A Three-Dimensional GUI for Windows Explorer
This work addresses the challenge of usability and navigation in 3D environments for users of file management systems, but it is incremental as it applies existing 3D technology to a specific domain.
The researchers tackled the problem of designing a three-dimensional graphical user interface (3D-GUI) for file management in Windows Explorer, resulting in an implemented application that demonstrates an efficient 3D-GUI using an extended Half-Life 3D engine.
Three-dimension will be a characteristic of future user interfaces, although we are just starting to gain an understanding of how users can navigate and share information within a virtual 3D environment. Three-dimensional graphical user interfaces (3D-GUI) raise many issues of design, metaphor and usability. This research is devoted to designing a 3D-GUI as a front-end tool for a file management system, in this case, for Microsoft Windows\c{opyright} Explorer; as well as evaluating the efficiency of a 3D application. The software design was implemented by extending the Half-Life 3D engine. This extension provides a directory traversal and basic file management functions, like cut, copy, paste, delete, and so on. This paper shows the design and implementation of a real-world application that contains an efficient 3D-GUI.