Once More Through the Looking Glass
I know everyone’s probably sick of hearing me talk about Project Looking Glass by now, but Sun’s Chief Technology Evangelist, Simon Phipps, has posted a level-headed response to my original critique, and I would be remiss if I didn’t give it a mention.
Phipps responds to my essential question, “What does 3D buy us in the GUI?” with some good points about its benefits for window management:
I’ve tried Looking Glass and the best thing it brings is the ability to clear space on the desktop without dismissing or hiding the windows involved. Exposé is great (I’m a Mac user) but temporary - when I resume work the clutter comes back. LG offers another approach to clearing space for work, where I can slant & stack windows to the left and right of my workspace. Parked like that I can still get an idea of their content or maybe even read them, and that feature alone is very worthwhile.
This is definitely a valid point—I personally would still strongly caution against the sort of thinking represented by “3D apps” like the CD player, but I can definitely appreciate the more mundane benefits of a 3D windowing system.
Phipps also mentions Looking Glass’s “flippable window” concept, which is aesthetically pleasing—but I’m still not sure I buy into it. As someone suggested to me today, it could be an neat approach for apps that use an edit/preview paradigm (you could edit HTML on one side, and flip it over to see the rendered page), but I would be concerned about the time involved in displaying the “flipping” animation (I speak from experience here—a frequent criticism of my own PodWorks app used to be that its neat window resizing animation slowed users down). I’m also not sure what I’d use the notes field on the back of windows for, but, then, I’ve never been much of a Stickies user anyway!
As a former Java programmer, I also feel duty-bound to apologize for something that Phipps didn’t call me on: my assertion that the term “Java” is a complete misnomer where the Java Desktop System is concerned. While it is true that the JDS itself is Linux-based, and thus not fundamentally “Java,” it turns out that the Looking Glass windowing system is mostly written in Java, which is pretty cool! Whatever you think of the 3D UI, the whole system certainly makes a spectacular demo of Java’s sometimes underestimated capabilities.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I have to say about that for awhile!