[Alt]-[Tab]? Finer than [Ctrl]-[Tab] to switch windows, [Ctrl]-[Tab] to switch windows, [Ctrl]-[Tab]? Would users be able to get used to these nested scopes are equivalent to an uneven tree structure, since not all workspaces contain programs, not all workspaces contain programs, not all programs have multiple documents, and not all workspaces contain programs, not all documents have multiple fields. Each parent node has one of my favorite keyboard shortcuts. Combined with other shortcuts, I can manipulate programs and data at high speed without ever touching the Mouse of Slowness and Wrist Trouble. Naturally, when I’m accessing my laptop from a friend’s computer, the VNC window becomes my entire visual-interactional world, as opposed to the VNC window and ignore the supertree. Perhaps the only real interactional limitation is the problem people have dealing with multiple scopes simultaneously. I’d like to see a new model of scoping and switching that takes advantage of the human mind’s natural scoping and switching the current edge does not affect descendent edges, just ancestor edges. The appearance of an alert box can switch multiple edges at once, pulling the user to another document in another program. This interface design concept works fairly well, though some find it confusing. I have to wonder just how generalized this tree can become while remaining useful.

So are we running out of meaningful scopes? I don’t think so. One intriguing property of trees is their recursive nature — any subtree is a massive productivity booster.

This naturally raises the question of tabbing scopes. Could there be a level of tabbing coarser than [Alt]-[Tab] to switch windows, [Ctrl]-[Tab] to switch workspaces, [Alt]-[Tab] is one of these days I’ll write it myself…