Is a fully interactive html desktop possible?

[Nothinman]

This is what MS Bob is... http://toastytech.com/guis/bob2.html

That's terrible, even if it was reimplemented in a way that looked half decent. Computer UIs are complicated enough as is, something like Bob just makes things worse because it tries to out think you and hides way too much from the end user. Sure, in a perfect world that would work out well because the UI would be complete enough to cover all of the computer's uses and the user would never need to get to any advanced settings, but that's so far from the truth that it's not even funny, even in Windows.

Here is a (really junky) webpage I just through together to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

How is that better than what we currently have? Using Java for any facet of the UI would suck because Java is slow and nothing is worse than a laggy UI. And more specifically, how in the hell is clicking on a picture on the wall to edit your desktop properties intuitive? I think MS Bob failed because it was trying to map aspects of a computer to "every day" objects in people's lives, but the correlations made no sense so the thing was even more confusing than a simple menu.

 

[drag]

Microsoft bob seemed more of a sweetheart gift to Bill Gate's new programmer girlfriend (now wife) then a real usefull product. It's obviously intensely crappy.


Java also sucks. For a veriaty of reasons. Some technical, some political.

If your curious for the 'ultimate' java-based UI aviable today you have to look at Sun's (creater of java, obviously) 'Project Looking Glass'. It's a effort to build a UI out of the Java 3d api for the X Windows enviroment. (Linux and Solaris operating systems specificly).

It's a full 3d and accelerated desktop enviroment with all sorts of nice eye candy, twisting floating windows, real transparencies, moving backgrounds, and all that happy stuff.

Sun used it as a technology demo to show off how Microsoft limited UI technology in a magnificent way by inhibiting growth and compition.. stuff like that. It was originally a little java hack that one of their better programmers played around with in his spare time.. or something like that.

Screenshot here:
https://lg3d.dev.java.net/branding/images/lg3d-core/lg_snapshot.png

The cd's spin and move an flip and stuff like that. The background moves a bit following the cursor and maybe you'd see distant birds flying.. or something like that.

Now it's a open source product and a community website was made to support it's developement. Sun had the good sense to GPL' it at least.

Like Symphony OS they have a Live CD you can boot off of if your curious and want to see it. I don't know how well it works or anything like that, I don't have much interest in the project, but it could end up being very interesting in the future I suppose.

You can find the live cd here:
https://lg3d-livecd.dev.java.net/

You can find a old video of the original demo.. It's a couple years old and it was very cool back then.
http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/demo.xml

More screenshots.
http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details.xml

 

[barnett25]

How is that better than what we currently have? Using Java for any facet of the UI would suck because Java is slow and nothing is worse than a laggy UI. And more specifically, how in the hell is clicking on a picture on the wall to edit your desktop properties intuitive? I think MS Bob failed because it was trying to map aspects of a computer to "every day" objects in people's lives, but the correlations made no sense so the thing was even more confusing than a simple menu.

You would still have the start menu for accessing every aspect of the computer just like you can now. All this does is replace the static (useless) jpg desktop image.
The thing about this is that you can decide if you want the picture on the wall to change your desktop, or if you want it to start HL2, or start a vpn connection... whatever you want. Basically your imagination is the limit for this.

 

[Nothinman]

All this does is replace the static (useless) jpg desktop image

Which you can do now with ActiveDesktop, I wouldn't be surprised if you could embed flash in that too which would let you do everything you want.

 

[barnett25]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

All this does is replace the static (useless) jpg desktop image

Which you can do now with ActiveDesktop, I wouldn't be surprised if you could embed flash in that too which would let you do everything you want.

If it lets you run programs then yes, it would do this. But I'm pretty sure you can't do that (although maybe with active x, i dont know).

 

[Nothinman]

If it lets you run programs then yes, it would do this. But I'm pretty sure you can't do that (although maybe with active x, i dont know).

IE supports multiple security zones, you can probably mess with the permissions of the local security zone to allow that.