Wow that is crazy cool. me want!

Fascinating stuff. I could see getting lost in that "universe of windows" view and I don't know about the radial hidden menu (seems like a real pro user kind of feature), but it's certainly an exciting look at what the web could be like in a few years.

This is so "futuristic" but really messy and probably a lot of bloat. If specialized apps were made to communicate with other specialized apps (eg. what some mac software does [address book, growl, quicksilver, etc])...

Like simple UNIX programs that used to pipe together... Let the browser take care of browsing, and let other apps take care of the specifics. Just make the browser extensible inwardly and outwardly.

but then again, Maybe I'm missing the point :P

That looks wicked and, as mentioned above, absolutely futuristic. I like the idea of those objects fading away that lay further back in the past. That reminds me of the imagery we use in daily language to say that memories are fading and getting blurry. I like that you guys used that metaphor.

I wish the video would have emphasized the input device more, but the intention was probably designed more to give a feel of what future web browsing will be like.

Ben's comment sums up my feelings on this. I'm interested in its use, however it appears to be suffering from the "everything to everyone" mentality in approach.

Definitely not a browser - this is a communications device with analytical capacities. Be interesting to see the ideas that flow from it though.

Too much bling and too many "original" controls to make it useful.

Forgetting Window, using elements as widgets and sorting by semantic elements is how things should be, but the interface looks rather like a dream than a realistic usability experience.

Its all very impressive as a proof of concept, but i'm afraid thats way way too much information on screen at once... i'm very minimal in my use of computing (i have 1 icon on my Vista Desktop) so this would not suit me one bit.

The input device did look interesting though !

Great browsing concept. Love it.
Not sure about the hand cursor. Seems like a big device that will take a lot of space on the desk. A multi touch screen might be a better option.

This looks great. Really beautiful.

I'm not sure anyone in my family but me would embrace it.

You should see me trying to explain to my mother that she doesn't need an AOL browser to get online. She gets mad if she has to access her account with IE or Firefox and is totally confused by the different interface.

This would induce an apoplectic rage.

Heh flashy, lots of ui mistakes but the concept's interesting.

this is totally sick ... but what blew my mind is the ui on nytimes, fantastic!!!

Very Macish ... yawn.

Like pretty much all UI design, it rewards people with certain visual-motor skills and puts severe obstacles in the path of the rest of us. Whether a UI is command-prompt, point-and-click, or spin-and-farfle, it can only be suitable for a certain percentage of users. One thing to be said for Windows is that it tries to address users' different abilities by providing several UIs.

lol, i love how it has 2 farmers using it. such a likely scenario.

i'll pass.

The 4-leaf menus, each with 4 identical dots with no captions until mouse-hover -- fail.

Too much! I was digging the browser, the little pop up notifications and the screen sharing, but once she jumped into that insane mess of a dock, side bars, and that blobby mess of everything in the middle... you lost me.

I appreciate the amalgamation of several concepts into this interface (I've seen them all described in some form before), but I agree with a few of the other commenters. There seem to be more concepts than necessary with the "user stack", "wheel", recently-used stack, 3-D zooming interface, etc.

Also, I agree with others that the future of computing in general is probably going to be much more about the interface. Your input device looks somewhat novel, but didn't get any screen time and didn't appear to be much more productive than a mouse today.

I think you could get away with only two persistent interface concepts (3-D zooming interface, user stack/shelf) and go for a Minority Report-style interface with several degrees of freedom.

The "where did I put that?" question that the farmer had should really never happen—she should be able to speak a few keywords about the thing she's looking for and the interface should respond with search results wrapped in a much richer interface.

All that said, concepts are cool. Keep playing.

Oh dear god, really? This is suffering from designer syndrome - absolutely everything is visual. What if you're not a visual thinker? This design fails utterly for anyone other than a spacial thinker.

Frankly, I felt lost from the moment it went into 'cloud' view. While the concept is clever, I'm never going to use something even vaguely similar to this.

Also, why on earth are the designers embracing this 'digital data as physical object' viewpoint? The one huge advantage of the digital medium is precisely that it's NOT limited to physical ideas. An item can be in multiple places/categories at one time, etc.

I don't want objects moving because of how old they are. I don't want to have to have a bookmark in one 'bubble'. I don't want to have to hunt around to identify a page by a tiny thumbnail that could be anywhere. Who would?

Things that are nice though: the zero chrome concept.

I'm sorry, but this is a complete and utter mess of a GUI. It "reinvents" a lot of stuff that's already intuitive to most PC/computer users under the age of 60. I see some features that would be an improvement over current standards, but nothing that would require the almost total overhaul this UI seems to require.

The radials, I think, were the biggest and most unintuitive part of the video, however the whole "cluster" idea wasn't far behind.

How deliciously pipe dreamy. It reminds me so much of the Apple Knowledge Navigator. The philosophy here is solid, but the interface needs much work to become useable and avoid being too search-driven which seems a bit much like a step back to the day of command line.

I don't think such a radical and fundamental redesign of the Internet is possible. With so much information that people are increasingly required to manage something needs to change as it has become entirely overwhelming.

It seems really confusing to use but without actually getting to try it out, its still up in the air.

It is true that people will adapt to software (take MS Windows for instance), but what is better for all is if technology and thus software adapt to real people.

I have to agree with KarmaGhost that the UI is confusing and extremely counter-intuitive.

Now.. the variable data-sets that can be rendered different ways was cool. But the whole Mac Dock knockoff merged with a cluttered desktop (icons around the frame) will pave the way for millions of hours in consumer training and frustrated users.

I sure hope this never comes to pass...

That is very interesting and very beautiful. I like very much the idea of allowing the computer to derive relationships between clusters (because that is what they are) of somewhat related information and making it available to the user.

The interface is very dependent on visual cues and representations of objects. How about those (like me) who are more attuned to non-visual contextual information (text)? I am able to parse text a lot quicker graphical representations of data. I am on a Mac OS X and I find myself reading the names of the programs in my Dashboard as oppose to merely looking for and clicking the cute little icons.

Terrible. Masses of similar looking "objects" all over the screen with no context... hidden menus where you don't see options until you mouse over them. The learning curve would be enormous, and for what payoff?

The only nice part of that video was the monitor that had no frame around it. That I'd like.

dear god no.

Jesse James Garrett = Bruce Tognazzini

asktog.com/starfire/index.html

Effective designs trend toward greater refinement and simplicity. Aurora (like Starfire) seems to miss that point in favor of additional layers of complexity.

A bit messy atm, but it gives us clues for the years to come.

Very Nice!

This is reminiscent of Apple's Hotsauce browser from some years ago.

thats fuckin sexy, not her i mean...

- shes alright ;)

It's an interesting concept video, but a little heavy on the graphics-for-graphic's sake factor.

Watch it again and look at what proportion of time she spends navigating the UI (that is, looking for stuff, waiting for the UI to animate, etc.), as opposed to actually doing stuff.

After the first 5 minutes of using such an interface, you'd get tired of zooming in and out of windows through 3D space. Not just for the sense of vertigo, but if things "move along the z-axis as they get older" you have to deal with the fact that things won't be where you left them.

I think that a more realistic interface might be based something along Apple's Exposé, where all windows are arranged on a 2D plane, and you simply move your "viewport" around.

I dig it and want it.

Why is it that these videos haven't changed over the last 20-30 years? The idea is great. Don't get me wrong. I respect the guys at Adaptive Path, but these videos are painful to watch. It's the same bad music they used in those 6th grade Sex Ed videos they made us watch in school!

I do agree with others. This seems almost entirely directed at users that are strongly "Right Brain" oriented. The more analytical or "Left Brain" oriented user needs to have things more organized. The "Cloud" view actual ruins the experience and turns these types of users away. While it's great for some users it's definitely not the answer for all users.

Some things I like:

- They're calling it a "browser", but it resembles what we usually call an operating system desktop. It'd be fantastic if OS manufacturers were to someday allow independently developed interfaces to be applied as easily as you swap a style sheet.

- Love the idea of grabbing data in a table and automatically applying a chart view to it. Note that this won't be possible until semantic coding is more broadly implemented (and IA's jump fully into the semantic Web).

- Using distance in the Z-axis to indicate how long ago you accessed something... brilliant. Yeah, can I have that now?

- I think the collaborative elements and screen sharing are an inevitable part of the future. 10 years from now, we'll all be saying "Do you remember how people used to walk to each others' desks?"


And a few critiques:

- The "frame" doesn't move us significantly beyond what we have today. It's the start menu, taskbar, quicklaunch, and history -- we've already got all of that, and all I see here is different positioning.

- I'm very skeptical that the computer-generated placement of objects is going to work as well as they're suggesting. There's a pervasive misconception that computers think like people (and in particular, like you).

- I like the idea of radial context menus, but AP's nonverbal treatment for them is only going to frustrate people. Labels aren't bad things, people.

- That 3-dimensional mouse/arm thing will never take off. The existing mouse wheel is an infinitely more elegant solution.

On the whole, a great vision.

As Zach Gambino said, I think many of you are missing the point. The purpose of the video is to help people think about different ways in which data from the Internet could be manipulated by both the browser and the user. Yes, there is a strong emphasis on the visual side of things. They took the 'kitchen sink' approach, and put a huge amount of data in a short pseudo-slice-of-life clip that is hardly realistic. It is, after all, a concept. They could have made a two hour presentation to show the same elements, but I doubt many people would watch it.

Once upon a time, browsers didn't have tabs. People used one or two browser windows, and that seemed fine. 'Tabs? Why would anyone have so many sites open to need a row of tabs?' Now it isn't too strange to use more than a few tabs. And RSS feeds. And youtube. And skype. Some of us are even carrying phones that can sync our email and pin our location on Google Maps. Could you use an interface like that with sanity and use only a few things at once? Sure. Could someone make the mouse scroll wheel move in every direction or turn the mousepad into a multi-touch tablet? Probably. I just hope these things are tried out sooner rather than later. It's not like they're suggesting breaking the laws of gravity to make a flying car.

Great stuff. I have my concerns though in terms of usability, which needs LOADS of work definitely...

but in essence, great stuff...

All very "Star Trek". We've all got a future in The Matrix piddling around with electronic gadgets so that we don't clutter up the real world. And if we ever DO get out, we'll take the gadget with us. Nightmare. I'd rather have a real life.

Nice. Loosely related to Microsoft Surface which is all about "Natural Experience".

needs more simplicity and a ui redesign, other than that great concept - looking forward to see more

In this video, they appear to be talking to each other, real-time. Is this the case? I find it interesting that they hear one another, but do not see one another as live video. So it's live audio?

Fail. Good design is about what you leave out.

Sorry, but this just looks horrible. Reminds me of this other video of the future:

youtube.com/watch?v=yFgVTUle_EM

haha!

You always have to question what a browser should do, and if something this advanced should be considered a whole new product. Still, interesting concepts.

Are you freaking kidding me? We're supposed to be SIMPLIFYING people, not cramming every damn webpage on the internet onto one screen. Oh, and I have a widget that gets me the forecast in half a second. Someone actually made an EFFORT to complicate and clutter browser and bookmarking design...you can't screw this up by accident.

OMG! If anyone can made this project mozilla will do!
Congratulations for starters planning the concept.
Aurora would start a new generation of web surfing, and community building, and overall browsing

That's a nice demonstration of a really interesting "browser" of rather a whole OS.
I really like the basic idea of being able to share everything in a communicative network like this!
I don't think that it's too complicated or contains too much information, in fact it'd prefer this Mozilla OS/Browser/whatever ;) to any currently existing OS/Browser/whatever anytime! :)
Though it might indeed be appealing to more people if the icon bars on the borders of the screen could be removed optionally.

I really like the radial mouse menue despite it's lack of icons or captions - I'm sure anyone would get used to it in no time.

This is very interesting. I'm both surprised that it hasn't been presented so well before and proud that it appears to be coming out of Australia.

I wonder how corporates would go adopting this? Given the reluctance to fully embrace Web 2.0 I wonder what they will think of a new browser? I also wonder what it will take for corporate data to migrate to formats which present with data and presentation separated?

One problem is of course is that this makes it easier to collaborate using real data. Unfortunately, very little corporate communication uses real data :-)

Interesting

I'm a bit skeptical that an average user can learn that system easily. There are a lot of abstract concepts in that UI.

I get a bad feeling from the comm. stuff too.

However, the whole cluster analysis and organic interface is really promising.

wow :)

To those worried that this is too much too fast: this is a *distant* projection; there would be many gradual changes before this stage was reached, and if this visualization only covered one or two new concepts we would complain this was "just one idea, nothing revolutionary here".

And to those worried that this is "too visual", "too spacial", with insufficient text, I think the point of this was to emphasize the sorts of things that become possible with widespread statistical/trend analysis with a social component. Like "web 2.0", but taken a step further, abstracted and integrated into an experience beyond the "page in a window" that is the current web. More traditional computing concepts like text and trees will not be forbidden in the future, but this video wasn't going to waste time showing us the familiar.

For example, I'm sure the pre-visualizations of today's desktop didn't bother explaining how command prompts or hierarchical filesystems work, but they remain with us and nobody was going to steal them from you.

Looks cool, but honestly, I can't imagine my mom using this kind of interface, it's simply to much to look at, too much to be SCARED of. And why is the clickable stuff on the mouse cursor hidden until you hover it? That's what i consider a mystery.

Some interesting concepts here. However, let's hope that the web is more accessible, inclusive and intuitive than the concepts shown here.

None of us want to see an interface with a zillion mystery icons and menus that ignore Fitts' Law and force the user to rollover tiny circles to invoke important functionality. Future UI's may need to move away from the old-school point and click?

It is a very beautiful looking UI, but why would you try to reinvent the wheel? It’s too much, too soon for anyone to really understand. I can’t imagine trying to teach a non tech savvy person how to use this interface.

With that said, they are some really great ideas in this video that I would like to see progress into production.

If we're here to dream, I think I wish to have a browser that allows me to treat any website like it is paper. I could then write and add notes to a site and the browser would keep track of all my thoughts and notes. And whenever I browsed back to that site, my notes would appear again and I could see that I read a certain article already. And because I can't always recall the precise content of an article, I would be able to consult my notes. I can't do that today or at least I don't know how to, so I end up printing a page -- and once again we're a step further away from the paperless office. Things would be so much more sustainable if I didn't need to print a page for that reason. And since we're in the Google era and leaving desktop computing behind us, I could just sign in with my personal account and access my notes and stuff from any computer in the world. That's like carrying around all my papers from Uni.

I want it now. But... please no mouse. I want a touch screen. Think Minority Report.

you left out the Orgasmatron.

What's with the laggy video?

So in the future we're all going to have piles of junk on our desktop??

Smart solutions, i think our children will help us to use it in the future.

Too much bloat. And don't get me started on the sound effects. Well-produced video, though.

kinda cluttered for me

YES. When can I buy........?!?!?!?!?

A few nice things mixed with many not-so-nice things. Others have said most of it, but I have to ask: why would you put "Scan Fingerprint" where your finger will block it? I'd put it at the top.

How about an in-depth look at how content creators are going to monetize off their properties, ie, web series,etc.

Well I'm glad there are people working hard to enhance and refine the user's experience with computers...even if this misses the mark. Where's the next Xerox PARC when we need it?

This is not a browser. It's more of an OS or GUI (like Gnome) at least.

I find this terrifying. I don't want it.