Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 3rd Feb 2006 21:26 UTC, submitted by Anonymous
Novell and Ximian LinuxEdge has posted the videos of the presentation of Novell Desktop Linux 10 by Nat Friedman. "A preview of Novell Linux Desktop 10 was shown to an audience at the Solutions Linux conference this week. We have a selection of videos which display a variety of amazing effects through the use of XGL, including transparency, wobbling windows, a 3D cube for desktop switching, and a task switcher which displays a preview of windows."
Thread beginning with comment 92485
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
sappyvcv
Member since:
2005-07-06

1. AFAIK Vista will still be single desktop only, so no desktop switching let alone rotating cube desktop switching. I don't remember OS X having multiple desktops either.

I'm pretty sure that's because they just didn't make any demos that do it. That and it would most likely be trivial to add. The desktop is just a surface in DirectX, as are all the windows. The desktop itself is just a window. They could very easily rotate around the surface, and put multiple surfaces together to form a cube.

2. The wobbling, although weird and distracting, is original I think. It can be turned off.

Not at all. OS X had something similar (though a bit more simple) in 2001? And Longhorn demos had the exact same thing (wobbly windows) a few years ago.

3. Vista shows windows at an angle when cycling through them, XGL doesn't.

That's Flip3d. There is also just "Flip", which is pretty much the same thing as Novells.

Reply Parent Score: 2

Thom_Holwerda Member since:
2005-06-29

1. AFAIK Vista will still be single desktop only, so no desktop switching let alone rotating cube desktop switching. I don't remember OS X having multiple desktops either.

OSX uses it in two places. Firstly, when doing fast user switching. Secondly, it's a transition inside Keynote.

2. The wobbling, although weird and distracting, is original I think. It can be turned off.

Not at all. OS X had something similar (though a bit more simple) in 2001? And Longhorn demos had the exact same thing (wobbly windows) a few years ago.


It's even older. WindowFX, by the same company as WindowBlinds, supported transparent windows, completely customized shadows, wobly windows, and even other 3D transitions while dragging a window. It could (and can) also do various genie-like effects when closing windows. New effects can be created as plugins.

Before Longhorn in any case, and iirc OSX has never been as advanced as WindowFX.

Reply Parent Score: 5

sappyvcv Member since:
2005-07-06

That's true, but performance has always been pretty slow with that. I've used it before, and it was both ugly and slow even on decent hardware.

But yeah, the idea is certainly not new, nor original to anyone.

Reply Parent Score: 1