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IDEA: Visual FileSystem

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NeilS:
This is something I've been looking at on and off over the years. In fact, I actually wrote one a long time ago which used a "2D disk" metaphor to represent a directory hierarchy. Imagine a segmented ring, where each segment is a file/folder in the root directory. The next level down in the hierarchy is represented by the next ring outwards, where the contents of each folder are contained within the same angular section of the ring as their parents. The result looked a bit like a fractal. It's hard to describe without a picture, but hopefully you get the idea. I can't remember what the folder traversal metaphor was, but I think it probably involved rotating the disk and moving up and down the folder levels by moving in and out along the radius of the disk.

Although it was a while ago now, I seem to remember it actually working quite well. One of the big advantages was that you could see several levels of the hierarchy and adjacent folders all at the same time, and it also gave you a reasonable sense of some kind of spatial structure to the contents of your hard disk. It also supported stuff like distributing the amount of angle (= size) given to a segment based on the size of the files/folders, or how many items they contained, etc.

Downsides were that the geometry of the disk tended to waste space as you went down the hierarchy (again, hard to describe - I wish I had a picture of it), and you could only really visualise the folder hierarchy as found on your disk (which is a fundamental problem with any hierarchical metaphor).

I also looked at a recursive "boxes within boxes" metaphor at the time, again with the ability to see inside boxes while also looking outside them (basically flattening a hierarchy into a big, zoomable space). It wasted a lot less space than the disk metaphor and probably had even better spatial awareness properties, but I think it lost out to the disk at the time because the disk's traversal metaphor seemed nicer. Plus the disk looked way cooler. :)

Anyway, neither method would really support the kind of arbitrary linking being mentioned in this thread (e.g. link all MP3s together), or rather, not as I've described them so far. I did have a few ideas about that though, but I've bored you enough for the moment.

Oh, and I agree that 3D visualisers don't really work (yet). The main problem is the input metaphor, although the display metaphor doesn't really seem to have been solved yet either.

Perry Mowbray:
The disk does sound amazing!

I agree that one of the real benefits of something like this is being able to "see" a lot further, and depending on what basis the rendering is constructed, get a lot more functionality.

When I was showing my manager the ThinkMap was obvious that that type of system offers a great deal more than standard searching models because you see some of the structure.

I've also installed at various times applications that map your drives and give you a visual display based on filetype. Not bad, very pretty though; seemed to be based around size: somewhat similar to your disk idea.

I like the boxes within boxes thought, especially if the box that is a file contains stuff as well! which is does: size, date stamp, etc. That would enable "grouping" by what the "box" contains. Picasa does that with its Timeline view.

- Perry

JavaJones:
A few thoughts occur.

First, what is the expected value from this? I think the biggest thing noted so far is improved context for navigation and searches. That seems fairly worthwhile to me so it would be useful to look at practical existing examples of this to see how useful it is in practice. Some of that has been discussed above but more deliberate practical experimentation is in order.

Second, this sort of thing is precisely why I want a database-driven file system so badly. Such a thing would make this fairly trivial - merely a visualization of database info, like outputting a bar graph or pie chart, just a different visualization.

Third, along those lines it seems what we need is a hard drive cataloging application like Locate, Google Desktop, X1, etc. but open source and consisting mostly of the underlying searching, cataloging and database storage functions, upon which other developers can then build plugins for data interpretation and searching. With this sort of underlying system you could rapidly prototype these kinds of advanced file navigation schemes without reinventing the wheel. All of the search and visualization methods could use the same underlying database and info. Search by keyword, browse with a ring visual metaphor or a tree, group by file type or size or creation date, sort by whether it has a thumbnail or not, or whether there is an associated application, etc, etc. It could all be built easily and quickly with a robust data cataloging system. So where's the open source HD search tool?

Oh yes, and 3D navigation systems: the missing question seems to be *why*. :D People are working on this stuff but I really have seen *no* compelling examples of it being *more* functional than the current systems. Simply going 3D "because you have a whole new dimension to work with" is not reason enough.

- Oshyan

Rover:
JJ - I think one answer to why is that some people cannot relate to the virtualness of the filesystem.
Most folks don't really know how to file things in the physical world, so the metaphor breaks down a lot for some.

The tree view helps a little, but there still isn't a good visual for storing data.  To me, that's more the issue than need for a 3D fs viewer.

I agree with you on the whole DB FS.  Let's write one this afternoon. :)

JavaJones:
Agreed Rover, it's the storage/organization metaphor that is lacking, not necessarily the 2D/3D paradigm. The question is what works consistently in the real world, if anything, and is it applicable to a computer interface? If so the familiarity would probably make it a very popular system. What you want to avoid is duplicating a bad system, like the demo of a "virtual desk" with sophisticated stacking functionality that was shown here a while back. Some of the features looked cool, but I really wasn't convinced by the whole organizational metaphor of "order within chaos" on your desk.

- Oshyan

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