I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and I think I might have finally come up with a halfway decent GUI for Portal. There would be three view modes: Mac, Item, and Animation. The Mac view has a rotating palette that’s a straight rip off of Front Row. When a specific Mac is highlighted, you get the basic specs and the number of files, folders, apps, and sys. settings for the system. If a unique sync animation is selected for that Mac, it will be listed as well (along with its unique settings, if any). Double click on the Mac’s image and you move automatically to the Item view (the other macs fade out, and the item list slides in from the right in a cool little animated transition). The Item view sorts everything into the previously mentioned four categories. Beyond that you can sort by name, kind, date edited, date added, size, etc. Just like list view in Finder.
Animation view is just like Mac view, but instead of having pictures of Macs sliding around, you motion video from the animations. Highlighting one brings up the basic description, default running time, and the name of the author (user created animations will be possible via plugin). Double clicking runs a full-screen demo.
Of course, you’ll always be able to add a file to the sync list for a mac by right-clicking as well as dragging the file onto the Mac’s icon in Mac View OR dragging the file into the Item View.
Mac View
Item View
Enjoy!
