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Ever tried browsing your hard drive in 3-D?
How about shuffling your open applications like a deck of cards, or "throwing" your files with your mouse to open them?
It may sound like some "desktop of the future" dreamed up by a Hollywood special effects crew, but such a scenario will soon be within reach of anyone with a Mac. The key to making this fantasy a reality is Core Animation, the user interface graphics engine included in the next version of Apple's operating system, <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/">Mac OS X 10.5</a>. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to highlight the new-found graphical might of the next Mac OS X (nicknamed Leopard) during his keynote address at the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference on June 11 in San Francisco.
Leopard's October release will bring with it an entirely new visual language for designing desktop user interfaces. The traditional desktop will become a multi-layered, three-dimensional environment where windows flip around or zoom in and out. Double-clicks and keystrokes will give way to mouse gestures and other forms of complex user input.
"We're going to see a whole new world of user interface metaphors with Core Animation," says Wil Shipley, developer of the personal media cataloging application <a href="http://www.delicious-monster.com/">Delicious Library</a>.
Core Animation is primarily an enabling technology that allows programmers to access the Mac's graphics processor more efficiently than before. By giving developers tools to easily add animation and greater interactivity to their applications, Leopard's graphics engine will fuel a revolution in user interface design akin to the one that followed the introduction of the original Macintosh computer.
"In 1984 Apple said, 'Here's a relatively easy way to add graphics to your user interface'" and Core Animation says, 'Here's a very easy way to add composited layers and motion to your interface,'" says Shipley.
Shipley's initial release of Delicious, with its glossy, highly refined interface, gave birth to a new breed of application often dubbed the "Delicious generation." For these often younger Mac developers interface experimentation is one of the appeals of the platform.
Applications of Delicious generation, like <a href="http://www.appzapper.com/">AppZapper</a>, have taken traditional tasks (deleting application files) and added a fun layer of animation to the mix -- this isn't your father's rm command.
But creating animations like those in AppZapper or <a href="http://discoapp.com/">Disco</a>, a disc burning program which features smoke animation that reacts to sound -- blow into the mic, and the smoke blows away -- is a complex and difficult task under the current version of OS X.
Leopard's Core Animation will change that, giving the Delicious generation of developers a set of tools that will allow them to easily create new, non-standard, fluid, moving, interactive interfaces.
The shift toward non-standard interfaces isn't necessarily new, Kai Power Tools, a set of plugins for Adobe Photoshop, featured what was at the time a revolutionary interface for editing image files. But Kai was too far ahead of its time -- the majority of Mac users disliked the novel interface which broke with conventions and ignored Apple's official Human Interface Guidelines (HIG).
However with the rise of the "widget," both online and in Apple's Dashboard environment, users have come to accept novel interfaces and often expect the sort of highly-graphical interaction that Apple's new Core Animation enables.
With many developers already moving toward smaller, single-task applications, the addition of Core Animation tools may signal a revolution in Mac application design: lightweight, heavily-animated, widget-like applications are the future of the platform.
And while some long time Mac developers have decried the Delicious generation of apps, Apple seems to be embracing the changes.
Apple is ignoring its own HIGs in upcoming Leopard applications like <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/timemachine.html">Time Machine</a>.
Functionality-wise Time Machine is a banal program -- a content version control system that makes periodic, automated backups of a computer's hard drive.
But Apple's take on the age old task of incremental backups features a 3-D visual browser which allows users to move forward and backward through time using a virtual "time tunnel" reminiscent of a Doctor Who title sequence and completely unlike any interface currently used in Mac OS X.
<a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/spaces.html">Spaces</a>, also new to Leopard, lets users manage several virtual workspaces and flip between them using a navigation system that's pure eye-candy.
Austin Sarner, an interface designer and engineer at software company <a href="http://www.madebysofa.com/">MadeBySofa</a>, says that the new style of Apple apps isn't just about glossy effects -- there's a usability payoff as well.
"Animation in general creates continuity and more direct feedback to a user experience. In addition to obvious graphical speed boosts, the elegance (animation) can add to a UI is pretty substantial," he says.
Sarner points to the AppleTV as an example of how animation is making interface navigation more intuitive.
"Your selection glides into place, as opposed to immediately snapping to the next item. Midway through the split second animation, you can neatly cancel out and go in the other direction."
Shipley predicts the new user interface paradigm will also include the direct manipulation of documents -- instead of fumbling for a scrollbar, users will be able to grab a document and "throw" it upwards with their mouse in order to scroll down.
Upcoming small screen devices like the iPhone will force designers to further abandon traditional elements associated with the window metaphor, such as pull-down menus and scrollbars, in favor of more innovative designs emphasizing mouse gestures and click-and-drag actions.
Core Animation will only make it easier to translate these new ways of thinking onto the desktop.
Mac developer and <a href="http://www.panic.com/">Panic Software</a> co-founder Cabel Sasser has no doubt that developers will embrace Core Animation.
"A fast, Apple-maintained way to do the kind of animations we now rely on heavily is a brilliant and well-welcome idea," he says.
In order to run applications that utilize Core Animation, users will need to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5, as the graphics engine will only be available in the new OS. Apple has created a pair of applications to show off Leopard's 3-D interface abilities.
While it seems logical to speculate that interfaces like that of Time Machine and Spaces will lead to the end of the familiar "window" framework for desktop applications altogether, many Mac developers predict that the most basic elements of the current user interface forms won't disappear entirely.
Flying desktops and animated scrolling actions can enhance a user interface in many instances, but applications that like browsing the web and writing an e-mail will still require a traditional environment.
"I really don't think that the desktop will ever become 'windowless,'" says Panic's Sasser. "Windows present a very familiar and natural way to work and multitask, and to radically change it might just mean desktop suicide."
Even though we're still tied to the traditional computer desktop, Shipley agrees that the limitations of what that desktop can do are eroding.
"I don't think we'll abandon the old way as much as supplement our armory with a whole new arsenal of tools," Shipley says. "It's an awesome time to be a Mac developer, and, by extension, a Mac user."
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