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The classic Finder offered a list view, in addition to the spatial view, and there was a "clean up" command to tidy up the icons if they got too chaotic. I rea

The classic Finder offered a list view, in addition to the spatial view, and there was a "clean up" command to tidy up the icons if they got too chaotic. I really liked it; I miss just... knowing where everything on my system lived, by feel. It was like the concept of a "memory palace", built into the system.

nine_k 4y ago
Spatial navigation seems trivial to implement: just store the positions of everything. ...until you consider attaching a large display to your laptop. And then detaching it after you have placed some stuff there.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  That reminds me of a tiny fraction of an off hand discussion with some Microsoft engineers closer to the height of their big Mixed Reality investment hype stage and how questions of that become much more interesting when you've got 2D displays and 3D mixed reality displays sharing the same space. Disconnect a monitor but all the windows remain hovering in the 3D displays exactly where they had been. Connect another monitor in roughly the same plane and watch it pick up all those windows. The system has to know all of those positions anyway so in some ways, that sort of spatial navigation where even the displays are spatially navigated is "easier" than in 2D only. Not that storing all those 3D positions or much of anything else about Mixed Reality simulation is easy, by any stretch. Some of the impression I was given too was how much more important things like spatial navigation were for Mixed Reality usability according to research and usability studies. In three dimensions our brains much more crave that things we put into a place stay put in that place exactly where we put them. (But yes, doing it in 2D even on a single monitor was harder than it sounds. Another real world example of complications is things like removable read only drives: where do you store its customization and position info and is that something that you can accidentally burn to the disc and then never override?)

nine_k 4y ago

Spatial navigation seems trivial to implement: just store the positions of everything. ...until you consider attaching a large display to your laptop. And then detaching it after you have placed some stuff there.

WorldMaker 4y ago
That reminds me of a tiny fraction of an off hand discussion with some Microsoft engineers closer to the height of their big Mixed Reality investment hype stage and how questions of that become much more interesting when you've got 2D displays and 3D mixed reality displays sharing the same space. Disconnect a monitor but all the windows remain hovering in the 3D displays exactly where they had been. Connect another monitor in roughly the same plane and watch it pick up all those windows. The system has to know all of those positions anyway so in some ways, that sort of spatial navigation where even the displays are spatially navigated is "easier" than in 2D only. Not that storing all those 3D positions or much of anything else about Mixed Reality simulation is easy, by any stretch. Some of the impression I was given too was how much more important things like spatial navigation were for Mixed Reality usability according to research and usability studies. In three dimensions our brains much more crave that things we put into a place stay put in that place exactly where we put them. (But yes, doing it in 2D even on a single monitor was harder than it sounds. Another real world example of complications is things like removable read only drives: where do you store its customization and position info and is that something that you can accidentally burn to the disc and then never override?)