BumpTop, Pushing the Desktop Metaphor 213
Alranor writes "BumpTop is a new way of manipulating your GUI desktop with a graphics pen. Documents can be moved and piled (among other actions) as if they were real pieces of paper on a physical desktop. Simulated real physical interactions, such as documents pushing others out of the way as you move them around, are intended to increase the intuitiveness of the layout tool. Given the messiness of my desks at work and home, I'm not so sure this will work for me, but it's an interesting idea."
There's a neat video demo linked from the site (and a "hip-hop overview") if you want to see BumpTop in action; unfortunately for Linux users, BumpTop seems to be Windows-only. As reader idangazit describes it, this is "not just another "me-too" alternative UI; a lot of effort and polish has been put into the (pen-based) interaction, resulting in a very natural way of interacting with collections of information. Less sci-fi than Minority Report, but far more likely to hit a desktop near you in the next few years." Update: 06/22 16:55 GMT by T : As zdzichu reader points out in the comments below, a visually similar project called lowfat, with an equally impressive video demo, is being developed — with enough sponsorship, lowfat will go open source.
At a glance... (Score:5, Insightful)
I watched that video and the entire time I thought 'useless' until they showed the photos. There was also once a video of someone using multiple fingers to manipulate photographs, and I thought this would be useful as well. Neither of these systems can do much for me otherwise, though.
As for being Windows-only... I think that shows how short-sited these people are. Linux users are quite a bit more likely to embrace change than Windows users. But, maybe that's to our advantage. We can now design and implement a MUCH better and more useable system that was intelligently designed (I couldn't resist) instead of just what someone thought was cool.
If I had much free time, I would be working on it myself.
Star Trek 42 (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I want my computer to be *better* organized than my desk, not worse.
Simple Pleasures (Score:3, Insightful)
It just wouldn't be the same if it was ALL technology. I like to touch things with my hands. I like getting a pile of documents in my hands and banging the sides so they all align. I like dumping a big pile of papers onto someone I don't like's desk. Ink stains on a white shirt, I could do without though.
Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this is a research project, and some of its results may find their way into mainstream UIs. For example, I could think of a variation of the lasso menu. Draw a lasso using the mouse over a couple of files, then pull up, and a directory is created with all marked files in it.
Re:At a glance... (Score:3, Insightful)
You *are* kidding, right? In my experience (both personal and based on comments here) Linux users tend to be the least flexible, most opposed to change people I've ever met. That's not to say that they *all* are, of course, but read any article here about KDE, Gnome, xgl, new HCI ideas, etc and you'll see a whole slew of comments deriding it, with a lot of them expousing the innate superiority of the commenter's chosen preference (be it WindowMaker, the CLI, vi & make rather than an IDE, C rather than a higher level language, etc).
Yes, you also get a lot of comments arguing against them, but if anything that merely implies that as a whole, Linux users are neither more nor less likely to embrace change.
Hell, a lot of the die-hard Linux users *won't* embrace change - lots of them got their computing start on Unix boxes. Not all Linux users have migrated away from Windows in disgust; a lot (myself included) got our start on OSes other than Windows.
Look at the bigger picture. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with these kinds of technology demos is that many people view them as an end product, and then write them off without considering how they might fit into a larger environment. Besides, isn't part of the usefulness of computers to be able to perform tasks virtually that could not otherwise be done in the physical world? If such function is provided in an intuitive way, then it makes computing more seamless and useful.
Re:Why emulate old technology? (Score:2, Insightful)
> back and try to digitally emulate a system that is antiquated? A computer offers endless
> opportunities for organizing and storing data, I see this as a step back.
Also, I don't actually have many "documents" on my "desk top". There are a few pieces of paper on my desk. I don't really much them around very much though.
Re:Why emulate old technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes the UI has to take a step back because there are users out there who find it hard to take the step forward.
I agree that it's a bad idea to limit your thinking to physical metaphors if you can reasonably think in a similar way to the way a computer works, but then this probably isn't the right desktop for us. If however there's someone new to computers who doesn't want to or is unable to relearn their dead wood system, I think the option of such a desktop would be great for them.
Too little too late (Score:3, Insightful)
Bob by any other name is still Bob. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why emulate old technology? (Score:2, Insightful)
Countless times. On a computer AND on paper. On a computer, so what? It's easy to search when needed. On paper? Now that really sucks. That's one reason I hate paper. Print it, and it's lost.
Oh, and that is true for "neatly organized" and "not organized at all" (AKA "huge pile"). Organizing just makes searching easier to avoid and easier to do.
Unfortunately, "not using paper" often means "using PDF". Well, at least they are searchable, and I can have an open window next to it.
Re:Why emulate old technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no technophobe, but I always have at least one paper document on my desk at work. Why? Firstly, because then I can free up my monitor for more important things like my text editor, and secondly because I can scrawl all over a paper document with my handy ballpoint pen much more easily than I can annotate an electronic document using my mouse and keyboard.
Physical limitations are absurd. (Score:5, Insightful)
And then of course, you have to deal with the extra processing costs inherent in such a desktop. It may look pretty, but behind it you have to have the CPU doing plenty of physics calculations, the GPU doing rendering, anti-alwhich could slow down a slow system with a cluttered desktop.
My biggest gripe with this, however, is the fact that the icons all look the same. I don't want to have to memorize the placement of documents on my desktop (even though I often do so through simple habit, anyway), and these icons barely indictate file type, much less name, which I find to be a huge handicap. Without file names on the desktop, things get confusing rather quickly.
A final gripe I have is that, if we must use a pen-type device, does that mean we're switching from a pen to a mouse whenever we want to use an application that's incompatable/inconvenient when using this software?
The technology is interesting, but I doubt its practical use.
Re:Why emulate old technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole point of having a computer is to free yourself from paper.
No, it isn't. The whole point of having a computer is to make tedious and repetitive tasks easier. The "paperless office" hype was just a way to promote the use of computers ("cut costs by reducing the amount of paper used"). Or maybe it was just the standard answer given to business people by computer salesmen: "What can you do with it? Well, uh, I don't know, you'll have to spend a lot less money on paper?"
So why would you take a step back and try to digitally emulate a system that is antiquated?
Because this is what they're used to. First GUI-s used the file cabinet metaphor because this is what they were mostly used for -- filekeeping. The people using them were used to having huge file cabinets around. These days, computers are more and more being used for creating stuff, not only archiving it; the people doing this kind of work are used to having to work behind a desk full of stacks of paper. Eventually, this will change. Someone will come up with a more efficient way of interacting with information. But people first have to get used to using a computer (twenty years of personal computing might seem like a long time, but it isn't). A familiar environment will make it much easier for them to wrap their minds around this new thing.
A computer offers endless opportunities for organizing and storing data, I see this as a step back.
A computer can only do what you want it to do. If you don't know what a "new" interface should look like, then "emulating a system that is antiquated" is the first logical step in developing one.
Re:Why emulate old technology? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why emulate old technology? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why emulate old technology? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's more like 30 years for the GUI (Xerox PARC started developing their GUI for the Alto in 1972) and that *is* a long time.
In the first 30 years of powered flight we went from the primitive Wright flyer (range about 1/2 mile, controlled by pulling wires) to the DC-3 (range about 1,000 miles, modern controls, some are still in use today). The first 30 years of automobiles went from carrieges with a steam engine in the back and a wooden horse head on the front to the model T Ford. The first 30 years of radio went from morse code tapped out on spark-gap transmitters to commercial music and voice broadcasts.
The first 30 years of GUI development have seen the amazing technological leap from using a mouse to click on blocky black-and-white icons and widgets to using a mouse to click on blocky 16-color icons and widgets, to using a mouse to click on smooth 32-bit color icons and widgets. We're still using the same concepts of a desktop, folders and files, the same types of widgets, and the same input devices. The graphics have gotten prettier, but that's about it.