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_.
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)
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.
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
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.
Squeak it's an Object ambient, not a programming lenguage alone. That's mean every thing you see is an object (the compiler, the classes, the windows, the number 3, the message "+" send to the object 5, etc. etc.).
I think the idea is to create an OS from Squeak, and opencroquet being the shell.
The language itself is used to do things like open files, if you want.
You can program in assembler, if you can. But you must think in Assembler.
I'm from Argentina: Tango, Asado, Mate, Gaucho, Maradona, YPF
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
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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
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).
Because 3D is one more D than 2D... it must be better. :)
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
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.
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.
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 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
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]
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.
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
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
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 -
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.
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.
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 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
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
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!
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.
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.
Actually, I have no idea; I just thought this would be funny to say.
-Carter