way ahead of his time.
The version I tried had a long way to go, but if even half of it pans out, it will change everything.
I would completely disagree that you should send text as images, vector or otherwise.
I'm glad you mentioned SVG. I haven't used it much yet. I'll be happy with whoever wins the vector race, as long as they're simple, fast, and cross-platform. If it's open, bonus!
To be precise, Flash will send vector information for any used glyphs of a "non-standard" font, and then display the associated text using that "on-demand" font face information as appropriate. I'm not sure if this addresses your concern about sending text as images or not.
Normal text is indexable by search engines and other tools, and can be searched easily within the browser. Copy & paste works fine too. Does all of this work with flash?
Of course, I was thinking of it merely as a replacement for a number of GIFs, which suffer the same or similar limitations (I think you can have an ALT tag on Flash movies, too?). Clearly, anything that's purely text should probably be treated as such, and I'd rather see a really robust, reliable and cross-platform system for being able to render in different fonts, and to transparently send fonts that the client doesn't have. I'm not sure how well this is addressed outside of Flash at the moment. And this leaves aside the other GIF cases (rollovers, simple graphics, simple graphics + text, etc.) that you can address with a format like Flash.
I may have a high-resolution display that is capable of rendering serifs well, so I'd want to subtitute another font for sans-serifs most of the time. CSS allows me to do this, flash does not.
Absolutely true. I'd say this is another good way to think about the dividing line for where Flash is appropriate. Any time such a font substitution would be reasonable, Flash is not appropriate. Any time it is not, you may still consider it.
I have no trouble accepting that there are good uses for flash.
Of course.
The authoring system ~v4 (I can't comment on other versions) is absolutely terrible, yes.
It has not improved much, though the Ecmascript API is stabilizing, and the client-server networking possible is interesting and powerful. My single biggest beef with them is that, over all these years, despite a huge outcry in the developer community, and though it would add only a few bytes to their overhead, they have still not deigned to offer the ability to turn on explicit variable declaration. This one little if-statement in their script engine would save 10-30% on development times for most script-related projects.
This exemplifies one of the many reasons why I hate closed-source tools.
I really hope not. The html wg has only just managed to properly separate content from presentation, it would be madness to glom it all back together again.
I think I was very vague about how I expected Flash to have to change for this to become rational. I think it would have to grow considerably.
Personally, I think that flash could be completely replaced by w3c technologies today, with a massive increase in usability/accessibility/ease-of-development if only the browser support was there. Check out scripted svg, the dom, ecmascript, smil, css, and so on.
I really like the idea; it's good to just have a competing array of specialized systems, mini-APIs floating around for content people to author against and scripters to orchestrate and assemble, all of it based on open standards, and then you'd have commoditized IDE's which allow you to do a lot of the same "easy" tasks.
However, being all too familiar with the systems you mentioned and a few others, I can ruefully say I think this is a ways off. A lot of it comes down to, as you say, browser support. If we're being realistic, it's hard to imagine so many good and necessary and improvements to all these systems by all the competing parties (for whom failing to cooperate well has been one of their chief sources of amusement over the past few years). I mean, among other things we're probably talking about a cross-platform font standard.
Still, perhaps this is really what I was thinking of when I was ruminating in the last paragraph of my previous post. It sounds interesting.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
The n-torus you mention is a good example of the work that IMHO is 'ready to be done' in the realm of 3DUI. It's been apparent for perhaps 10 years that the present "WIMP" paradigm (invented, or at least made popular/practical, btw, by this same Alan Kay) is insufficient and not-that-good. But we really don't know what will work best in 3D. I believe that a commonly available, fully 3D workspace environment will cause a lot of great experimentation to be done, and in 3-5 years we'll really start to know what works best.
The clue will be the appearance of UI paradigms we haven't imagined yet, based on or inspired by the new environment. Think of how Instant Messaging appeared from nowhere, or how the NeXTstep 2D GUI inspired Berners-Lee to develop the WWW, or indeed how the WIMP paradigm came to be in a period where most computer input was still based on cards or "key-to-disk". In each case most-or-all the necessary ideas were there, but it took someone using the new system to really put it all together.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Check this out.
Hmmm, the moderator obviously didn't RTFA or TFPDF.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Actually, I have no idea; I just thought this would be funny to say.
One of the systems often used in physics for 3D is Hamiltons notation. This has 4 vectors with hasis {1,i,j,k}
ij = k= -ji, jk = i = -kj, ki = j = -ik; etc... i^2 = -1 so you will pick up the more general complex numbers.
I'll tell you why I'm opposed to Flash. It makes my mp3s stutter on my slow system. And what benefit do I get from it? Moving ads. Heck, give me animated .gifs for that...
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
The screenshot seems to bear a lot of similarity to the operating environment that Ed from Cowboy Bebop used to surf around in ...
James
"This is a Unix system ... I know this!"
(girl from Jurassic Park)
XeoMage
new Long(5).equals(new Integer(5)) // guess what it returns - hint its not true - go on try it!
They aren't objects of the same type. Only an autoboxing system or specially designed equals() code will catch that in *any* OO system. Besides, how often do you do that? (If you said often, you ought to be smacked up side the head.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
see here
I want 2D games back.
Teabagging is amazing, don't you think?"
WTF? Yes, I know about the former name. But still... WTF?
Don't blame me, I get all my opinions from my Ouija board.
First reason: most usage of flash is silly and pointless eye candy
Second reason: With a 26.4k modem connection to the web, I never download software without a good reason. It takes too long at 26.4. Maybe if I could get a broadband connection I'd feel different.
Third reason: The download probably introduces a security hole. Which means another monstrous download at slow speed.
Fourth reason: The download may introduce spyware that I do not want.
Bottom line: Flash gives me nothing that I will not live without.
I like images that contribute to content. But there are an amazing number of so-called images that are gifs/jpegs containing rendered text. It allows the display of text using "pretty" fonts, 3D effects and/or shadows, but Google would index the site and make it more useful to humanity if it was just plain text.
I rejoice that there are owls.
Alan Kay, who also is one of the inventors of Smalltalk, one of the fathers of object oriented programming, conceiver of the laptop computer, inventor of much of the modern windowing GUI ...holder of the sacred chalice of reeks, heir to the holy rings of...
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
Either this guy has a discusting sense of humor, or his site http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2901 was cracked.
does the development staff really like what the site says they do? Just curious...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Anyway, personally I'm glad that OS research is finally turning to the 3D realm. It only seems like the next natural progression in computer environments.
Some people may relate *less* well to 3D. People think differently. Anybody who has dealt with designing interfaces for end-users can tell you that. Some even preferred character-based interfaces because it was less keystrokes for them. They didn't care about the pretty icons and shadows, they just wanted to get work done. While others loved mouses and icons.
Alan Kay also said that OOP was supposed to be "natural", but I don't see anything natural about it, especially when you try to apply it to the real world, not just the shape, animal, device-driver, and stack examples in the books. Do I need to hire a personal OO guru and meditate on a mountain for 10 years until I see the naturalness? I don't "get" naturalness according to some OO fans.
I hope Alan has not done to UI's what he has done to software engineering philosophy. I would rather have Microsoft Bob I think.
Table-ized A.I.
If you go to a restaurant you have a lovely 2D interface to the food called a menu. All the pertinent information about the food is there, and you can pick very quickly between items as well as easily point them out to your date.
Now imagine the wonderful next generation 3D menu:
1. Place your table on a large lazy susan
2. Get 30 waiters to stand in a circle just outside the radius of the lazy susan.
3. Give each waiter a placard with one dish listed on it
4. Now use a joystick or something to rotate the table so you can look at each waiter in turn
Voila! Super 3D restaurant user interface.
I'll take the menu.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Also, the history of Microsoft proves, that some OS can be designed so bad that it cannot function properly (or at all) without one or more GUI components. Theoretically, if you will take 3dWM, Berlin/Fresco (or other post-X11 3D GUI) and embed it to the OS kernel (don't ask me, I don't know why, ask Microsoft - they know) than you will get 3D OS.
Now, forget GUI. But I still think 3D OS is possible. OLAP is typically based on multi-dimensional data mining. So, if (and somehow) OS kernel is functioning based on 3D data mining, then it's 3D OS :)
Most of moderns OS kernels do not need dimensions. Dimensions are needed to classify or to measure something (like to measure the position in case of GUI-based presentation). Modern OSes do not classify anything and they measure nothing. What if some future OS will start to classify or to measure something? Let's say, to measure the overload of nodes in order to schedule tasks in the distributed computing grid, huh?
Wait a minute, how about grids? The grid can be 3-dimensional, right? Than the OS controlling the grid is 3D OS!
So, OS can be 3D by one (or more) of the following three (or more) criteria:
Less is more !
It's kewl. It's a 3D app launcher, file system and media player. It's commercial and Windows, but hey, like's like that sometimes. http://download.com.com/3000-2346-10188001.html?ta g=lst-0-1
Either I'm high and don't know it or the website that the screenshot link leads to has this written on it...
Do you like gay sex?
Indeed i do! What's your phone number?
212 596 7765
Thanks to Ryan, Jacob, Fisheye & Bill for their hard work!
What??
No sig for you!!
A really big deal is made about this project's ability to "unlock the potential of this technology to enhance the entire user experience" and such as well as acknowledging the importance of communication through out the few pages with any info. It's just a shame that none of their "assumptions" are adhered to in the design of their own website.
As for stating that "it is our full intention to make Croquet into as high a quality a product as you will find anywhere, commercial or not.[snip] This isn't just a promise; it's just what we do.", maybe the same intentions should be directed towards the presentation of their communication.
I'm not going to get started on the documentation only being available in .PDF!
"The big question in our lives is how to be at the same time a hedonist and in a hurry" - Alain Ducasse (?)
Exists. There's an IR unit that you can purchase and sit on your desk, then put a little sticky thing on your forehead and wire it to a hatswitch, dunno the name nad I think it was windows only
Banaaaana!
"why are people so opposed to Flash on the net?" Because it doesn't run on my operating system, while any good open source package will.
Put simply, it's because Flash makes Web sites harder to use. For most sites, it's superfluous, over-complicated and annoying. Furthermore, because Flash breaks a lot of Web conventions (Back, font sizes, accessibility), it's unintuitive.
While I still agree that advertising is the worst thing about Flash - just ahead of the Macromedia site so longer working in Opera - I generally hate sites that use Flash at all, because things just take so much longer. Of course, there are a few shining examples.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
Indeed I did...
bleh
- Danny
The problem is that you're using a 3D interface on a 2D monitor. 3D's only good for games or data analysis. Now If one had a table top with some type of holographic projector and one could manipulate everything with their hands, then it would work.
I wonder what Jef Raskin would say about this...
- Danny
I'd rather hear stories about some of the off-the-wall projects Alan Kay worked at during his tenure as chief scientist at Atari myself...getting a budget of $100 million in 1981 (or 82?) for example...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Squeak is an interpreted language similar to Smalltalk. Could be ssslooooww.
Judge for yourself, but I found Squeak to be an astonishingly swift, and absolutely compelling, programming environment. Squeak isn't "similar to" Smalltalk, it is a direct, but quite modern, decendant (including bits from the image) of Smalltalk-80. It runs swiftly enough, and far faster than some well-regarded programming systems, with all of the virtues of a full GC, purely dynamic late-binding OO programming.
To each their own as programming goes, but I simply never "got it" about OO programming until I did it in pure Smalltalk -- Squeak is worth a careful and detailed look by anyone who considers themselves a programmer.
Here is a mov file of Croquet for those of you uninterested in installing it: sumim.no-ip.com:8000
"...I'll need guns" --Chow Yun-Fat in 'Replacement Killers'
-Carter
Yes, I think we have a confirmed slashack.. Someone hacks a slashdotted site so that a zillion people see their hack.
Remember, don't feed the trolls.
Looks like it might be...at least that's how I'm choosing to interpret the following quote:
Do you like gay sex?
Indeed i do! What's your phone number?
212 596 7765
-JT
What happened? Someone crack it or something?
Can you tell me how to use my own stylesheets to change other's pages?
I use mozilla, and it would be nice if I could turn the override on an off with a hotkey. I generally like to keep the original look of the page, and then occasionally change it.
Thanks if you can help,
#6495ED - cornflower blue
Take a look at this article for how to do it with mozilla. Unfortunately, it requires a restart before any changes are made.
Opera has support for user stylesheets that can be toggled on and off with a keypress though.
Anyone know why I can't "View Source" on that webpage, either by right-clicking or using the menus? I'm using Mozilla 1.3b. I don't have Flash installed....
Jouster
I refuse to install flash for flashing, noisy ads and things that fly around my screen that there's no way to turn off. I refuse to be held captive to advertising on the web. Too many flash/shockwave ads have no "turn me off" and/or "turn off sound" buttons. Since there's really nothing of value on the web that uses flash, I leave in uninstalled. If something REALLY looks interesting, I'll go through the few seconds or so to install it, but I'll remove it right afterwards.
If you want to know what a croquet really is, ask the Dutch. Or take a look here: Van Dobben Croquetten