Re: Possible additional UI based on Natrificial's "The Brain"?

[Steve Dunham <dunham cps msu edu>]

Steve Butts <sbutts@purdue.edu> writes:

>    The recent Byte just did an article on a piece of Windows software by
> Natrificial called The Brain.  I won't go into details here about it, but
> basically it is a UI based on associations/thoughts instead of a file
> hierarchy.  A much better explanation is on their web page,
> www.natrificial.com.  If you have access to a Windows machine I recommend you
> check it out.

>    I've just been playing around with it last night and I think it's
> a really cool interface to augment the desktop.  Technically the
> program isn't too complex, so it shouldn't take any great leaps to
> make an equivalent.  The main problems would be the graphical
> layout, animations, and maybe getting it to work nicely with other
> programs.  For example, in The Brain there are a few ways to make
> links to a web page, one way is to drag a link from The Brain window
> to the web browser that is currently display the page to be linked.
> So somehow the web browser has to tell The Brain the URL for the
> current page.

In netscape, the current URL is stored in a property attached to the
window.  The browser can be also be instructed to go to other pages by
setting properties.

Type "xprop" and click on the netscape window to see what they look
like.


Steve
dunham@cps.msu.edu