You can examine a file by selecting it from a menu of matched files. The screen rearranges itself so that the text of the file appears in an editor buffer. Another way of looking at files is to walk into another room that uses a perspective wall to display the files. The front segment is used for viewing details, and the side segments provide context. In this case, each node represents a file with its horizontal position determined by its date of last modification.
Vertical position is used to indicate the class of the file.
When a node is selected, the wall moves to bring the selected node to the center of the front section. In regions of the wall where there is too much detail, we can stretch the wall like a sheet of rubber to reduce clutter. You can see it really does create a great deal more information in a smaller space. I also wanted to show a little bit more of that user interface that was on the videotape. This is what these rooms look like in overview, and it is another way of thinking of combining a physical metaphor with a metaphor for artifact representations.