[Gzz] Re: ideat

[Tuomas Lukka]

(Cc: gzz-deville, jossa muutkin lukevat)

On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 07:27:38PM +0300, Marketta Niemelä wrote:
> FENFIRE USER INTERFACE
> 
> Connectedness
> Hyperstructure
> 
> Fillets
> A visually effective way to show links between two visible elements
> 
> Textures
> Backgrounds of documents, may help the user to recognize the document on
> the basis of the background
> Help to perceive the direction and speed of movement of the viewport
> Should not affect legibility or readability of text, or interfere object
> recognition, etc.
> 
> Nadir
> A "three-dimensional" way to position elements on the screen...?

No. Nothing 3D about it. Rotates 2-D:ly all object so that their "down" vector
at their center points to a point somewhere below the screen.

Because rotation is preattentive, separates the objects better from each other.
Also looks surprisingly natural.

> Fisheye view
> A view for searching in a document, focus+context (when reading, a flat
> view may be more comfortable)

> Document pages displayed side by side, scrolling through the document in
> horizontal direction

This is a non-essential feature we just happen to have, not something really
deep.

> Buoys
> Work as (small) viewports to other documents, 
> floating in the margin

Uhh, here you're confusing the separate ideas.

1) Buoys = things that float in the margin with a very specific geometry.

2) The user interfaces you've seen where connections are between planes
   and the fragment is shown as a buoy

These concepts are on different levels.

> Can be (or always are?) visually connected (for example, with a line or a
> fillet) to a specific position in another document

Another? No, they're *anchored* to a specific point of the *focused* document
and float in the margin based on that anchor point.

> Enable two-direction linking between documents and flexible changing of
> the document in focus and in a buoy

Again, this is confusing the two different-level concepts.

> Irregular boundaries (in viewports)
> Make the viewports distinctive as visual objects from the background
> Scalability of the boundaries convey (redundant) information about zooming
> in the viewport
> Movement in boundaries convey (redundant) information about the movement
> of the viewport
> Enable more information to be seen in both the viewport and in the background
> A straight boundary of the viewport indicates a borderline of the document
> "in" the viewport
> 
> Animation between views
> Makes changes between views visually continuous to prevent "getting lost"
> and to help perceiving the connection structure

Yes. Overall, you seem to be getting the picture ;)

        Tuomas