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This is not actially an idea, it's a dream I just had.
It's pretty hard to describe.
I was working with a weird, strange OS. SciFi. But it could be done.. After all, we live in the 21st century..
I had a new interface. It included Head-tracking, Finger-tracking, Foot-tracking(!).
With my foot, i could move the entire desktop (like when you zoom the whole desktop and move the mouse and the picture pans around) which was quite huge (say, 4:2 of my current desktops, viewed on my standard 19' as a real window into that virtual wall). (now you will say: like 4:2 desktops in Ubuntu, only without snapping to desktop boundaries, just like 8 of them merged into one, like expose without desktop boundaries, zoomable, and I would then say yes, something like that, only better).
When i moved my head back and forward, it changed the zoom level, but more sensitively than in that video where that guy (sorry, forgot the name) uses a wiimote for head-tracking (like when you meke mouse sensitivity higher and the pointer moves faster with less motion). I wanted to look at a PDF preview more closely, "picked it up" with three fingers of my left hand and dragged it bit nearer and moved my head just a bit forward, and it came to real size, was suddenly readable, and even further zoomable. I could turn pages like those of a book, or more like a stapled 10-sheet handout.. I couldnt read it (dream!) but didn't realize it was a dream so it did not become a lucid dream. However, there was a stack of papers on the far left of the "wall", each next one a bit more down than the previous (like conversations in Gmail) and it was my Inbox, like when collegues come by and put the stuff on my table, not just drop it in a "In-Box", but they sort it nicely and put the next over the previous so I can read the topic and some of it. Well maybe like Slashdot, only it looks like a real paper stack. I could pick any email and (not) read it like I picked that PDF up. When I put it down, it became greyish. There were some photos laying around on my "virtual wall" and beside them a Photoshop (GIMP?) toolbar, so I picked up a magnetic lasso, selected a car in a picture, took it out and put it into a "Reply" part of an email, then did the same with another one and wrote "which one?" under it (with a pen from PS-Toolbar), and put thar email into a simple, plastic "Out-Box", selected (pressed) a few pictures of friends that were suddenly next to the box and it was taken in matter of seconds (by a tatooed hand).
I wanted to explore it a bit more (semi-lucid) so I turned a TV-like thing on and it showed some stupid situation (video) I had last week in a club, with some stupid bloke talking shit and me beating the shit out of him (I really just told him not to bug me and do his stupid dance a few meters away from me and my girls). Moving the screen with my foot seemed natural. Zooming with the head even much more. Part of the time it was a wall, and part of the time a table. I dunno.
I vividly remember searching through my contacts by flipping pages of an "album" with contact cards and photos, pressing the one from my girlfriend and talking to her a few seconds after it, like skype.. she told me that the pizza is done and than i woke up. Went to kitchen. It was full of smoke and smelled really bad. The pizza is a little black coal thing..
Lucky: it's pretty windy now here in Germany and with a balcony door and a window open, it took just a few seconds to get new air into the kitchen. Now, it smells better. But still like a burned pizza.
Now i have to figure out how to rewrite this for Brainstorm, so it sounds like an actual idea. I think I will post this as a comment, and the rewrite as an idea..
It's very long, but this is BRAINSTORM, and that's what I just had..
Thank You for reading and dreaming. Maybe we meet some day in a dream.
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jannone
wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 03:44
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It is a cool dream.
Maybe you should work this out by isolating the main concepts and functionality in technical terms, rather than exemplifying.
After you have a good number of assumptions, you should back them up by validating against well-known usability studies, so that perhaps you can convince developers that your approach works, and works better than the current desktop paradigms.
Either that, or you'll have to create a prototype by yourself... and I don't think it is a project suitable at a Linux distro level, but rather a whole new desktop project.
Wish you good luck!
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I've seen this sort of thing happen by accident. Sometimes, if you're playing a game that plays fullscreen, and changes the screen resolution, and then the game crashes, the resolution doesn't change back, but your desktop is the original size. So, for example, your desktop might be 1600x1200, but your screen is only showing 800x600 at a time. If you move your mouse to the edge of the screen, the view will move with you.
It's not convenient, it's annoying.
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jhol
wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 08:30
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It is convenient for those accustomed to it. Nobody is forcing you to use it.
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Yorick
wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 13:49
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The infinite desktop (though not the control schema) has been in simple window managers since time immemorial.
Go have a look at twm. Strapping a neat controller thingo onto it may work.
Try to make your ideas more concise and focused before presenting them, it makes people much more likely to recieve them well! Keep up with the thinking.
~Y
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Closed in Brainstorm at the request of the author.
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