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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Project looking glass
From:       Paul Pacheco <paul.pacheco () wavecode ! com>
Date:       2004-07-02 21:11:44
Message-ID: 200407021611.44242.paul.pacheco () wavecode ! com
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On Friday 02 July 2004 15:17, Segedunum wrote:
> What kind of machine did you install it on?

Dual pentium III 1Ghz, 1 Gb of ram, Radeon 7200.

> > and I have to say the future has been shown to me. It is still not usable
> > because it crashes a lot, and has several other problems.

> Well, you may think it is the future, but it is just not practical at all
> for several good reasons. The big one is that there is no hardware around
> that can cope with a pure 3D accelerated desktop environment at the moment,
> that will also allow people to use many everyday applications, at the same
> time, and let people run stuff like games with acceptable performance.
> Under no circumstance should you believe those Jonathan Schwartz
> presentations. What kind of hardware do you think is behind him there?

I didn't believe him, so I went, downloaded and tried the thing myself. It has 
descent performance on my computer, and it does not use much cpu. My video 
card is fairly old and is not exactly the top of the line, $15 would get you 
one like mine. Odds are, yours is better than mine.

You don't have to believe him or me, you can go ahead, download and try it for 
yourself. It is not difficult if you have 3d set up.

https://lg3d-core.dev.java.net/lg3dgettingstarted.html#Setting_up_your_Project_Looking_Glass

I don't really play a lot in linux, but If I did, and this gets on the way, it 
is very simple to turn off.

> There is no way the hardware today, or even sometime soon, can cope with
> that. People are touting Linux desktops as a way of reusing old desktops,
> so there is no way you can push a desktop environment that can't even be
> run on the stuff of tomorrow.

Believe me, my hardware can cope with it just fine. It runs on the stuff of 
today. In fact, don't believe me, please try it, it won't override anything 
on your machine and is trivial to uninstall.

And because we want to reuse old desktops, the regular 2d kwin should be kept 
around. In fact it should be the default until most people decide otherwise.

> > You can zoom out (smooth animation here), see all the virtual desktops
> > and zoom in in another desktop. What is more intuitive than that?
>
> Not only have I seen zoom added to the desktop mix, but I've also seen the
> concept of moving windows around as if they are in a 3D space with a mouse.
> This is a definite no, no usability-wise, because if you are talking about
> businesses taking this up people can just about get by on a 2D desktop as
> it is. A mouse is just not a good peripheral for doing 3D movements.

True, that is why you don't do 3d movements in here.

It behaves in pretty much the same way your window manager works today, no 
radical way of moving windows around or anything like that. Just click on the 
title bar and move it to up, down, left or right. You don't have to fear the 
learning curve, there is none.

What it does different is that you click somewhere, the camera zoomes out and 
you can see the 4 different desktop one next o the other. This is done as if 
you walk away from your monitor and see 3 other monitors. Then you click on 
one of the desktops and it zooms in into the selected desktop. This is like 
in a 3d game, where you walk out and then walk in somewhere else. Very 
smooth, very clear what you are doing.

> > It is also clear which window has the focus because you can see some
> > shadow around the window (the all famous drop shadow :) And you see the
> > window as being closer to you than the other ones.
>
> You can do that now, without the overhead of a total 3D desktop.

Not quite there yet, but I agree, no need for 3d here.

> > The minimized windows have the minimized contents in them, even video. It
> > is much easier to figure out what window to maximize, because you see a
> > miniature version of what you want.
>
> Hmm, not really. This should be possible with thumbnails when you put your
> mouse over. KDE has that with thumbnails in Konqueror, and it's quite cool
> and very useful at the same time.
>
> > Modal dialogs are displayed by fliping the window over and showing it in
> > the back of the window. This makes it clear which dialog relates to which
> > window, which could be confusing in other window managers.
>
> I fail to see how this is a step forward. You have to flip a dialogue
> around to see what window it relates to? That has absolutely no practical
> usage at all, and would probably be a step too far for a lot of users out
> there.

The logic behind my observation is that modal dialogs are tied to the window. 
And you can not use the window and the dialog box at the same time. One way 
to do it is to just open another window and disable the main window. There is 
no analogy to real world objects here, just magic. Another way is to flip the 
window around and change the options on the back. Altough not very comon, 
imagine a toy or a phone, you flip it around to adjust some stuff such as 
volume. At least there is less magic going on. I doubt any current user would 
get confused by that (I could be wrong though).

> People just about get to grips with a 2D, one-side-to-every-window desktop
> as it is. There is still a lot more work to be done on that before you
> start throwing 3D everything into the mix. 3D features and SVG could be
> used where they make some sense, but a total 3D desktop is just not on the
> cards. 

Except that we live in a 3d world, and we relate better to 3d objects than 2d 
objects. If you have the video card that does the hard work, and it is easy 
to use. It could actually be easier to get a grip on a 3d object than a 2d 
window. It is not like 3d is 1 and 1/2 harder than 2d :) it does not get more 
complicated at all.

I showed this stuff to everybody in the office, there are people who have 
experience with computers and people who don't. Nobody had an issue with the 
mouse, nobody had problems moving windows around (3d does not get in the way 
at all), everybody was impressed and kept asking me when it was going to be 
ready. This is almost like showing a graphical GUI to people who have used 
text mode terminals all their life (a little exagerated here, but it did 
spark a some interest).

Please open up, try it for yourself instead of just dismissing it as useless. 
It is very intuitive and beautifull, you might be surprised.
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