View Web searching and browsing from a new perspective-3D. The free SpaceTime Beta 0.9 simplifies surfing by organizing items in a spatial way, as you would in the real world. Web pages appear as large thumbnails, one behind the next, in a visual stack that recedes into the distance. Pages browsed by URL go into a browsed-image stack. Search stacks show thumbnails of the results listing followed by the pages it cites. Every search produces another stack. Stack float on an invisible plane. Within a stack, you can quickly move back and forth using your mouse’s scroll button. You’ll also find navigation tools in a band below the stack area. Keyboard cursor arrows let you “fly” through the 3D environment or move stacks. Double-clicking on a thumbnail maximizes it into a browsable window.

With certain sites, the application can display search in its interface rather then as normal 2D Web pages. Currently this capability works with major search engines and a number of RSS feeds. SpaceTime’s eBay search integration is the most impressive. The software isn’t a full-blown browser, though, and it requires a pretty powerful Windows XP or Windows Vista PC (Mac and Linux versions are in progress), but it’s definitely worth checking out.

Related Posts