News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

July 4, 2006

software

An odd approach to file management

Posted Jul. 4, ’06, 8:44 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

LiquifileI think I saw a video demo of this app several months ago, but there’s a working demo out now. The idea behind Liquifile is that instead of using the traditional file display that the Finder uses, files can be represented more graphically, in this case as “bubbles” of liquid.

While it’s an interesting concept, it’s still in a pretty early stage, and it’s hardly sufficient to replace the Finder. The immense difference in scale between, say, a word processing document and a video, means that either you get gigantic bubbles that dominate the screen, or tiny little bubbles that are hard to pick out. I like the idea of locating the bubbles on x & y axis representing user-definable criteria (such as modified date), but there’s not quite enough screen real estate (even on a widescreen) to make it truly usable.

Still, the Finder is one of the most antiquated parts of OS X; it’d be nice to see Apple start innovating again. Perhaps Leopard will have some surprises in store for us.

[via Infinite Loop]


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