What do you think about the UI construct piles? Other than that it will lead to innumerable "this Panther has piles" quips, of course.

Interesting. In essence it's kind of like being able to view the contents of a folder without opening it. I wonder if you can name the pile? (I'll be the first to call mine "Dog"). I would assume you could, although the demo doesn't show this.

While I like the concept of Piles (I've been piling up files on my Desktop for years!) I also feel like this.

This pdf offers piles of information on piles which were invented by Apple in about '92.

And here's a Slashdot discussion of piles.

"piles"

I don't know enough about them yet, but if they are going to be a part of OS X, could the name be any more PERFECT? What's next, "loads"?

quote:

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but if they are going to be a part of OS X, could the name be any more PERFECT? What's next, "loads"?

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LMAO. Oh, it's good to have a laugh like that. I hear you'll be able to hierarchically group the piles together into something called a "heaping."

It seems that John Gruber has already used the "steaming pile" gag. Tog has written about about piles, too.

It seems to me that such a UI metaphor is really only good for rather small groups of objects.

From Tog's article, where he describes how folders can be maximized to represent mor einformation about the folder:

"However, regular files appear to continue to be as weak and ineffective as ever. I should be able to tell, by looking at the outside of a file, how much material is within, how old the folder is, and how long it has been since I’ve opened it. I’m not talking about surrounding it with text; I’m talking about using that 24-bit color space to add visual attributes. For example, the more the folder contains, the thicker it should appear. The older it is, the deeper the color should become, with age cracks appearing after several years. The time since I’ve opened it could be represented by cobwebs or dustiness."

That would require the larger icon sizes in OSX, if more graphical information is to be displayed. Wouldn't that violate the less is more credo by forcing the larger icons sizes in order to get maximal information?

From the section on Projects:

"Quicken has what I believe to be a much more successful model, with a series of master tabs, always visible across the top, pulling up one environment or another. The user easily moves from the checking/savings account environment to the investment environment to the report environment. Quicken was also clever enough to enable the user to open any account in any environment, so if you need to compare stock purchases to checks written for same, you can open your checking account in the investment environment, etc."

That I like, tabs across the top, under the menu bar, that allow the user to switch "environments" or "desktops". I sort of use DragThing for that now, keeping the tabs across the top under my menu bar to access different collections of useful applications and folders.

It seems to me that such a UI metaphor is really only good for rather small groups of objects.

Somewhere in that pdf it talks about certain rules that piles can use to organize themselves – something like that. I only glanced at the document briefly. They way I work, say on a logo or something, I keep "Saving as" when I've made, or plan to make, some major change that could cause things to go very badly. If all those revs of the same document could be stacked in a pile then I could see some utility in that. And you know how sometimes downloading just one file can leave up to three different files hanging around? It might make sense to have things like that automatically organized into piles. The thing is, at least as I see it, piles would seem to work great with the classic OS 9 Desktop. Lots of people already keep "piles" of similar documents strewn all over their Desktop. Having a UI feature like Piles to organize it could come in handy. With OS X deemphasizing the Desktop as it has I'm not quite sure if Piles are much better than creating a folder. Still, I'd like a chance to play with it and find out for myself. It took me a good while to intelligently make use of Labels.

Gruber ripped me off. I swear!

That would require the larger icon sizes in OSX, if more graphical information is to be displayed. Wouldn't that violate the less is more credo by forcing the larger icons sizes in order to get maximal information?

Certainly having larger icons inherently makes it easier to displaying subtle graphical clues, particularly if there are many different clues combined on one folder at the same time. I think a few of these ideas might work – a very few. I think you have to be really particular about how much information you show or it all becomes a hodge-podge and you're no better off than when you started. Personally, at the very least, I'd love to have some clue as to whether a folder is empty or not which would be simple enough to do in List View with a hollow disclosure triangle.

That I like, tabs across the top, under the menu bar, that allow the user to switch "environments" or "desktops". I sort of use DragThing for that now, keeping the tabs across the top under my menu bar to access different collections of useful applications and folders.

I really do think that idea has some merit. It's kind of along the same lines as the Linux virtual desktops, isn't it? Heck, in the Finder it could be useful for saving certain configurations of windows. That probably is only scratching the surface.