Heh, offtopic.
On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, Nicholas Leippe wrote:
>
> IMO it may as well be ignored. There's no sense in keeping up with the
> Jones's if the Jones's aren't doing anything fundamentally worthwhile. What
> great new advantage does Longhorn tout to provide?
I think the "great advantage" as far as MS is concerned is to sell new
hardware.
That doesn't mean it's necessarily a stupid idea.
> How does rewriting the
> window manager on top of a 3d api improve the useability? And since when has
> MS ever really improved useability--XP?
I don't think MS has ever _really_ gone for useability. Because people
don't care.
What people _do_ care about, and MS knows this (and hey, X people should
know it too) is visually rich environments (cynically: "eye candy", but I
actually think it's more than that).
Be honest now: opaque moves are largely eye candy. As are those window
outlines that burp up when you maximize or minimize a window. Things like
that - they are largely a more visual confirmation of what is going on.
And that's more than just "candy" - it looks good, but more importantly
when you get used to the effects they are actually a visual hint on what
is happening.
3D support for that is a no-brainer. Those window outlines that you used
to have when opaque moves were too expensive are just not acceptable any
more: people expect to see the window content while moving stuff around.
Similarly, people pretty much _will_ take things like the windows "folding
down" when minimized, instead of just a outline suggestion.
So I think it's inevitable that people _will_ want to use the 3D engine to
minimize and maximize windows. Dismissing it because it isn't "useful" is
short-sighted. The desktop experience is to a large degree about a lot of
small visual details that make the desktop appear richer.
Things that simply aren't practical to do with 2D acceleration but become
"trivial" with the kinds of support you need for 3d are things like smooth
linear scaling with anti-aliasing (which you _can_ in theory obviously do
with 2d-only hardware, but nobody does it, because such hardware on its
own just wouldn't be useful enough to warrant the exercise).
And dammit, it just would look _cool_ if a window rotated away into the
distance when you close them.
THAT, I think, is the MS approach. Useful? Whatever. Some of the visual
clues certainly can be useful, but that's not really the point, is it?
Richer experience, leaving the "old flat look" looking very dated indeed.
So don't dismiss it. Rich interfaces can potentially make people come up
with some truly useful approaches.
Linus
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