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Jun. 30th, 2004 02:22 pm
Project Looking Glass
I have heard a little about Project Looking Glass by Sun Microsystems lately, as they recently opened the source code for free use and update by all. Isn't it pretty?
What I don't understand is why anyone would care. I see it is pretty. But how does a 3d metaphor make better use of the desktop space? If you use Windows or KDE or CDE or Gnome or OSX, you minimize windows to a taskbar of some kind and you can bring them back with a single click. The programs continue to run and take up next-to-no space. With Looking Glass, you'd spin the window off to the side, where it would continue to take up a small but not negligible part of the main screen. Meanwhile, the content on the window is so obscured by the perspective shift that it is unusable, so why not just minimize the darned thing?
I must be somewhat dense, as I can't figure out why a window which can be turned on edge is better than the metaphor of the flat desktop we use now, where windows are behind each other or minimized. What am I missing here?
What I don't understand is why anyone would care. I see it is pretty. But how does a 3d metaphor make better use of the desktop space? If you use Windows or KDE or CDE or Gnome or OSX, you minimize windows to a taskbar of some kind and you can bring them back with a single click. The programs continue to run and take up next-to-no space. With Looking Glass, you'd spin the window off to the side, where it would continue to take up a small but not negligible part of the main screen. Meanwhile, the content on the window is so obscured by the perspective shift that it is unusable, so why not just minimize the darned thing?
I must be somewhat dense, as I can't figure out why a window which can be turned on edge is better than the metaphor of the flat desktop we use now, where windows are behind each other or minimized. What am I missing here?
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