Re: window rotation
Re: window rotation
- Subject: Re: window rotation
- From: Wade Tregaskis <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 13:52:58 +1000
Try continuous rotation and use Expose. It's hilarious (or about as
funny as windows displayed on a computer can get). I predict someone
will figure out a hack that will make windows 'fall' off the bottom of
the screen, when Expose is used. If nothing else, that would be a
slick Easter Egg.
Believe me, I've got a million ideas for applications of all this, if
only I can get it to work properly. :)
Even with just the current functionality, I see several plausible uses
for the transforms:
a) Scale the window back and forth if it's in the background and wants
attention; it's surprisingly effective while not being aggressively
distracting. Much better than the existing notification system - I
hate dock icons that won't stop bouncing. :)
b) Rotate the window violently back and forth like a cartoon alarm
clock to signify some important error condition. Similar to the login
dialog that shakes itself when you put in the wrong password (thank
heavens there's no lockout with this, otherwise every time I'd show
this feature to a friend I'd have to re-enable my account :) ).
c) Shrink windows in the background over some time period, e.g. chat
windows, status windows, progress windows in the Finder, etc... so you
can still get an idea of their status by looking at them, but can see
more at a time. Sort of like a full-time Expose. This resonates along
the lines of the much-publicised transparent windows patent that
surfaced recently.
d) A screen saver which gently shifts the visible windows in soft arcs
across the screen, while they rotate slowly, all the while playing some
pleasant classic music. :)
The last one requires a bit of a hack to get at the windows of other
applications, but I know that's possible one way or another (it can be
done via undocumented window manager calls, although I haven't worked
them out yet; from memory other people have anyway - google it if
you're interested).
FWIW, Expose appears to remove all window transforms during its
initial zoom out step, so if you get stuck somewhere and don't want to
quit the app, just zoom out with Expose, and zoom back in.
Yes, as does the genie effect (I gather that any applied mesh first
reverts the window to it's "normal" state). Initially I was doing this
too - reconstructing the "normal" transform via the window
co-ordinates. But it's unnecessarily complicated, ignored any existing
transforms, and produces the awkward results you've seen. I'm not sure
why they've done it with Expose.
As a note, there are command-key shortcuts for all 5 of the buttons in
that demo app, going off the first letter of the button name. So if
you do shrink it to nothing or grow it beyond the screen, just hit
command-g or command-s as necessary.
Wade Tregaskis (aim: wadetregaskis)
-- Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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