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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.




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.