'Looking Glass' 3d Desktop from Sun

Category: Videos
Link: 'Looking Glass' video (Real Media). Demo of a 3d Desktop from SUN.

Posted on MacBytes.com

Approved by arn

oh my god...I want that operating system....:eek:

Project Looking Glass is being created to work with the Solaris and Linux desktop environments using Java technology

I'd use linux even more if I could have those features :D

Looks kind of like exposé, but better.

I like the notes on the Back of a page, but what happens when you close the window? Where does the note go?

The HUGE icons at the bottom get in the way, and the compressed windows at the side take up too much room. While the technology is cool, they really didn't USE it when they made it, that's obvious or things would shrink more. Some of the technology is IN OS X now, and some of it could be added easily. Overall, it wasn't THAT much cooler than OS X.

Originally posted by Keynoteuser
I like the notes on the Back of a page, but what happens when you close the window? Where does the note go?

They are probably stored in the file

The HUGE icons at the bottom get in the way, and the compressed windows at the side take up too much room.

Thought the same thing. I bet they could make it scalable

Some of the technology is IN OS X now, and some of it could be added easily.

Yea, once longhorn comes out, they could do something similar to this as well since its going to use directx in the UI, probably wont though.

This is eye candy + functionality. I like it :D

Will they be selling this soon? or giving it away with their current OS?

As far as moving things to the side, I dont see how that is any better than the osx dock. infact the dock is smaller.

The notes on the back are cool,

WOW, someone using Real Player format!

I regularly have so many windows that the stack of windows would meet in the center.

I struggle with the number of windows even with exposé. In all-window mode, I'm left with 20 or 30 tiles that all look like sourcecode windows, and I have to mouseover them all. Here are some enhancements I've come up with, that i've already feedbacked to apple.

- Labeling an exposé'd window with windowname or app icon.
- Being able to scale all windows, or certain ones, by a small factor, for example, 90% (this would give me more effective space)
- Being able to auto-scale background windows a certain amount.
- a Minimize that doesn't fill up the dock with even MORE stuff (I don't use minimize at all, since doing so make all my dock icons shrink). Minimize-In-Place was a cool haxie I had at one point, but i don't use haxies, since moving to a different Mac would be awkward.
-- perhaps mousing over a dock app icon would present a second row with that apps windows. I've been meaning to screenshot that idea, as it's hard to explain.
- I'd like to be able to twist a window (along the z-axis) so that I could stack windows on top of each other, but still see corners I could click on. Right now, I have to have them all sized differently, and I still get smaller ones lost on top of larger ones.

Of course, if Dreamweaver had a single-document-interface kind of setting, that would be groovalicious too.

It's good to see that they are trying to get people to 'Think Different'!!!!

I like the comment at the end of the video 'The dominant company that provides the desktop' and then something about how they don't want to change bla bla bla

Looks cool. In my opinion it provides more eye candy than functionality. The guy demonstrated something very similar to exposé, but 3D-ish. Still when they fold to the side, they still take up a considerable amount of screen area.

This shows us that the 3D metaphor approach is very feasible in the future and will open new ways for us to interact with our computers. But from the demo, the desktop is still a desktop except it wiggles a little bit. What I think would be cool is to have the 3D analogue of a 2D desktop, and make it an environment. Maybe a room, decorated with real wallpaper, or maybe your environment can be a big open field to place your documents or programs. I don't know if it would be harder or easier to navigate though. Still the possibilities are endless.