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Fold 'n' Drop Window Interaction
Mints writes "Following up on recent "Desktop Innovation" stories that have left some disappointed, I thought Pierre Dragicevic's exploration of Fold 'n' Drop warranted mention. Described as "a new interaction technique for seamlessly dragging and dropping between overlapping windows", Fold 'n' Drop allows the user to interact with layered or overlapping windows in a very intuitive manner. Refreshingly, Mr. Dragicevic provides both a sample implementation, in Java, and video demos. Mr. Dragicevic is a researcher in Human-Computer Interaction at Intuilab, Toulouse."
MS begrudgingly announced tabbed browsing for IE7, after claiming that it would confuse users.
Bring this to KDE/Gnome and there's one less reason for anyone above a "ma and popo" level to stick with Windoze.
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Kind of neat. My only comments thus far is that if you "discard" a window (fold it all the way over so that it dissappears off the screen) there's no easy way to get it back without dropping the object your dragging first. Similarly, it's too easy to folder over too many windows, by accident.
-dave
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Combine this with some kind of hand gesture sensors (yes a mouse is one but I mean more complex) a la Minority Report and you would have a very intuitive "virtual paper" interface. This looks like it will be very handy (no pun intended) for use with a mouse but I think using more complicated hand gestures (in the future, when possible) will really make this paper-like manipulation of windows even more intuitive and useful. Funny how the further we move away from paperwork, the closer we get to being just like it.
Speak for yourself. I'd love to see this make it into Linux or OS X. I always seem to have 30+ windows open and never seem to be able to find the correct one to drop into. Two 19'' monitors at 1240x1024 *don't* help. Expose doesn't work because it either shows the desktop (no windows) or all windows. Spring loaded windows are about the only thing that helps in this situation.
Looking at the video, I'm struck again by how ill-fitting the "window" metaphor is. "Leafing through windows"?? Come on -- the model here is the page or the sheet.
Maybe it was never very appropriate. Windows and icons and menus... on desktops?? Oh my!
"It's fun to use and all, but why would I have that many windows open, and then need to sort a lot of documents through them? Moreover, with dual screens and/or multiple desktops, overlapping windows should be mostly a thing of the past."
Nope. I'm doing plugin development for Lightwave. I have a small LW window open. I have my editor open. I have a few file windows open. (Yes, I need them for this.) I have a PDF viewer open for documentation. I have a web browser open for accessing the knowledgebase. I sometimes even have an ICQ window open so I can talk to the people testing the code. I run dual monitors at 1600 by 1200 each, and I still have a bunch of overlapping going on.
Couldn't tell you if this particular desktop management system would do me any good or not (couldn't get the page to load) but I'll take any help I can get.
"Derp de derp."
You should try mapping Expose to a multi-button mouse. I have a 5 button mouse that has each Expose function mapped to a separate button.
1. Left Button = Left-Click
2. Right Button = Right-Click
3. Scroll Click = Expose Show Application's Windows
4. Thumb Button = Expose Show All Windows
5. Second Thumb Button = Expose Show Desktop
This way, you can easily Drag from one window to any other window with the click of a button, also allowing you to switch quickly between apps. You can also get different reactions by holding the button down, which temporarily switches to that Expose mode, then returns to last mode when released, or when you click on it, it turns to that Expose mode until you click another button.
It REALLY hurts when I am working on a non-Expose enabled computer. Longhorn will only speed-up the switch to OSX, especially when compared to the new Macintel's loaded with OSX.5 Leopard, and its Red-Box abilities(Built-in VirtualPC abilities similar to Classic mode)
Cheers to Apple.
I honestly love exposé, sometimes you just lose track of a window and can't find it any more and I don't want to have to put everything in the dock and then open it up one by one. I'm still wondering what Leopard will have in store. I honestly can't wait.
- Qua
Another feature could come from folding windows. This feature could be "Window backing's" Think wallpaper, except for the back of your windows! Who wants their windows plain and white on their backside anyways?
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While your comments are insightful and this is a neat idea, Expose will always be faster. And I'm not talking about performance. Picture this, you need to move a file to another folder, but wait that folder is two layers below your current level. You'll have to fold back two windows to get there! Now imagine having to fold 5 or more folders. Since Expose can show you all your windows with one action it wins hands down.
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This looks cool and was rather fun to play with in the Java demo, but just how useful is it really?
How many people actually move/copy files in this manner anyway? I suppose Jo(e) Average may but surely anyone who uses a computer at all regularly would copy and paste - I've even seen people copy/cut and paste using menus more than I have seen them drag and drop between open windows.
Neat trick, but... next!
In stories like this you can see how much the Slashdot userbase has changed over the years.
Here's a new UI concept, that is very promising and hasn't been implemented anywhere yet. A true opportunity for Linux to score a "first" in UI design -- this could be the next generation of window shading/rollup, the possibilities are endless.
And the comments are "in Mac OSX you do such-and-such instead", "in Windows you do such-and-such instead". Things like "this problem is solved" -- as if there was One True Solution in UI design! -- and "before doing your research you should stop at the Apple store" -- as if PhD research didn't do related work assessment! --, enumerations of Windows key sequences, and so on. And those are ranked "5, Insightful".
A few years ago the comments would range from the usual "GUI? Give me a CLI any day" to discussions on how to implement this on Linux and which wm would get it first, which would (d?)evolve to a healthy wm flamefest.
The Slashdot audience truly has changed. *sigh*
The filesystem is the package manager
This technology seems like the perfect killer app that would require Force Feedback. Imagine for a second... the more windows you leaf back, the heavier they become. You could blindly lift off a few windows...
jm2c
.: 2+2 = PI SQRT(1+N)
You're right - sort of. It's not that the mouse or the keyboard are burdening you - it's when an application forces you to use *both* of them in combination that your efficiency really starts to suffer.
Some programs are primary mouse-driven (eg. 3D modeler). Others rely primarily on keyboard input (eg. word processor). I would argue that an interface strives to be most efficient when it maximizes the functionality of its primary input device.
For a 3D modeler, this means an intuitive 3D interface for rotations, use of all mouse buttons, and carefully positioned clickable buttons and toolbars.
For a text-editor/word-processor, this means loads of keyboard shortcuts. emacs/vi come to mind (MS Word falls short in my mind - I *need* ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-k).
What become challenging for the developer (and, consequentially, the user) are applications that are sometimes mostly mouse-driven, sometimes mostly keyboard-driven. These apps necessarily force the user to switch between the mouse and keyboard frequently. Often, there is some gain to be had via keyboard shortcuts, but the interface does not always allow these to be most efficient.
A web browser, for example, or a file browser require both a mouse and keyboard (OK, so many of us get by just fine with the terminal, but let's ignore that). In the case of the web browser, many folks are drawn to opera and firefox specifically because of their extensive keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures, allowing you to stick to whatever input device you were already using.
So, for example, in opera, i can gesture left if I'm using the mouse, or I can hit 'z' if I'm using the keyboard. It's *never* more efficient to reach for one or the other, but ultimately, I'll always need both (I didn't type in this post using cut and paste, and I certainly didn't click on the link to your post by tabbing through everything).
The *real* problem is that your window manager does not allow efficient navigation via the mouse. If, for example, you had mouse gestures, hot corners, or OS X expose functionality bound to extraneous buttons on your 5 button mouse, you would reach less often for the keyboard when you were already using the mouse.
You're right - reaching for the mouse just adds more time, but so does reaching for the keyboard. A window manager is best when it forces you to do neither.
Not that I post on slashdot or anything.
You want to move text to a different application? Select it, and then drag it through Exposé to any window.
If you drag it to the desktop, it creates a file called whatever.textClipping. The file can be moved around or stored. It's a normal file. If you drag the file to an application, the full text of the file is pasted into your window. If you double-click the file, you can read it just like a normal file. I have three of these files on my desktop right now.
Want to add an image to your document? Drag it to the window. Want to add an attachment to an email? Drag it to the window. It's much simpler.
Albuquerque PC
There is value in the dragging, at least for new computer users. It is much more intuitive to click on a file and drag it to another destination. This is a pretty good simulation of how we move things in real life and is easier to learn than some arcane keyboard commands. I'm a very experienced computer user and I prefer to just shift select some .ogg files and drag them to my Rio Karma (which is a pretty good player, btw, and much cheaper than the over-hyped iPOD)
The first post still wants to use his keyboard.
../ Of course the latter is faster if that's all you're doing.
Personally, I wish the computer cognoscenti *would* give more emphasis to truly graphical computing.
The fact that the keyboard is more efficient for interacting with the majority of computer operations that people do really just goes to show that our culture hasn't advanced from thinking in pipelineable data chunks to true objects.
For much software, config files, switches, and option params still dominate over graphical dialogs, and even those that do exist in polished software are still just checkbox and radio equivalents of config settings, not real objects in the sense of "chopsticks interacting with noodles" (associating entities with containers).
Even most GUIs are simply visual equivalents of the same verb-noun operations that CLIs have always used, eg, graphically foo.txt dragging up a level is the same as mv foo.txt
I think the future is somewhere in the way non-linear video editing suites and graphical art programs work, but more consistent.
Hopefully now that OSes are moving to 3rd gen windowing architectures that allow much more complex visual depictions (OS X a few years ago, Longhorn next year, Linux real soon), more experiments like this will be tried, and new interactions will emerge.
Although this post has made no sense, here's to truly graphical computing!
Okay, take your theoretical situation in Expose, because I come across it fairly often. You have ten windows open in XCode, all code windows so they all look essentially the same. You start dragging and hit Expose. Since they were all stacked almost directly on top of each other, they scatter in a somewhat random fashion (if they really ARE stacked atop each other, Expose places them side by side across the middle of the screen, making the thumbnails even MORE indistinguishable, but that's not what i'm talking about). Since they were almost each the entire size of the screen, they shrink to an indistinguishable blob of black and white. Which one did you want? Hover over first, wait for name to pop up. Not it. Hover over second, wait for name to pop up. Not it. Etc.
Expose is a great tool. I use it every day and miss it dearly when I have to use Windows. However, if I had a "thick" stack on my desktop, and not arbitrarily thick (meaning, not something like ten 100x200 pixel windows all stacked atop each other instead of already spread out over the desktop) then it would be significantly easier to fold back the "top" windows to reveal those underneath than to use Expose and pick amongst randomly-arranged, visually indistinguishable thumbnails.
Whis is it that /.ers think that everyone likes and is good at writing perl one-liners? Or compile their own kernels, for that matter? Or, and here comes the slightly on-topic part, use a text shell for everything?
Everyone thinks that what he is used to is the greatest thing ever, and everyone's life would be so much better if they finally would see the light and do it the right way. That's why interface design is hard, and shouldn't be left to programmers (or gamers, for that matter).
it'd be nice if windows didnt absolutely unhackabbly insist that the window that has focus is on top. on my good ole amiga you could chose how to dish focus out and bring windows to the front. i set it so you had to click on the title bar specifically to bring it to the front. simple and when shovelling files about i could drop them into a text editor/ photoshop/browser etc without the application's resulting focus making the folder window dissapear behind it, forcing me to fish it out again or resize everything so that they sit next to each other. far too simple, i know. (IIRC you can do this in KDE too)
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