“The desktop metaphor was a brilliant innovation–30 years ago. Now it’s an unmanageable mess, and the search is on for a better way to handle information. […] If you have ever forgotten what you named a file or which folder you put it in, you probably will agree that it’s time for a change. The desktop metaphor is decades old, arising from early-1970s work at Xerox’s fabled Palo Alto Research Center, and was never intended to address today’s computing needs. TechReview searches for our next computer Interface.
The Next Computer Interface
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
will be either eye driven or voice driven depending on the environment ….
lol.. bad luck if you have a stutter or an eye twitch.. you’ll be double-clicking everything.
heh.
From the article:
> If you have ever forgotten what you named a file or which folder you
> put it in, you probably will agree that it’s time for a change.
That’s what BeOS –> “Find…” and attributes are for.
> …Today we’re using the same
> metaphor to manage the countless files on our ever more capacious
> hard drives, as well as to access the virtually limitless information on
> the Web. The result? Big, messy hierarchies of folders. Favorites lists
> where you never find anything again. Pull-down menus too long to
> make sense of.
Heh, this coming from a guy that (judging from his picture) can’t seem to
keep his shirt tucked in or his hair from being bed-headed.
> …alternatives that borrow from video games the
> notion of having an intelligent guide, or avatar, to help us find what
> we’re looking for …
Oh yeah! Like the paper clip!
Ok, I’ll stop now.
Pls spare me the “voice activated” bullshit!
As a Deaf\Hard of hearing person nothing gets
me steamed more than talk like this..what the
hell am I supposed to do in this beautiful
future of yours? or have all the Deaf\blind\
etc… people been “taken care of” in this
bright vision of the future?
And spare us the animated paperclips\loyal “retrievers”
Why not just give everyone a database like interface, were they search for all information, and just edit that information when needed? ala Star Trek style?
I see no problem. I manage my folders and files very easly. I have a place for everything. Games go into the “Game folder”, Multimedia go into the “Mutlimedia ” folder, downloads go into the “Download” folder, etc… and each folder has sub folders. I learned along time ago, on my Amiga, that proper folder management makes for easier computing. No matter how “easy” you make it, people will still find ways to make it difficult. Oh, for the user who noted BeOS finder, right on brother. BeOS was the next step in computing, unforutantly bad managment, unforgiving market, and other facters lead to its failure.
Jim
Look at the automobile. A lot has changed under the hood & in the passenger compartment, but there is still a steering wheel
& gas pedal, after close to a hundred years. Some things just fit into the human psyche better than others. Change for change’s
sake is kinda silly.
Ugh, 3D interfaces should not be invisioned like the ones in this article. In fact, no 3D interface will ever make it in this world until some sort of 3D projection is invented. 3D on a 2D plane just halves the efficiency.
And what’s all of this voice recognition? At current, all voice recognition software has trouble understanding complex phrases and won’t be intelligent enough to compensate for a long while. And what’s the use of voice recognition without true AI capabilities? If I’m going to talk to my computer, it better damn well know what I mean … no use in memorizing specific commands – point and click is easier.
Just try to imagine how would you tell your avatar what are you going to do right now… It seems to me what clicking and pointing is much faster and easier than speaking with a new Microsoft’s clip reincarnate.
It’s pretty long, though… I hated that article. 10% was interesting and worth reading at the end, the rest is a bunch of commercial hype trash. The desktop files and folders metaphore has lasted this long for a good reason: no one has come up with a better method. STILL. Organizing things chronologically is about as idiotic as it gets. If someone wants to see my lengthly destruction of the article, let me know and I will post it or email it to ya… I’m far more articulate in that than I am right now…
“It’s pretty long, though… I hated that article. 10% was interesting
and worth reading at the end, the rest is a bunch of commercial hype
trash. The desktop files and folders metaphore has lasted this long
for a good reason: no one has come up with a better method. ”
Actually, they did, long ago. The 2-column file manager is much more
usable than the “desktop” GUI for all kinds of file management. It’s
difficult to make it work properly on Windows because every program
runs inside a window frame, so you can’t access the pixels along the
edges of the screen. But windows Commander is a good try.
But look at DOpus 4 on Amiga. It works. And you can set either or both
columns to display in chronological order, which is convenient for
finding data files in big directories.
The example screens shown in that article were exceptionally bad even
by the usual standards of these Experts.