1 Are 3D User Interfaces Useless? {anchor:Are 3D User Interfaces Useless?} According to usability expert, {link:Jakob Nielsen|http://www.useit.com/}, {link:they are|http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,108561,00.html?source=NLT_LIN&nid=108561}. I have lots of respect for {link:Alan Kay|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay} but I don’t see the point of his {link:Croquet|http://www.opencroquet.org/} project, or of Sun’s {link:Looking Glass|http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details.xml} clone. (Well, actually I see the point of the P2P object synchronization infrastructure, but I don’t see the point of the 3D interface.) I think that a better use of the {link:Squeak|http://www.squeakland.org/} team’s time would be to improve their 2D interface. {image:img=croquet.jpg} 3D interfaces are fine for games but I don’t think they’re useful as a desktop environment. Most of what I do on my desktop involves working with text; whether it’s English documents, emails, IM’s, etc. or else with program source-code. In either case, text is 2D. 3D visualization techniques have their place, but they should be the exception rather than the rule. Overlapping windows already require lots of work to drag, resize, and arrange properly so that you can see everything that you want at once. Adding another dimension is only going to make things worse. Window management would become like playing {link:3D Tetris|http://www.3dtetris.com/}. {image:img=lookingglass.jpg} Anyone remember {link:VRML|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML}? Anyone still using it? Exactly! 3D interfaces have a great whiz-bang made-for-movies aspect to them, but they just aren’t that useful for most day-to-day work. I could turn out to be wrong, as many people who’ve argued against Alan Kay in the past have turned out to be, but as I say: I just don’t get it. {link:Story from Nooface.|http://nooface.net/article.pl?sid=06/02/15/0536221&mode=thread} 2006-03-02 14:33:46.682 2006-03-02 14:29:23.091 Thu Mar 02 14:29:44 EST 2006 Thu Mar 02 14:30:05 EST 2006