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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Looking Glass Redux

As well as the excitement of getting 100x my usual traffic following my Looking Glass posting, I have been interested over the last week to watch two clear reactions to Looking Glass. One is best summed up as "Way Cool" and the other as "Bah, Humbug".

Most of the posts I have seen in the "Cool" category have been appreciative of the eye-candy, rather than getting excited about anything specific. On the other hand, the "Humbug" category (ignoring a little anti-Sun rock-throwing, especially on SlashDot and in the Seattle PI comments) has yielded plenty of detailed discussion, but most of it seems to have been about whether LG is actually a 3D interface ("no coloured glasses?") and whether, abstractly, 3D interfaces have anything to offer (usually from people who sound as if they feel GUIs are inferior to EMACS). Very few have actually commented on the specific innovations shown in the demos.

SciFi HiFi seems to be in the 'Humbug' category (and from Apple, Chris!), asking "what does 3D buy us in the GUI". I've tried Looking Glass and the best thing it brings is the ability to clear space on the desktop without dismissing or hiding the windows involved. Expose is great (I'm a Mac user) but temporary - when I resume work the clutter comes back. LG offers another approach to clearing space for work, where I can slant & stack windows to the left and right of my workspace. Parked like that I can still get an idea of their content or maybe even read them, and that feature alone is very worthwhile. I don't think anyone has commented on it though.

Being demonstrated for theatrical effect at COMDEX may have given the impression that it's some sort of polished, about-to-be-released product, but it's still a prototype. As such offers a place to experiment with other ideas - some good, some not so. Being able to flip a window and use a 'stickie' on the back of it is handy, replacing icons on the 'dock' with mini versions of the full window is less so, and applications attempting to be "completely 3D" definitely need work - the CD Player is a work-in-progress.

posted at 2:42 PM (UK) | |