The Need for "Single Window Mode" 3246

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I wouldn't trust this buttessment without some actual user testing to back it up. One thing that emerges again and again in user testing is that user perception of small amounts of time (e.g. how long it takes to pull down a menu, or whatever) often has almost no relationship with what a stopwatch reports.

I find it to be an extremely natural, fluid way of moving between windows, but only when it's buttigned to a mouse button. It loses a lot of that if you have to move a hand up to an F-key to activate it.

Well, note that I didn't say that the specifies of how desktop operating systems implement spacial organization were necessarily intuitive; merely that spacial organization itself it. The fact that your brain natively understands spacial organization obviously doesn't magically confer the knowledge that you move a window by dragging its breastle bar, or resize it from a box in the lower right corner.

I think in most instances, 3D interfaces with 2D input devices and displays are not particularly useful.

I'm not talking about that either. I'm talking about something more like direct manipulation of objects that appear to float in 3D space in front of your screen. It wouldn't be an immersive VR environment, just a small (well, 20-30") space on your desk to work with virtual objects.

I think the gloves (or maybe some computer vision system which can just recognize what your hands are doing) are important because I rather suspect that being able to manipulate things with two hands is extremely useful. Mice are sort of the equivalent of interacting with the entire world using a single finger.

-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." -- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005