I loaded the 3DNA demo off a gaming magazine CD just for the heck of it. It replaces your desktop with a 3D environment you can navigate to find your files and applications. This appeals to me because lo these many years ago (i.e., around 1992), for comic relief at a users conference I hacked together a demo of what the Interleaf desktop might look like someday. I replaced Wolfenstein 3D’s bitmaps with my own document management ones so you could stroll down a corridor, enter rooms that were the equivalent of file folders, visit the poor saps stuck in the FrameMaker jail cell, and at the end get shot by a Nazi representing the Secure Computing Environment. Hmm, maybe I can sell the idea to Microsoft.

Anyway, 3DNA is just about completely unappealing to me, and since I can’t find a lot specifically wrong with itI guess it’s the 3D-ness of it that bothers me. There are certainly some nice touches: your Web favorites list becomes a wall of TVs, each showing what’s up on the site. But moving through space rather than “teleporting” via mouse seems like a lot of work with no particular pay-off. It’s a bad way to traverse lots of information.

There’s a free version and one without ads and some additional features for $30.00.

Categories: Uncategorized dw