My fantasy UI would be a sort of large flat desktop plane, with ~infinite zoom. FVWM and other do have the one large desktop space that you scroll around, instead of discrete virtual desktops, but I want to see the ultimate version of that.
A vast virtual plane that you could scroll and zoom around, drag your files/content around, make groups with marked delineations like a map. Obviously there would be some kind of grouping and minimap if you zoomed out enough. Documents should be represented such that you would simply zoom into them to access their content, you wouldn't open files or start applications, everything would be represented visually and the editing tools you need would be presented as you zoom close enough. A document would be represented as pages you could flip through or spread out for a larger overview. Videos could be simply viewed or spread out into frames/segments with editing tools.
Content would not be a "text file" or an "image file", it would just be a delineated piece of content, which you could add whatever type of content to, by calling up the relevant tools.
There would be no discrete applications as such, just content and flexibility, I want it to be seamless and integrated. In some ways similar to UIs seen in Minority Report and other sci-fi movies, but without the Hollywood flash and gimmickry.
I'm aware that there are a lot of complications and practical limitations, but it's an idea I've toyed with for a while, and I'm not sure I've seen people really attempt something like it for practical use, only bits and pieces.
An interesting theme in UI this year has been what types of tools for remote collaboration have become popular as more people have been working from home. Several of the ones I’ve seen are indeed based on a sort of infinite canvas/desktop/whiteboard concept.
Apparently those businesses are doing OK providing that kind of SaaS, even though the things you can actually do on their boards might be much simpler than what full-power desktop software or more specialised SaaS can offer. And this does make sense: once you can put basic text and basic drawing in some sort of freeform layout and share that display with others remotely, you already have a useful collaboration tool.
Providing built-in support for more sophisticated visuals like tables or specific types of diagram might make things more efficient, as could making good use of shortcut icons, gestures, hotkeys and so on. However, these are incremental improvements. They might bring big improvements in productivity in some cases, but they’re still helping to solve the same fundamental problem in the same fundamental way.
So it seems that at least some developers are already experimenting with the concept you’re suggesting, if only in a relatively simple form so far.
I don't have much to add except that I wonder why something similar hasn't been done already? I mean, it's an UI that works fine in RTS games, so why wouldn't it work for application windows?
It would be pretty maddening to keep losing the application you're working on because of the infinite scroll.
In RTS games you have keyboard shortcuts to return to your unit groups, bases etc to mitigate that, but there you're supposed to jump between points of interest while for general use you tend to keep the same point of interest for a long time...
That covers a lot of the basic concepts, albeit in a somewhat different format than I imagined. For one, it sticks to a grid rather than being freeform. There are certainly benefits to that. Thanks :-)
A vast virtual plane that you could scroll and zoom around, drag your files/content around, make groups with marked delineations like a map. Obviously there would be some kind of grouping and minimap if you zoomed out enough. Documents should be represented such that you would simply zoom into them to access their content, you wouldn't open files or start applications, everything would be represented visually and the editing tools you need would be presented as you zoom close enough. A document would be represented as pages you could flip through or spread out for a larger overview. Videos could be simply viewed or spread out into frames/segments with editing tools.
Content would not be a "text file" or an "image file", it would just be a delineated piece of content, which you could add whatever type of content to, by calling up the relevant tools.
There would be no discrete applications as such, just content and flexibility, I want it to be seamless and integrated. In some ways similar to UIs seen in Minority Report and other sci-fi movies, but without the Hollywood flash and gimmickry.
I'm aware that there are a lot of complications and practical limitations, but it's an idea I've toyed with for a while, and I'm not sure I've seen people really attempt something like it for practical use, only bits and pieces.