Pivot, the Dream window of information organization

The Microsoft Live Laboratory, which is known for its image processing, recently released a new novel: Pivot. After the launch of the first impression is a browser, and IE, FF, chrome and not the same is, pivot exquisite and gorgeous. But look at installation requirements: 256M of video memory, Win7 or Vista system, and install. NET Framework3.5 and IE8, the browser can not need this luxurious configuration ah, go to the official website to look at, and sure enough another thing. Live labs are trying to provide a much more effective, powerful, and interesting way to interact with the vast web of information. Usually the way we get information from the Web is by searching--browsing through links--browsing to get relevant links (articles, references, and so on) until you  you need. Pivot provides a more interactive and intuitive way of browsing information.

In addition to the installation of the need to invite code, use a little card is not too good, pivot the overall experience is very nice, in addition to the use of "depth zoom" technology to bring the handsome animation effect, the interface itself to do the visualization of the extreme. Look at the following:

Because there are some differences with the normal browser layout, Pivot provides some guidance on the first use to illustrate each module and function:

The visual processing of the page, is a big bright spot of pivot. At present, multiple-page check browsing, is the usual page title to identify, this has a disadvantage is that when you open many Windows, recognition is a difficult problem to deal with. In the previous workshop, we discussed the design of the TT5.0 browser tab to solve this problem.

Pivot's handling of this conundrum is pretty good, and although the thumbnail is small, it's really useful to find out how to recognize different windows, and there's a picture of the truth:

The visual design concept accompanies the entire product, everywhere:

This is the history of the Pivot interface:

Pivot brought a collections, which listed a lot of cooperation with the content provider Collecitons. Looking at live labs, Colleciton is a collection of similar information on the Internet, which is the embodiment of Pivot's philosophy: She restores the network to the web rather than to many separate pages:

These two interfaces show the most core capabilities of pivot: first mass information, and then provide the classification and many dimensions (that is, the object's attributes) to filter step-by-step to quickly locate what you are looking for. This information is organized in a way that is very similar to the way the library manages the file in Win7: One is to provide fast searching, and the other is to provide filtering and categorization of different dimensions (that is, properties of objects):

Windows ' Search experience has improved significantly since Vista, almost as much as Apple's spotlight. Thanks to the creation of the Metadata Index table, the search file only needs to query the index table to give results, rather than having to access the disk as slowly as XP. In the index table, in addition to our well-known attributes, such as file name, size, date, but also increased the author's name, image size, music style, camera aperture, etc. hundred items to help the information search metadata.

It is because of the support of many metadata that the "library" has brought a subversive innovation to the Windows traditional tree-style file management. In a single information organization such as a tree, managing files is not an easy thing to do. For example, if you need to find a file now, you must know the path to the file, otherwise you can rely on search (the search experience under XP is very difficult to tolerate), we need only files, but have to remember the storage path such as redundant information. Or maybe we just finished reading a Word document written by Wang June and wanted to look at other documents written by this person, similar to the author's needs, which are not satisfied with the traditional file management method. And in the "library", we only need to classify by author, we can find all the documents related to Wang June.

In this way to see the "library" of the function of a more tree-like file management way to use more, should be very popular only right, and in fact so far, "library" is only a recommended function of Win7, and the traditional way of file management is not a series. What is this for? The reason is related to the 06 Microsoft Force Push Concept: WinFS.

WinFS was the 06 star, when Microsoft was developing a much-anticipated Vista, and in a development plan called "horns," WinFS a revolutionary gesture to replace the traditional document management approach. Microsoft has invested a huge amount of effort to anticipate the following three principles in the process of innovating the file system: enabling users to "find", "correlate", and "manipulate" their information. Search is not difficult to understand, the emphasis is "fast" and "quasi". "Association" means that you can find each other by the relationship before the information, just as you just said to find a different document written by Wang June. and the 3rd "Operation", a little artificial intelligence meaning. For example, I'm having a meeting with only a mobile phone. This is the time to receive an email from a department manager asking about recent project progress. WinFS will automatically find the corresponding application of the system to give me notice (such as send a text message), after receiving the message, I would like to report to the manager about half an hour. WinFS can help you view the free time in our schedule and automatically create meetings.

The following is WinFS's promotional video, a good interpretation of its core philosophy:

In the increasing volume of hard disk and the tide of electronic data, the emergence of WinFS has undoubtedly brought us the gospel. Unfortunately, Microsoft finally failed to complete this new file system development, on the one hand, near the vista of the market pressure, WinFS to the hardware performance requirements can not be optimized to the point where the user is acceptable, on the other hand is the complexity of the information type is too high, So Microsoft had to announce on June 26, 06 that it would stop WinFS research and development.
Although it was just a blooming night in the Vista development process, but WinFS's idea was saved and inherited. Many of these technologies integrate into the ado.net and SQL Server,win7 "Libraries" also feel WinFS mantle. And Microsoft has just released the concept of products: Pivot.

Compared to one of the pivot "collections" is better than "library" management files, because the "library" information is similar to many complex, there are documents, photos, movies, EXE programs and so on, the corresponding key attributes, although many, but most of them are empty, These attributes certainly cannot be expected to be manually entered by the user themselves, so it doesn't feel like the advantage of a relational index table, but instead pivot's "collections" is provided by a third party, many of which can be provided in full, such as the "actor" category of birth, Number of films and so on. This is a very efficient screening.

Pivot's idea, mapping to Tencent's product line, has a direct reference to resource management and product search. For example, QQ Music library, qqlive Video Library, Cyclone Resources panel, even QQ Show mall. Because such resources are provided by the authorities, this ensures that each resource is equipped with structured metadata.

Look at Qqlive's video library from a pivot perspective, first listing all the resources, and then filtering through many dimensions, eventually sifting through the programs you're looking for:

WinFS shelved, Microsoft to "library" form to inherit WinFS's legacy, how many reveals helpless. And the release of the concept works pivot, you can feel Microsoft's information organization in the way of continuous attempts and exploration, and this kind of thinking is slowly maturing, perhaps one day, it will become our dream of surfing the internet window.