[Cuis] Fixing the Taskbar

[Ken Dickey]

On Thu, 31 Oct 2013 08:44:09 -0700
Casey Ransberger <casey.obrien.r at gmail.com> wrote:

> Iconic representation of "task" (or really, "activity," task is so age-of-productivity and we're quite over that for the most part I think) to my mind is still of value. The hard part is to decide when to use an iconic symbol and when to use zooming. Obviously if having zoomed out, one can't make sense of the zoomed-out thing by looking it, the zooming strategy has failed. Beyond that, it's hard to think about, because I've never used a zooming interface before. 

I think of two main metaphors or roles for a Taskbar:
 [1] A historical set of visual "bookmarks" to take me back somewhere (bread crumbs/Adrian's thread).
 [2] A Dashboard -- instruments reflecting my current focus in the world.

As to place (Where are we?) there are two main parts:
 [A] Location  (<X/Y/Z>, <E-W/Up-Down/N-S>, <Rho/Theta/Depth>, <transforms>...) relative to an origin <0/0/0>.
 [B] Scale/Magnification  ( <ratio>, <percent>, ...)
and possibly
 [D] Direction of view

So I have a current location relative to some "center of the Cartesian universe" seen through zero or more transforms.  One can think of describing a camera position with a lens which magnifies/reduces/...

Things I might want on my dashboard include a clock/calendar, current location (map & compass, altitude, pressure, weather forcast), topical interests (stock market, ocean temperatures, list of current tasks/to-do's, ...), heartbeat (VM is alive and sending steps), connections, ...

Given these two basic orienting viewpoints (dashboard, visual locations) I need a way to get to my toolset and a way to (re)configure the Taskbar.

Back to current Cuis and setting the stage for the future: we have a baseline scale (1) and location (pixels=X/Y, delta-Z=0) for graphical entities.  We have morphs for which we can display thumbnails.  As the morphs are live, today they might broadcast a #appearanceChanged event which means "Taskbar, update my icon".

Note that some morphs might like to display themselves differently at different scales.  E.g. a Clock might go from analog to digital format when displayed at a small scale.  A clock could "triggerEvent: #appearanceChanged" every minute/second to update the clock display.

Where am I? 
What can I do here? 
Where have I been? 
What can I do/Where can I go (planning)? 

The Taskbar can be a meta-compass to help orient and remember.

What is the simplest thing that will work?


-KenD