Wout's place

Under Construction

Some links about me:

• Zoek+, my site to make searching with Google and especially beyond easier.

Software archive

I like to make computers and services easier to use, and design user interfaces and experiment with these things. I created some nice programs and ideas for computers. A selection:

• Folder View, a program to make working with folders in Windows 95-XP a lot easier. I was irritated by the number of times you had to click to reach your most used folders. And you have to do this a lot when using a computer professionally. This was the solution to that problem. It got some very good reviews, from an honorable mention of 'Windows Wonders' in PC World to personal sites. It was on cover-cd's and has been downloaded by tens of thousands of people.
• Tag-based filemanagement. A document (PDF) describing an idea on how to make it easier to work with documents, folders and files. An imho good solution for eliminating the folders in the user interface.
• I also created XULWebmail (sorry for the name), an attempt to implement a traditional email-client like Thunderbird in a web application, so it could be run entirely from a webserver. This was done using a technology which later became known as Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). The project stopped at version 0.3, but it was working and proved that it could be done. Later, I helped the commercial @mail client to do the same.
• Provider Browser. A test. A dynamic browser-interface, build from downloadable xml-files and images. It also was an experiment with browsing using a tabbed-interface. Provider Browser can create a whole browser-interface from one (remote) xml-file. It can also populate listviews, tabs, etc, that way.
• Dynamic Desktop. An application designed to serve as a replacement for the traditional PC-desktop. I designed it in 2002 because I thought the behaviour of the desktops of PC's was static and unproductive (it still is btw). I tried to mix the old paradigm of directories with the idea of working in a more project-based manner. This did not work out the way I wanted, but the project was referenced in a patent application from America Online.
• Commercially, I also developed software. Amongst others: EasyScore, software to get the results of competitions into the newspaper in an easy way (we sold it to a lot of Dutch newspapers), and software to create company-stationery for e-mail.
• Lingo voor Windoos is a game I programmed for Windows 3.0 (!). Sorry for the design of the site, it was a joke...

I also created software for the MSX, Amiga, Dos, like menu-programs and demos. I also tried to help open source projects by filing usability-bugs, since I think most open source software is unusable for people other than tech people. Most developers don't see the importance of ease of use, which is a pity.

Regards,
Wouter van Wijk (contact me at wvw _att_ dds _dottt_ nl or at www.folderview.com)