Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 13th May 2008 18:30 UTC
Rethinking the desktop metaphor, or even improving it in any significant way, is a daunting task, and few dare to take the risk. The end result is that the desktop metaphor that we use today barely changed over the years - which is quite unique for the computing industry, as normally, things change very rapidly.
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Member since:
2006-06-24
I thought of this, except for the live previews, but I decided it was useless. Zooming in and out destroys your spatial memory with considerable force. So whole idea of remembering physically is vanishes into smoke, when things aren't there any more. Well, they are, but the view is zoomed. And the human brain plain and simply isn't constructed to remember where stuff is in a physically flat 3d space.
Another problem is that unless this can be the only file manager, the user has to learn two programs instead of one. And they have completely different interfaces. Which totally ruins this idea, whose purpose was to make stuff easier. (Making stuff easier isn't done by adding complexity without removing any complexity.)
Of course, we can drop the normal file manager completely, and only use the desktop. As far as I can see, this will be a mess unless the zoom range is very big. But, if the zoom range is very big, then the spatial memory will not be cooperative, as shown by usability tests.