From the second paragraph: “As you might recall Compiz Fusion has already cloned Vista’s Flip-3D…”

Really?? Which came first, Flip-3D or the Compiz Fusion version?

I didn’t say that Compiz Fusion cloned Aero… I was meaning that Compiz Fusion created a plug-in that clones Vista’s Flip-3D feature. That came well after Microsoft demoed Flip-3D.

I like the idea of having this serve as an Alt+Tab replacement if the key combination is pressed quickly. That would help alleviate some of the problems I was talking about. One thing that Alt+Tab still does to make identifying windows a quick process is include the application’s icon. Sometimes it’s difficult from small previews to tell what’s your feed reader and what’s your email application without hovering over them, and so I think an icon needs to be placed in the corner to get around that problem. I look forward to seeing what else will come out of Stackswitch!

This is definitely more useful than Flip-3D in my opinion, but the question is whether it can grab the attention of those that enjoy the simplicity of Alt+Tab.

You’re quite right that Alt Tab is very quick for switching between windows. I think Windows and Mac OS X got this wrong, in that they have one way of switching between recent windows quickly (Alt Tab on Windows, Command Tab and Command ` on Mac OS X), and then a separate mechanism to get the flashy interface. (Actually on Mac OS X it’s even worse, because over the years they’ve accumulated half a dozen different ways to switch between windows and applications.)

So what I’m trying to do with this design is have a single mechanism for switching tasks, with a consistent interface. If you pressed Alt Tab quickly, it would switch to the next-most-recent window with no fuss; but if you kept holding down Alt, the switcher would appear so you could select other windows. This detail isn’t implemented in the current version of the stackswitch plugin, though.

Really?? Which came first, Flip-3D or the Compiz Fusion version?