XCruiser (XCruise)

Last Modified: Mon Feb 3 23:54:46 EST 2003 (02/04, 13:54 JST)

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.

Analogies in XCruiser

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. 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. Symbolic links : Wormholes A symbolic link is represented as a wormhole, displayed as a green curve. 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.

Yusuke Shinyama (yusuke at cs . nyu . edu)