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Focus!
First of all, Sir Agarawala, you and your colleagues rock! This is the future and I have no doubt about it. BumpTop is stuffed full of great ideas and I've been following the project for long already. I'll add my two cents.
What I think is somehow hindering the managing of icons-files (especially since Bumptop is all about managing literally BUNCHES of them) is the fact that the more icons lumped together, the less visual hints there are. So in my opinion there should be (at least optionally) a way of enlarging the area where one is working by tieing a magnified focus to the mouse pointer or by some other method. When multitouch is implemented, a gesture could be used to select just a section of the screen.
This way we could be able to have a clearer view of icons we are working on, esp. useful to make full use of thumbnails (see below) or just to tell one file from another. Yes I've got this feeling sometimes things are a bit too far from the eye compared to the OLD :-) Windows desktop.
Others:
1 - as many other people have pointed out (and I understand you have taken notice already) there should be an option to glue single icons, or groups of them, to the desktop in case we don't want them bumped around or we don't want them eligible for making piles.
2 - Thumbnails for PDF, HTM, PPT etc. etc. documents (optional at least).
3 - I, too, believe the "more" option to get to the original context menu when right-clicking on a file is a little inconvenient. Right-clicking with CTRL pressed hardly improves the situation. In my mind there should be something like "right-click on an icon invokes the original menu, and subsequently moving the pointer to the left or upwards brings up the circular menu.
4 - (very important) CRISPER icons - and thumbnails when implemented! Have them designed in vectorial. As of now, the more I enlarge them, the more blurry they get.
5 - I'd like to have "light arrows" for the shortcuts, the likes of those TweakUI allows for.
6 - Everyone wants that and me too... get Crumpling AND Peeling the icons back!
7 - Give support for non-latin fonts (specifically Chinese) for the filenames (this is possibly my fault but I still see squares in place of Chinese characters).
8 - Last but not least - give back to BumpTop icons that solid, tactile feel that I loved so much in the video of the prototype. There definitely has to be an option to have them in 3D. Yes I know it's going to be heavier on resources, but I believe it's an important part of the experience. If we could have a chance to choose the thickness of the icons, this could also be expedient in delivering visual clues - for example, the info on the type of file - or even its name - could even be carried on the "spine" (the small side) of the icon - and we would not always need shuffling a pile to get a peek at the single icons. This would go in the direction of the "library shelf" metaphor many people have mentioned already.
Ok, I believe that's a lot of stuff for now... sorry for being so wordy!
(added) Well now I remember... in the videoclip in the very home page of BumpTop.com there IS a magnifying effect on the section of the desktop where operations with icons are performed... by the sound of it, this requires hitting some key... but in this page
http://bumptop.pbwiki.com/BumpTop-Key...
I haven't found anything regarding focusing or zooming... Is it currently in development maybe?
What I think is somehow hindering the managing of icons-files (especially since Bumptop is all about managing literally BUNCHES of them) is the fact that the more icons lumped together, the less visual hints there are. So in my opinion there should be (at least optionally) a way of enlarging the area where one is working by tieing a magnified focus to the mouse pointer or by some other method. When multitouch is implemented, a gesture could be used to select just a section of the screen.
This way we could be able to have a clearer view of icons we are working on, esp. useful to make full use of thumbnails (see below) or just to tell one file from another. Yes I've got this feeling sometimes things are a bit too far from the eye compared to the OLD :-) Windows desktop.
Others:
1 - as many other people have pointed out (and I understand you have taken notice already) there should be an option to glue single icons, or groups of them, to the desktop in case we don't want them bumped around or we don't want them eligible for making piles.
2 - Thumbnails for PDF, HTM, PPT etc. etc. documents (optional at least).
3 - I, too, believe the "more" option to get to the original context menu when right-clicking on a file is a little inconvenient. Right-clicking with CTRL pressed hardly improves the situation. In my mind there should be something like "right-click on an icon invokes the original menu, and subsequently moving the pointer to the left or upwards brings up the circular menu.
4 - (very important) CRISPER icons - and thumbnails when implemented! Have them designed in vectorial. As of now, the more I enlarge them, the more blurry they get.
5 - I'd like to have "light arrows" for the shortcuts, the likes of those TweakUI allows for.
6 - Everyone wants that and me too... get Crumpling AND Peeling the icons back!
7 - Give support for non-latin fonts (specifically Chinese) for the filenames (this is possibly my fault but I still see squares in place of Chinese characters).
8 - Last but not least - give back to BumpTop icons that solid, tactile feel that I loved so much in the video of the prototype. There definitely has to be an option to have them in 3D. Yes I know it's going to be heavier on resources, but I believe it's an important part of the experience. If we could have a chance to choose the thickness of the icons, this could also be expedient in delivering visual clues - for example, the info on the type of file - or even its name - could even be carried on the "spine" (the small side) of the icon - and we would not always need shuffling a pile to get a peek at the single icons. This would go in the direction of the "library shelf" metaphor many people have mentioned already.
Ok, I believe that's a lot of stuff for now... sorry for being so wordy!
(added) Well now I remember... in the videoclip in the very home page of BumpTop.com there IS a magnifying effect on the section of the desktop where operations with icons are performed... by the sound of it, this requires hitting some key... but in this page
http://bumptop.pbwiki.com/BumpTop-Key...
I haven't found anything regarding focusing or zooming... Is it currently in development maybe?
I’m Confident
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The more people who like this idea, the more it gets noticed.
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Inappropriate?I do like some of your ides myself, but I personalyl think the circular right click menu is perfectly fine, I really don't care if I have to click 'More...'.
I do thorougly enjoy the idea of adding some substance to icons, kind of like how pictures are currently implemented, but it could be really difficult wth anything that isn't a solid rectangle or square. I guess retracing the edges of filled areas to give the illusion of a 3D model... but then we're talking about adding textures on texture and that's just going to hammer the VRAM...
But I digress.... I'm going to clicky the like button, but I don't agree with the right-click menus point.
I’m excited
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This is one of the best points
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Well It's beyond me how people can consider the option for enlarging or shrinking an icon to be hierarchically above the basic functions for a file like cutting, pasting or deleting and as such require one click less. At the very least they should be put in the same menu...
As to the difficulty in rendering 3d icons, I never said the shape has to follow that of the icon, a 3D parallelepiped would do perfectly fine - I'm just wishing for BumpTop to go back to the prototype video in this, no more and no less. As to the additional texture, I believe a 256 colors 15 per 50 texture would be more than enough if only to show the file type on the small face of the parallelepiped... I don't think it would be much of an additional load... especially if the zooming-focusing got implemented, and the side texture only got visualized when a small fraction of the desktop was shown. -
Inappropriate?I'm not saying the options already in place for the radial menu are important, I'm saying the radial menu itself is a fantastic idea. I would like to see cut/copy/paste/delete in that menu, with everything else in the 'More...' category. I like the radial menu myself because it lends to the whole feel of BumpTop being something truly different.
ANd the problem with the icons for me is that I really like having my icons with transparencies. For instance, the shortcut icon for the game 'Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time' is the logo you see all over the palace in the game. The edes of the icon uses transparant colour so the logo itself is the only part of the icon you see. I really wouldn't like that icon slapped on a solid colour 'slab'. I do really like how all of my game shortcuts are all stuck up on my north wall like stickers right now :D
For word documents, etc. however, I think it's a fantastic idea!1 Comment Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Ok Daniel, the radial menu is alright to me, only maybe it would take TWO menus (possibly to be triggered with different mouse gestures after clicking) to make room for all the options. Well what you say about having some icons transparent does make sense, but that can be achieved by having... yup, a very thin 3D icon, or a glassy one... Anyway I believe 3D is 3D, that is to say, having 2D objects bump onto each other and interact in a 3d space is not very realistic and intuitive in the first place. It beats the whole concept of it.
