Window systems and window management techniques

During my stay at GMD-FIT (Dec 1999 - Aug 2000), I started developing a prototype able to extract the images of individual X Window applications from a live desktop and use them as textures to compose a new workspace. This work led to two early prototypes: VideoWorkspace [1] and Ametista [2].

Olivier Chapuis and myself are now developing Metisse [3], a system that extends Ametista by combining modified versions of fvwm and xserver with a custom OpenGL compositor. Over the recent years, we have used this system to implement and evaluate a number of innovative interaction techniques [4, 5, 6].

The Metisse Web site includes a number of screenshots and videos that illustrate the the system as well as the latest information about this work.

References

[1] N. Roussel. VideoWorkspace : une boîte à outils pour l'exploration de nouvelles techniques de gestion de fenêtres. In Proceedings of IHM 2002, 14ème conférence sur l'Interaction Homme-Machine, pages 271-274, Novembre 2002. ACM, International Conference Proceedings Series. [ACM] [Google]

[2] N. Roussel. Ametista: a mini-toolkit for exploring new window management techniques. In Proceedings of CLIHC 2003, the 1st Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, pages 117-124, August 2003. ACM. [ACM] [Google]

[3] O. Chapuis and N. Roussel. Metisse is not a 3D desktop! In Proceedings of UIST'05, the 18th ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, pages 13-22, October 2005. ACM. [ACM] [Google]

[4] W. Stuerzlinger, O. Chapuis, D. Phillips and N. Roussel. User interface façades: towards fully adaptable user interfaces. In Proceedings of UIST'06, the 19th ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, pages 309-318, October 2006. ACM. [ACM] [Google]

[5] O. Chapuis and N. Roussel. Copy-and-paste between overlapping windows. In Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems, pages 201–210, April 2007. ACM. [ACM] [Google]

[6] G. Faure, O. Chapuis and N. Roussel. Power tools for copying and moving: useful stuff for your desktop. In Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems, pages 1675-1678, April 2009. ACM. [ACM] [Google]