Robert Rapplean's dashboard

I'm not too worried about the off-screen thing. Many OS's and graphics cards already allow multiple virtual desktops that you can switch between, and this is just a more dynamic extension of that.

For normal desktops, I'd really like to see a hilbert space where panning squishes things asymtotically as they approach the edge of the screen, kind of like a Hilbert space. I think that would be awesome for having a near infinite desktop where you could actually see everything.

It's a fun idea, and I like it, but I think that it's outside of what BumpTop is attempting to accomplish. Let me dissect it a little.

If what you want is an electricity simulation, then what you would wind up with in reality is a toy on the inside (like Falling Sand or Life) with functionality no better than a slow scripted object on the outside. Scripted objects are cool, and they will probably be fun over time (it would be fun to have a robot wander around and re-arrange my icons based on an algorithm), but having an electricity simulation under the hood would really just be an obstacle to adoption.

If you want to use a physical environment to link the results of one program to the input of another then you're talking about either a Graphical Development Environment or a Graphical Process Control tool, of which there are already several in the works.

In general, I'd say that something like this sounds like a fun idea, but BumpTop would just wind up duplicating something that's going on elsewhere in a way that distracts from their primary goals.

This sounds like a great tool to help you pick out icons on a busy background. It wouldn't be too tough to implement it as a setting that displayed the background images at a higher gamma.

I'm basing this on my experience with MMO's. Being able to adjust both your viewing angle and your viewing distance while you're working is extremely valuable when you're rearranging things.