I'm with Jonas on this one -- lack of specs is a big hurdle, but I also wonder what it is about an accelerated 3D desktop that is so compelling, prettiness factor aside. Here are some of the things that I've seen that have utilized 3D-for- 2D: - Minimize to Dock effects (suck/genie/scale) - Partially tranparent windows - Minimize in Place - Exposé window management tricks - Vista's pick-a-window-from-the-side trick (screenshot attached) - Swtich users with a "rotating cube" effect Maybe it's just me, but aside from the Vista feature -- which isn't very useful, anyway -- there doesn't seem to be a single useful feature in the that *couldn't* be done right now. In the list, the only things that I can see that really are useful (and not just eye candy) are Exposé's tricks and Minimize in Place. For those not familiar, Minimize in Place is an addon feature to OS X which takes a window and shrinks it down to the size of an icon on the desktop and sticks the application icon over one corner so you know what it is. This sure beats minimizing an app to the Dock, IMO. Unless I miss my guess, adding this feature wouldn't even require some modification to the app_server - just Tracker! You wouldn't be able to have the live updates to the tiny icon, but it would be possible to have a good- looking, usable icon which didn't do this. When it comes to Exposé, the instant desktop access (via F11) can easily be done now, and I think it could be done by way of program similar to Minimize All. Even the window tiling effects could be done right now, albeit with some bigtime hacks.
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