[Sugar-devel] Zooming User Interface

[Christian Stroetmann]

Aloha

Since many years now I am looking at Sugar and the underlying basic 
software technologies. Besides this, I am also interested in the 
specific field of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI).

In this relation, I would like to present a concept that is an extension 
of the general GUI approach of the Sugar learning software with a 
Zooming User Interface (ZUI; [1]).

One inspiring moment was that recently the U.S.American government 
together with companiens like Adobe, Prezi, Microsoft and Apple 
announced to make software donationsto schools (related reports can be 
find in the web easily).
One specific software is Prezi ([2]) that is developed in Adobe Flash 
and Adobe AIR, and built on top of Django (Python web framework). 
Surprisingly, Prezi is not compliant with the Americans with 
Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act ([3] 
and [4])but used in education (see again [2]).

I looked around and found the software Eagle Mode ([5]; for a first 
impression see the videos on its website diretly).

Said this, I simply counted 1+1, Sugar+ZUI and Sugar+Eagle.

Such an UI approach has advantages and disadvantages that are discussed 
shortly on the website of Eagle Mode (see [6]). The point with the 
hardware requirements seems not to be relevant, because for example the 
hardware of the latest featurephones and featuretablets (simple 
smartphones and tablet computers) should be useable with a ZUI and are 
available for around 30 U.S. Dollar already.



Have fun
Christian Stroetmann

[1] Wikipedia, ZUI en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface
[2] Wikipedia, Prezi en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prezi
[3] Wikipedia, Rehabilitation Act of 
1973en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Rehabilitation_Act
[4] Wikipedia, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_of_the_Rehabilitation_Act
[5] Eagle Mode eaglemode.sourceforge.net
[6] Eagle Mode, Project Philosoophy 
eaglemode.sourceforge.net/philosophy.html