- Ditch the ability for regular users to create folders altogether
and put all files in one spot (probably their home folder merged
with a Shared folder for all system users). Make the workspace
manager an awesome searching and filtering tool. Add buttons to the
workspace manager for "Music" or "Photos" or "Letters to my boss
since last Tuesday" or whatever, and just make those shortcuts for
queries (live search folders). Never use a Save dialog again -- when
you make a new file, just give it a name and it's automatically
added to the user's home folder, ready to be searched on.
Possibly. This seems to be where Apple is going (apparently
implementing Spotlight is less effort than fixing the Finder…). I
rather like managing my own documents, and I can usually find them
quite easily. My main gripe with current systems is not that they
are hierarchical (the human mind is particularly well evolved to
interact with hierarchies, and they are a good model), it is the fact
that there is no separation between the model and the view of the
filesystem.
Yeah...I kind of think that stuffing this down your potential users'
throats is not going to make you many fans. I want to manage my own
files in folders, and it bothers me when iTunes insists on doing it
for me, for instance. There's more than one way to organize your
music.
Here's an alternative way that could be used to organize and manage a
flat (non-hierarchical) home folder and its contents:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo/
More specifically, take a look at some of the applications built with
it:
http://www.windsorinterfaces.com/images/photomesa1.jpg
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/counterpoint/counterpoint1.jpg
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo/applications/autobahn/collapsed.gif
And take a look at this, which wasn't built with it but uses a similar
idea:
http://thephaeton.co.uk/universe/index.php
(it's in Flash, and the hit areas suck because they're so small -- use
the arrow keys on your keyboard instead)
We could still filter content via searches (via an alpha fadeback, as
per Filie, and perhaps a zoom to that content), but unlike a text list,
it also works with the human mind's spacial/location-based orientation.
Any ideas?
J.
