3D Interface Extravaganza

This is supposed to be the year when modern, animated graphical user interfaces hit the mainstream. Apple popularized this idea years ago with MacOS X and Microsoft has big ambitions in this regard for Windows Vista.
A friend suggested that I try the Gentoo Linux-based Kororaa live-CD which incorporates an experimental OpenGL-based X server called XGL, combined with a powerful compositing engine called Compiz. Compiz has a modular architecture with a range of standard plugins that provide the following effects, and more:

• When switching between one of the four predefined workspaces, the transition is animated such that the current and new workspace both appear to be sides on a three-dimensional cube. It is also possible to manually rotate the cube in any direction using the mouse.
• Windows, when dragged, get an appearance comparable to that of a flag waving in the wind. The effect is proportional to the speed by which the window is moved. The result is a highly spectacular effect — I spent a long time just moving windows around and still have not grown tired of it!
• By holding a key while moving a window, the window can easily attach to one of the screen’s borders. This effect is remniscent of magnetism, and creates the impression that you almost have to “fight” the window when getting it to loosen its grip on the screen’s side(s).
• Alt-Tab shows miniatures of all windows on the current workspace, making it easy to select exactly the desired target.
• The F12 key temporarily shows miniature versions of all windows on the current workspace. When selected, a window immediately gets restored, focused and ready for input. This is essentially a more sophisticated version of Alt-Tab.
• Any portion of a window can easily be zoomed in and out of using the mouse and a special key combination.
• Using a key combination combined with the the scroll wheel on the mouse, the transparency of a window can be adjusted with great accuracy.

All of the effects are “live”, in the sense that applications continue to refresh their interfaces smoothly even as they are obscured behind partially transparent windows, or while the screen is rotated. Even movies continue to play uninterrupted!
Excited by the prospects of enjoying a smooth, animated desktop after having experienced the XGL and Compiz combination in Kororaa, with by far the most impressive interface effects I have ever seen, I installed XGL and Compiz in a recent Ubuntu Dapper daily — a remarkably easy endeavour when assisted by one of the many excellent on-line guides.


I’m hoping that some of the interesting features in Sun’s Project Looking Glass might eventually be incorporated in Compiz, such as the ability to turn windows around and scribble notes on the back.

Review: LiveHost

I moved to the U.S.-based hosting service LiveHost in early October 2005 from my previous web hotel, one of the largest in Sweden. Today’s global economy and ease of international communications combined with a stunningly low price made it an easy decision, as LiveHost offers half a GB of disk space and 2 GB of transfer for as little as USD $6 per month. I have to admit that ecstatic comments on a popular review site made me more than a little skeptical, but I had nothing to loose.
My previous host’s cheapest plan is SEK 83 (USD $100) which includes 100 MB of disk space and 5 GB of transfer. That’s more transfer but significantly less space, and it supports only annual or quarterly payments which I considered an inconvenience. In addition, the starter cost was an annoying SEK 369 (USD $40). It also included no free-of-charge statistics options other than a simple counter, while LiveHost by contrast includes several extensive options free of charge and ready for use at any time.
LiveHost has a large range of scripts and packages for blogs and forums ready for automated and hassle-free installation through Fantastico. This made it the ideal choice for this personal website of mine, as well as for a community website for the discussion room #political on the Undernet IRC network.
I have had no need to test LiveHost’s technical support, but they have always been very prompt and helpful when I have approached them with administrative issues and questions. The only potential drawback that I can think of with LiveHost is that I believe it lacks support for ASP.NET. Also, the international nature of the payments excludes the possibility to pay using ordinary invoices in my case. Instead, I rely on Paypal which frankly I neither like nor trust. However, all of the other advantages more than make up for this.
Highly recommended!
Update, 6th of October 2007: This host has changed very significantly for the worse in the past year or two, following a key employee leaving. I can no longer endorse this recommendation.