XCruiser (XCruise)
Last Modified: Mon Feb 3 23:54:46 EST 2003 (02/04, 13:54 JST)
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News
- XCruiser-0.30 is released. (Feb. 3, 2003)
What is XCruiser?
XCruiser, formerly known as XCruise, is a filesystem visualization utility.
It constructs a virtually 3-D formed universe from a directory tree
and allows you to "cruise" within a visualized filesystem.
The original idea came to me when I was a university student.
I heard that tree-like filesystems are not necessarily
best for us since we often remember the location of objects with
spatial hints. I was inspired by this idea and developed XCruiser.
I wish that someone create more user-friendly interfaces based
on this program.
(You need Flash Player to view the demo.)
Analogies in XCruiser
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Directories : Galaxies
A directory is represented as a galaxy,
displayed as a cyan or white ring in XCruiser.
Unlike the actual universe, a galaxy may contain
other galaxies to represent hierarchical directories.
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Files : Planets
A regular file is represented as a planet.
The radius of a planet is determined by its mass,
which corresponds to the file size.
The color is currently kind of random, but
we're planning to relate it to the file type.
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Symbolic links : Wormholes
A symbolic link is represented as a wormhole,
displayed as a green curve.
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The Location of Files (Stars)
The position and the direction of a file(star) is
determined by its file name.
Longer filenames are located farther from the center of the parent galaxy.
Closer filenames are located in closer places to each other.
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Yusuke Shinyama (yusuke at cs . nyu . edu)