1. 2.5D Desktop
Looking at this site http://honeybrown.ca/Pubs/BumpTop.html, and the accompanying video, made me wonder, "How can this be applicable to GNOME 3.0?". The implementation is indeed quite revolutionary, and the fact that it plays on the object-centric model of desktop is good (and I think conducive to the Gnome 3.0 goals). The problem however is in the fact that it's fully 3D, which I think could be more confusing than helpful to the user. Maybe there's a way to strike a subtle balance between this perspective/full 3D implementation of the desktop with an overhead 2.5D, where the objects have weight and physical properties (which, importantly, allows for user feedback) without being as striking as this. This is cutting edge, fairly innovative technology, so it would be pragmatic to consider implementing some of the parts of this system.
2. 3D Desktop
AntonKerezov: Since we do not have real 3D input and output devices the 3D desktop will be just a small imitation. However the popularity of three-dimensional decorations and windows managers is constantly increasing in the face of Compiz-Fusion and Beryl. Due to that fact some Linux distributions are including the effects by default such as Ubuntu 7.10 and Mandriva 2008. Despite being wonderful eye candy the 3D effects can be a trouble in some situations:
When playing games. Imagine that you have just downloaded some really cool FPS such as Nexuiz. You open the game folder and start the game. What you see (with some compiz effects enabled) is half transparent and blurred window showing you some nautilus folders and other desktop stuff as well as your game menu. Then you exit the game to change the effects of compiz and the cursor is placed in the upper left corner. Guess what happens? By accident this position of the cursor is trigger point for the Expo plug-in and you have entered Expo mode! So what should be done is to add some kind of property to files like -x,-r: -g for example (more competent people speak here
), identifying the entry as game and thus forcing the responsible effects subsystem to disable some of the unnecessary effects as window transparency and trigger points but leave some important ones. After all the windows should be movable, resizeable or minimizable. Not intuitive use and unnecessary effects. There are some effects that are hardly used. For example I rarely change my desktop with the rotate cube plug-in. I prefer to do that with the keyboard shortcut. Useless effects are paint fire and rain. But when integrated properly they may be very useful - it would be cool to have the rain effect when you enter keyboard break mode and the screen is locked.
User confusion. Some 3D stuff may be difficult to get accepted by certain types of people.
I think that in Gnome 3.0 the 3D graphics have to be a must. But it should be carefully and wisely integrated so that people could feel naturally using the system. For example it would be really nice to have Evince special full screen mode that displays the book contents as e real book with two pages at once and smooth animation for page scrolling, like in a real book!
Please excuse my imperfect English.