Looking Glass

Vinko · 231.7K views · 2006-05-22 · 6:35

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Overview

A short demo of Sun Microsystems' Looking Glass, a 3D desktop GUI concept for a future operating system.

On Hacker News

Referenced as an example of an innovative, ahead-of-its-time desktop interface.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2010–2022

Topics

GUI, HCI & interface history Operating systems & kernels

What people said

theCrowing · 2022-11 · Reference
Reminds me of the looking glass [0] demo from sun for the app itself there is sadly not much to see yet. closed beta. [0] [VIDEO]
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exitb · 2022-06 · Reference
That’s a cool video, I’m also going to leave this here, from around the same time, but a totally different world: [VIDEO]
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bad_user · 2010-03 · Reference
Project Looking Glass, while certainly inspired by current UIs, it was definitely not a clone ... pretty innovative actually, although it wasn't usable yet. You can take a look at a demo here: [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Vinko, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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