BumpTop is a new and creative desktop prototype.
Watch it in action on YouTube.
It is going to be very tough to overcome the inertia associated with the current flat desktop paradigm. I’m most impressed by the “Lasso and cross” methods of managing documents. The little pigtail action for the pie menu is cool but I’ve seen this implemented in application via a right mouse click and I have to say that it takes some getting used to.
This tip passed to me via Richard Querin’s blog Renaissance Man.
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[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBumpTop is a new and creative desktop prototype. Watch it in action on YouTube. It is going to be very tough to overcome the inertia associated with the current flat desktop paradigm. I’m most impressed by the “Lasso and cross” methods … [...]
“It is going to be very tough to overcome the inertia associated with the current flat desktop paradigm.”
Yeah, because the 3D “realistic desktop metaphor” is completely inefficient.
The desktop metaphor was a dumb idea when it was introduced, and it’s still a dumb idea now. Computers allow us to interact with documents in much richer ways than pretending that they’re a mess of overlapping papers on our desk. “Lasso and cross” is the equivalent of cleaning up your desk. Why would you want to do that if you don’t have to? Why would the computer let things become messy in the first place? Why do we allow icons and windows to overlap? Why would anything *ever* overlap? It’s a useless functionality. When one window is overlapped partially by another, it’s usually the case that enough content is hidden by the overlap as to make the visible content useless and just wasting screen space; you can read half a sentence, but the other half is hidden behind the focused window. You have to switch back to the partially-covered window anyway in order to continue using it, so why not just keep it entirely hidden? The computer interface should maximize the usefulness of the information it presents to us. Windows should try to take up as much screen space as they can without infringing on other windows (like a tiling window manager).
Putting things in “piles” is just as bad as putting them in folders. Documents should be organized with tags and put in groups or “projects”.
Instead of navigating into an arbitrary “My Pictures” folder and then into a “Family” subfolder and then into a “2000 vacation” folder, you should be able to tell the computer “show me all image files that are tagged with ‘family’ and were taken in 2000″.
Folders are just not flexible enough. One document might consist of multiple files (an automated scan of a book in which each jpeg holds a page of information; the book itself is the document, not the individual images), one project might consist of multiple documents (the Project for a book that is being written might contain the text files of different chapters, differences between revisions, emails between the authors, images, the publisher’s logo), one file might be used in multiple projects (the same publisher logo image would be used in 100 other book projects too). Projects that you are currently working on would appear on the desktop or in some kind of “Recent projects” menu, and things you haven’t touched in a while would be silently hidden away for later use. All documents would be automatically saved as you worked on them and you could close/minimize (why is there a distinction?) an entire project at once to work on later, and all the documents contained inside that project would be hidden (unless they were used in another open project). Etc. etc. etc. There are much better ways to interact with information.
And I need to publish this stuff somewhere centralized where people will actually read it. Phew, I got on a roll. ..