Re: [Usability] spatial desktop

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Aug 23, 2006, at 4:50 PM, Ritesh Khadgaray wrote:
> ...
> random thoughts from my mind
>
> Totem is a video player, and can be made spatial
>  - remember window position, time, state ( play/pause...) .

None of those are anything to do with a spatial interface; they're just 
good manners. (Except the part about automatically resuming playback, 
which is probably inappropriate if Totem starts when you log in.)

A spatial interface is about finding things based on where they are. 
Having items stay where you left them is an important part of this, but 
only one part. Another is having each item appear only in one place, 
unless obviously advertised as a shortcut (for example, search folders 
should look very different from normal folders). Another is for 
different objects to look different from each other (for example, 
different documents should not have the same icon). Another is for the 
number of things you are navigating to be small enough or the display 
to be sophisticated enough (which is why spatial interfaces are popular 
in VR worlds, and why a spatial interface is good for folders with few 
items but poor for large things like music collections).

So whether a spatial interface is appropriate depends on the 
application. An interesting juxtaposition of the two is in Aperture, 
which uses a non-spatial interface for a photographer's overall 
library, and a spatial interface for groups of photos.
<http://urlx.org/apple.com/20b5d>

> Image viewer can have a spatial mode ( a gconf key ? to remember this )

What would that do?

> Documents viewer ( pdf ) can remember there setting per document basis.
>
> Text editor - already have an example.
>
> Additionally, we can associate an application to a particular document
> only ( not document type )
> ...

Those should happen anyway, and they aren't really anything to do with 
a spatial interface either.

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/