Feature Story
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A fresh look.Powered by Java technology, Project Looking Glass offers a new paradigm for the desktop interface that promises to change the way you work. 23.Mar.04--Hold on to your hat. Sun is at work on a desktop interface that's going to blow the lid off the traditional windowing paradigm. Now in advanced development, Project Looking Glass is an intuitive, 3-D way to interact with desktop applications. The new interface will offer imaging features such as window transparency, rotation, zoom, and miniaturization. See for yourself by taking an online tour of the latest Project Looking Glass prototype. Watch how Project Looking Glass technology enables you to flip over a browser window, jot a note on the back, and store it sideways like a book on a shelf while you're at work on other documents. Icons become dynamic thumbnails of the content they represent, instead of static placeholders.
Project Looking Glass isn't just about pretty pictures though. The technology allows faster, more efficient management of applications and content. Windows that can be made transparent and manipulated in three dimensions will help you effortlessly juggle a dozen or more applications at once, as well as work more effectively within a single application. The technology will also help bring to life new types of applications and new ways of managing data. Sun is committed to open development, and Project Looking Glass is being designed with the developer community in mind. Project Looking Glass is being built with Java technology, widely accepted by the open development community because of its unique benefits. Developing Project Looking Glass applications with Java technology promises to be fast and efficient, with the possibility for cross-platform interoperability. Best of all, Java technology performs on today's PCs and workstations at lightning speeds. Breaking Boundaries"Innovation is possible on the desktop," said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun executive vice president, Software. "We don't have to keep the same paradigm that's been around for the past ten years. "Project Looking Glass enables a new way of examining how applications should be built and what the computing world could look like if it was freed from having one company define the boundaries. Sun is interested in what a community could do with an open platform on which everyone can innovate." Written in the Java language, Project Looking Glass is designed to run on the Solaris Operating System and on the Linux operating system, and to work with current desktop applications without modification. Over time, developers will be able to create new applications that fully leverage the 3-D capabilities of the environment. The Sun development team also intends to create a platform and APIs to benefit creative developers who are keen on innovating around a 3-D desktop. In mid-2004, look for an initial developer's release of Project Looking Glass, which will provide a framework for developing the 3-D desktop environment. The release will help the developer community and Sun work even more closely to break the figurative boundaries of the two-dimensional desktop interface, as well as the creative stagnation of interface development in general. The first developer's release will include all of the pieces necessary to experiment with 3-D desktop development. Support for 3-D applications is slated for a second developer's release, due in the second half of 2004. The high-level architecture of Project Looking Glass is illustrated below. An unmodified X Client application communicates with the X Server, which is enhanced with the X Client Capture functionality. This enhanced X Server captures the client's visual representation and sends it to the Project Looking Glass Display Server, which manages rendering of the 3-D space, using the popular OpenGL 3-D platform. For 3-D window management, Project Looking Glass Java libraries communicate with the Display Server for constructing 3-D visuals, and with the X Server for necessary X Client management. In the initial developer's release, we plan to provide a very simple sample 3-D window manager; the Java libraries will also help you write your own 3-D window manager.
New MetaphorWhen the windowing paradigm was originally designed, the idea was to simulate the top of a desk, with stacks of paper lying on a flat surface. Open documents were represented as rectangular windows that could be shrunk, enlarged, and sorted. Today's GUIs were designed in the 1980s and include vestiges of design decisions based on the computational constraints of that era. For instance, back then, changing pixel color was relatively resource-intensive and expensive. So, one of the primary design decisions was to minimize the number of pixels that needed to be changed. This resulted in a flat and relatively static desktop metaphor. Obviously, things have changed. Today's desktop systems are equipped with 3-D graphics capabilities including video memory and processors powerful enough to handle multimedia code. In fact, the amazing price/performance advances in memory, storage, and processing power have changed every facet of computing. Yet the desktop metaphor has not evolved substantially. When Sun engineers looked at the current windowing paradigm and the current capabilities of desktop computers, they had the idea that would become Project Looking Glass. "By taking advantage of the third dimension, we're able to make better use of screen space," said Juan Carlos Soto, Sun engineering manager for Project Looking Glass and Project JXTA. "Imagine spreadsheets that let you see relationships across many pages at once, instead of static tabs at the bottom of your screen. The third dimension really helps show the connections between things. "Project Looking Glass will also enable compelling new applications that we haven't even thought of yet. These applications will present more information visually and deliver a richer, more pleasurable user experience." One of Sun's goals for Project Looking Glass is to explore the design and infrastructure required for next-generation desktop products. To that end, Sun plans to use Project Looking Glass technology to enhance future versions of the Sun Java Desktop System, our secure, highly affordable enterprise desktop solution based on open source components and industry standards. This demonstrates Sun's commitment to providing the most functionality and best possible user experience for our customers. Check here often for the latest news and information on Project Looking Glass. You can also sign up on the Project Looking Glass mailing list to receive updates. But brace yourself, because no one can hold back progress. | ||||||||||||||
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