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The Future Of The GUI?
Graymalkin sent in a nice article written for fairly novice folks comparing Mac OS X, Microsoft's upcoming .NET, and Nautilus's respective user interfaces. Considering all 3 are still vapor, it'll be even more
interesting to read an article like this in a year, and compare it to
this.
Go use a Mac from 1984, and try to do a normal routine of opening documents, editing, saving, copying files, etc. Now use one from 2000. There's a HELL of a difference in terms of what those two OS's are capable of doing!
;)
I still would classify this as fine-tuning. It's not like the difference between CLI vs. GUI.
Define "everyone else." No, really! Do you mean the management types?
They would be my first target for sure! I am quasi-management myself (but still code) and find it frustrating to get things done dealing with other managers who hide behind email all day. I'm also probably jaded from using enlightenment for the last couple years.
I'm definitely oversimplifying the issue; probably anyone who reads this website qualifies as someone who needs their desktop to work, but I'm betting the majority of office staff (especially managers) do not need to sit and stare at a screen all day and they'd probably be better off for it. (as would the company)
And I really believe that some time in the next 10-20 years you will see the desktop computer go away except for those who do the content-generating/coding - people will have some other, much more convenient way of accessing information from the net or whatever takes its place. Until then, I cringe every time someone spouts off about the sexy new eyecandy on their desktop.
If I really thought about it I'd probably come up with some better way to make my point, but I've sat here long enough.
An interface should give the user some indication on what to do, and somewhere to do it. The basic function of what to do could be explained in the manuals, like mouse clicks, etc. But the rest of it should be visible.
For example, the CLI emulates a teletype, with a few standard hacks. The CLI brings to the TTY, the notion of redirection of output, a programming interface, and pipelineing. Once mastered, the CLI can prove to be a powerful workhorse.
In a windowing system, you can run multiple CLI sessions. You would be very upset if commands made in one session affected another. This is called leaking. Yet, different command lines could be logged to the same log file, what is going on would be clear if different names are used: consider the IRC sessions, for example.
What makes GUIs scary is that it is all too easy to hide things, and move them from place to place. The interface varies from user to user, and from vendor to vendor, and from version to version.
A small UI, like the Win3x shell, makes a dandy thing if the main activities is to launch intensive applications, like games, or to load different users, or to install hardware and software to the OS. The shell is small, and fits nicely into ram, and is more userfriendly than a command line. A fixed shell makes it easier to describe in manuals, for one-time tasks like installation, or rare activities like fs maintainance.
Once into an activity, you can then load the shell of your choice (on a user by user basis), and your customisations for that user. This can be a full set of widgets and hacks designed to allow programs to integrate.
What happens now is that each new version of Windows seems to say `lets make Windows look like OS/2 v 1 [so we got Program Manager and File Manager]. Let's make it look like v 2.0, so we get Explorer. Let's make it look like Netscape, so we get the Win98 explorer thing. And let's make it look like the Adobe interface, so we get this Win.NET thing.
So if you want to do any nice things, you have to learn the weird languages that make the different shells tick, or just leave them alone.
And so you see why, despite the power of the shells, most people use them in much the same way as the dodgy little menus that came with the DOS machines in the late 80's. Use the shell to start programs. All the rest of the shell is so much lard.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I use my right button menus all the time, and I think they are very intuitive, and a very good idea. I think the problem is that no one explains it to most people properly. The right button brings up a list of all the actions you can take upon whatever you've clicked the right button on, while the left button selects on the first click, and when you double click, it executes the default action (which is bold in your right button menu).
Now, obviously no one here really needed that explained to them, but I've done lots of teaching basic windoze, and I've found that is a rather good way to explain it to people. People use it if they're taught how.
Joshua
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Y'know, I've wondered this for a few weeks now and I'm finally going to ask: How the hell do you people get your posts to show up in that god-awful font? It is truly jarring to be reading along with the usual proportional /. font and then hit a fixed-font message - it makes me think I've hit a troll ('cause the letters sort of look like all-caps compared to a proportional font).
What gives with that, anyway?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I am not saything there is not anything wrong with the new stuff, I am just saying that the old stuff ain't bad either. At least they work.
Gorkman
Err, gnustep isn't innovation. It is copying/cloning Next. Berlin is rather innovative but it isn't even in the catagory of vapor yet. It is in such extreme alpha state that it is practically not worth mentioning. It is FAR, FAR from being end-useable, plus it will suffer, unfortunately, from the huge dependence of almost all things linux on X.
I would LOVE to ditch X and go with something smaller, faster, better, but unless the major distros get behind Berlin, it will be ready for prime time around the time that Golgotha is (yeah, right - but even then golgotha is so much more developed).
How many guys are working on Berlin? Two? Three? I'm holding my breath on it's release in even beta format, I tell you.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Has it occured to anybody but me that ever since Win95, the next version of Windows has been said to have these new, advanced capabilities with impressive beta releases, and then when it all gets down to it, they ship the same old, same old?
I mean, really. Those screen shots, with a tweak here and a tweak there, look like the really early Win98 show-off-ware. And they've been having ideas about design ever since MS Bob! All that MS has come up with is a few tweaks here and there to the interface, a little gloss, and a lot of hype.
I think that the GUI needs to get OUT of my way, not in my way. If I want news, I'll look it up. If I want my buddies, I'll pull up my buddy list.
If we are going to not have windows that overlap, I want there to be $100 tablet computers that I can spread out over my desk, not a single $2000 computer with a single monitor.
Having said that, OS X has some good new tweaks to the interface. It's no revolution, but I think that Aqua is doing a better job at evolving the GUI.
Gentoo Sucks
Gnome and KDE are crap compared to these interfaces, the only good features they have they stole. They are handicapped by strong direction and lack of interface testing. UI is VERY VERY hard, you don't just slap together whatever comes to mind and expect it to be usable to the general public. All gnome and kde amount to are extremly complex interfaces built by COMPUTER EXPERTS that try to be beginner interfaces at the same time and fail miserably. You can argue that gnome and kde are great, but you allready know and understand the concepts behind them. From the outside, it's pretty much worthless. Plus they are discovering all the problems msft discovered during the early phases of its switch to componant software. MSFT took the plunge and now they are coming back in a big way after working out all the problems. Gnome and KDE have just begun their journey.
You raise an interesting point, worth considering further. I'd suggest that all interfaces limit the user's actions in some way or another. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that all interfaces make certain operations easier and others harder.
:)
Consider:
GUI: viewing a list of files, selecting a bunch of them, and moving them elsewhere is quite easy
CLI: In a strict, single screen CLI is more difficult to view a list of files (list may scroll off the top of the screen), select multiple files (must type each name correctly), and them move them
or,
CLI: With the typical suite of *nix tools, it is fairly easy to examine (more, less, head, tail) and manipulate (cat, vi, |, perl voodoo) documents for a variety of actions
GUI: Must load word processor, then open documents, then manually accomplish each action
But in each case, it *is* possible to accomplish the task. It may just be difficult.
The trick, or perhaps the key, to a good UI is making the most common and most important operations trivial, and providing a good set of tools so all other operations are not overly difficult.
But to do that, requires a good understanding of what people do and how they'd like to do it. I'm concerned that, at least in a few minor cases, UI designers don't know understand how many people work (or maybe I'm just odd).
- Easel will auto-iconify folders based on its content. Thus, a folder of music files gets a music icon.
That would be great if I organized my files by type, but I organize by content. Thus, a given folder is usually a mixed group of filetypes that all share a common (abstract) theme, like "my web page" or "my thesis" or "games". Auto icon-ifying based on filetype will most likely give me misleading icons for most of my folders.
- MSN Explorer, a partial, proto-UI for the next version, has a persistent media player.
Why? I listen to music about 50% of the time I work on a computer. And when I am listening to music, I don't want the media player visible anymore than I want my stereo on my desk/couch/lap when I'm working and listening to music. I want to start the player, and then not have to think about it again.
(I could think of something for Aqua, but I'm tired of writing
But despite my minor quibbles, hopefully the majority of the GUI features of these new guys will allow the important stuff to be done easily.
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D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
Why are you afraid of cookies? Is Big Brother(tm) watching you?
(Big Brother is a registered trademark of Microsoft corporation and is used without consent.)
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Is it just me or does the future of GUI's seem to be just a "pretty" version of the old modal menu interfaces? Remove the purty graphics from the .net and all you have is list of options. Does the fact that you click on them instead of pressing a number really make it any different?
The same question applies to both Aqua and Nautilus. In both cases, their "only on list at a time" approach to file browsing reminds me of a gohper interface with graphics. Am I the only one that see it like this?
Hmmm. Completely objectively, I use Enlightenment to manage my Linux X windows. It is certainly innovative to a level that I find lacking in both Windows (unless they've vastly changed the GUI in Win2k, which I've not yet used) and Mac OS.
A docking bar with a mini-preview-snapshot deal for each "minimized" application. Multiple virtual desktops, with a small map with previews of each application. The ability to scroll over the edge of the screen and have it flip up the next window.
No start bar. No task bar. No stupid menu bar stuck across the top of my screen. No silly pull out control bar. No shortcut bar. BUT a configurable start-type menu that appears anywhere on the background that I left-click. How much more innovative should Linux be before it is released from this myth that the Linux GUI is nothing more than a copy of windows & macintosh?
I do not have a signature
[...snip...] We all like to rag journalists for being clueless and gullible....
I like to rag Apple-bashers for being clueless and gullible! You know, the simple-minded idiots love to think "Apple just copied Xerox." Their brains are just too wimpy to handle the truth.
As a public service, I am providing the whole text of an article by someone who was actually there, Bruce Horn.
-Todd
Origins of Macintosh Interface
Xerox and the Origins of the Macintosh Interface
by Bruce Horn bruce.horn@alumni.cs.cmu.edu
About Bruce:
Any number of people will try to tell you about the origins of the Macintosh, but Bruce Horn was one of the people who made it happen. From 1973 to 1981, Bruce was a student in the Learning Research Group at Xerox, where Smalltalk, an interactive, object- oriented programming language, was developed. While there, he worked on various projects including the NoteTaker, a portable Smalltalk machine, and wrote the initial Dorado Smalltalk microcode for Smalltalk-76. At the Central Institute for Industrial Research in Oslo, Norway, in 1980, he ported Smalltalk- 78 to an 8086 machine, the Mycron-2000.
At Apple (1981-1984), Bruce's contributions included the design and implementation of the Resource Manager, the Dialog Manager and the Finder (with implementation help from Steve Capps). He was also responsible for the type framework for documents, applications, and clipboard data, and a number of system-level design decisions. Since then, Bruce consulted on a variety of projects in the late 1980's at Apple and received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1993. He continues to work as a computer science consultant with Apple and other companies.
Where It All BeganFor more than a decade now, I've listened to the debate about where the Macintosh user interface came from. Most people assume it came directly from Xerox, after Steve Jobs went to visit Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). This "fact" is reported over and over, by people who don't know better (and also by people who should!). Unfortunately, it just isn't true -- there are some similarities between the Apple interface and the various interfaces on Xerox systems, but the differences are substantial.
Steve did see Smalltalk when he visited PARC. He saw the Smalltalk integrated programming environment, with the mouse selecting text, pop-up menus, windows, and so on. The Lisa group at Apple built a system based on their own ideas combined with what they could remember from the Smalltalk demo, and the Mac folks built yet another system. There is a significant difference between using the Mac and Smalltalk.
Smalltalk has no Finder, and no need for one, really. Drag-and- drop file manipulation came from the Mac group, along with many other unique concepts: resources and dual-fork files for storing layout and international information apart from code; definition procedures; drag-and-drop system extension and configuration; types and creators for files; direct manipulation editing of document, disk, and application names; redundant typed data for the clipboard; multiple views of the file system; desk accessories; and control panels, among others. The Lisa group invented some fundamental concepts as well: pull down menus, the imaging and windowing models based on QuickDraw, the clipboard, and cleanly internationalizable software.
Smalltalk had a three-button mouse and pop-up menus, in contrast to the Mac's menu bar and one-button mouse. Smalltalk didn't even have self-repairing windows -- you had to click in them to get them to repaint, and programs couldn't draw into partially obscured windows. Bill Atkinson did not know this, so he invented regions as the basis of QuickDraw and the Window Manager so that he could quickly draw in covered windows and repaint portions of windows brought to the front. One Macintosh feature identical to a Smalltalk feature is selection-based modeless text editing with cut and paste, which was created by Larry Tesler for his Gypsy editor at PARC.
As you may be gathering, the difference between the Xerox system architectures and Macintosh architecture is huge; much bigger than the difference between the Mac and Windows. It's not surprising, since Microsoft saw quite a bit of the Macintosh design (API's, sample code, etc.) during the Mac's development from 1981 to 1984; the intention was to help them write applications for the Mac, and it also gave their system designers a template from which to design Windows. In contrast, the Mac and Lisa designers had to invent their own architectures. Of course, there were some ex- Xerox people in the Lisa and Mac groups, but the design point for these machines was so different that we didn't leverage our knowledge of the Xerox systems as much as some people think.
The hardware itself was an amazing step forward as well. It offered an all-in-one design, four-voice sound, small footprint, clock, auto-eject floppies, serial ports, and so on. The small, portable, appealing case was a serious departure from the ugly- box-on-an-ugly-box PC world, thanks to Jerry Manock and his crew. Even the packaging showed amazing creativity and passion -- do any of you remember unpacking an original 128K Mac? The Mac, the unpacking instructions, the profusely-illustrated and beautifully- written manuals, and the animated practice program with audio cassette were tastefully packaged in a cardboard box with Picasso- style graphics on the side. Looking Back
In my opinion, the software architectures developed at Xerox for Smalltalk and the Xerox Star were significantly more advanced than either the Mac or Windows. The Star was a tremendous accomplishment, with features that current systems haven't even started to implement, though I see OpenDoc as a strong advance past the Xerox systems. I have great respect for the amazing computer scientists at Xerox PARC, who led the way with innovations we all take for granted now, and from whom I learned a tremendous amount about software design.
Apple could have developed a more complex, sophisticated system rivaling the Xerox architectures. But the Mac had to ship, and it had to be relatively inexpensive -- we couldn't afford the time or expense of the "best possible" design. As a "little brother" to the Lisa, the Macintosh didn't have multitasking or protection -- we didn't have space for the extra code or stack required. The original Macintosh had extremely tight memory and disk constraints; for example, the Resource Manager took up less than 3,000 bytes of code in the ROM, and the Finder was only 46K on disk. We made many design decisions that we regretted to some extent - even at the time some of us felt disappointed at the compromises we had to make -- but if we had done it differently, would we have shipped at all?
The Past and FutureIn many ways, the computing world has made remarkably small advances since 1976, and we continually reinvent the wheel. Smalltalk had a nice bytecoded multi-platform virtual machine long before Java. Object oriented programming is the hot thing now, and it's almost 30 years old (see the Simula-67 language). Environments have not progressed much either: I feel the Smalltalk environments from the late 1970's are the most pleasant, cleanest, fastest, and smoothest programming environments I have ever used. Although CodeWarrior is reasonably good for C++ development, I haven't seen anything that compares favorably to the Smalltalk systems I used almost 20 years ago. The Smalltalk systems of today aren't as clean, easy to use, or well- designed as the originals, in my opinion.
We are not even close to the ultimate computing-information- communication device. We have much more work to do on system architectures and user interfaces. In particular, user interface design must be driven by deep architectural issues and not just new graphical appearances; interfaces are structure, not image. Neither Copland nor Windows 95 (nor NT, for that matter) represent the last word on operating systems. Unfortunately, market forces are slowing the development of the next revolution. Still, I think you can count on Apple being the company bringing these improvements to next generation systems.
I'm sure some things I remember as having originated at Apple were independently developed elsewhere. But the Mac brought them to the world.
Your Gnome apps? Would need to be completely rewritten. Ditto for the KDE apps.
Everything needs to get recoded using OmniORB, C++, GGI, and the Berlin libs.
As a result, jumping to Berlin means losing all the GUIed applications that you might be running now, from StarOffice to GNOME to Netscape to KDE.
If you run Berlin atop GGI atop X, then maybe you can run some of those concurrently...
It makes you jump through the hoop of applying DPS to everything, which will be quite wonderful for anything that should be WYSIWYG, and which may represent a big "who cares?" for other sorts of applications.
It has the merit over Berlin that there may be some existing NeXTstep and OPENSTEP applications out that would be an "easy port away," and might have a bit more ability to play well with existing X apps.
Unfortunately, both suffer from the same daunting problem that in order to make them useful, there's a whopping lot of code that needs to be written. And they're pretty useless until both libraries, services, and applications get written.
GNUstep is somewhat closer to usefulness, with the added merit that there are parts of it (namely the DPS services/libraries) that can be usable with other graphical environments.
In similar senses, Linux and the BSDs are not particularly "innovative," as they all "merely" represent Yet Another Unix Clone. In contrast, EROS is a truly innovative OS kernel design, but since building a user space to go along with that is daunting, practically nobody uses EROS.
Innovation is pretty cool and all, but I'm just not sure that it actually represents something deployable.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Nope, it's Mach.
-Todd
More innovation has come out of development on Linux than from M$ and crApple combined.
Okay. Let's play a game. You name something innovative done on Linux and I'll tell you the source it originally came from or was inspired by.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
In my opinion, a feature that I don't use is a feature that gets in the way. Since the GUI is what lets me interact with the program, anything that gets in the way can cause me to be extremely annoyed. I just don't have much tolerance for fluff. (Explains why I avoid gnome and kde.)
I'm not saying that a good program can't have lots of features, just that it's hard for programs to include a lot without having some of them get in the way. If your program does 5 things, chances are that every user will use all of them. If it provides 500, everyone will find that 475 of those things are useless to them. Every program needs a way of keeping those 475 things somewhere where they won't be bothersome.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I would like to be able to automate operations involving GUI-based applications in much the same way as I can automate command-line-based ones by using "here documents" in shell scripts. Given a few simple conventions for identifying GUI elements such as menu entries, buttons of various types, list boxes, and so on it shouldn't be hard to come up with a simple language for redirecting events into an event queue to start programs, issue commands to them, and pipe I/O between them.
What you're asking for sounds a lot like AppleScript. AppleScript will still be supported in OS X, and there will probably be a way to integrate it with the CLI too, from either from Apple or from some 3rd party.
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This space unintentionally left unblank.
I must admit I just don't get Eazel (yet). It appears to me that all it is is a file browser. What the hell do I care about a fancy file browser? I have that with konqueror, and honestly, I can't see any real difference other than look (HUGE icons, like everything in Gnome...WAY too frickin' huge like everyone has vision problems).
Would someone explain to me why Eazel, a mere file browser (web browser?) is in the company of full GUIs like the doze interface IDEA and the MacOS X reality? It is just an app that can be run on an interface system...like gnome or kde for instance.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Yeah, and what's gfm (Gnome File Manager) for then? They make it sound like Gnome was just in total useless disarray before the saintly Eazel came along, and that Eazel is essentially synonymous with the Gnome desktop. I mean, Gnome is a lot more than just one file manager/browser. Seems to me that Eazel is at best a peripheral player who is nicely writing some Free software for Gnome hoping to capitalize on it later. Hardly responsible for Gnome as a whole.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Everyone keeps suggesting different ideas for UI, but they seem to be laying too much on the OS. The systems for organizing program use in the GNU tools and Windows are relatively uniform. All Windows apps are easy to use as long as they follow the GUI guidlines. Similarly, most GNU tools are easy to learn because they use similar arguments & input as other GNU tools.
Gnome has no way of enforcing conformity. The gnome team isn't going to be able to make it so that Emacs fits with their interface guidelines. KDE can't make Netscape use QT widgets. Since these two environments came along *so* *late* in the lifecycle of Unix, there is no way that they can create a uniform & easy to learn environment. At least not one of any fantastic use to Unix geeks, because it will only work with their new tools.
Mac OS X is in a weird predicament as well, because Apple keeps violating their own HI guidelines left and right. Quicktime is foul. The new finder has unexpected features and clutter. It takes too long to visually find your balance.
Anyway. I guess my point is just that usability is directly related to the uniformity of appearance between applications. Which is why I think that Windows 2000 is the most easy to use desktop environment ever created. After being a Mac user since I could read, and a Linux user since I could code, I picked up Win2k for the first time three months ago. It doesn't feel good because of anything particularly intelligent on MS's part. It feels good because everything works alike.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
"but until a new company named Eazel came along, no one was willing to take the step to create a world-class interface"
Have these guys seen KDE 2 or GNOME? These are both "world-class" GUI's!
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
Most problems most people find with today's GUI's are problems because most computers today running GUI's are running windows.
The problems you describe with the icons--Macs don't have those problems. Apple didn't have any dumb DOS filename extensions they could use as a lame argument for not making the icons recognizable, so the file icon *had* to convey what type of file the user was looking at. All you have to do to undertstand what type of file you are dealing with on a mac is LATFI (Look At The Fine Icon). Getting to the argument about the executables and files having the same icons, in most cases, macs have different icons for files and executables. Getting to the whole application integration thing, macs have always been able to do this. A mac file has two basic properties, a creator type and a file type. The creator type says what program the file "belongs" to, and the file type is the file type (jpeg, mp3, etc). When you double click on a file icon (let's say an MP3), the mac will open up the file in MacAmp. Double click a word document, the document
Most of the things you describe in your post are things that macs have been able to do for years. The whole application integration thing has been tackled by applescript, a plain english type of scripting language that has hooks in a great many mac programs. The file/folder system is not a bad system, but it needs to be implemented consistently, like it is on a mac. On a mac, every object is consistently manipulatable. I can choose a different icon for just *one* file of a certain type. If I have a britney spears MP3, I can change the icon from whatever the default mp3 icon is to a pile of dog poo (seems appropriate). I can have the ability to change the icon for a single folder, as well. Every object on a mac (with the exception of trash) is a folderitem--it is either a folder or something that fits in a folder. It can be easily modified, changed, deleted, or moved. Contrast this with windows, where there are regular files/folders, and then there are files/folders that have special "behaviors". Files/Folders like My Computer, Dial Up Networking, Control Panels, Printers, My Documents, etc. These files/folders don't act normally, so they break consistency. Any GUI that breaks consistency with itself is going to be user hostile.
I fail to see why Miguel is so damned impressed with Microsoft.
C:\ONGRTLNS.W2K
I know that in the upcoming Whistler (next version of Windows) there will be a choice to use either their new webified GUI, or the old.
I bet 90% or more of the users will still use the old GUI design. It looks better, and is more functional.
What this means, I don't know.
EverCode
I would have a serious problem with a voice-input system. The speech/hearing parts of my brain are severely out of whack compared to the reading/writing parts. Verbal communication just doesn't work in my brain, especially if I'm trying to do visual communication at the same time. No multitasking in Eric's brain!
What a pud. More innovation has come out of development on Linux than from M$ and crApple combined.
What are you talking about? Completely objectively (I am a user of Windows, Linux, and the Macintosh), the GUIs for Linux are more attempts to outdo Windows than anything else. You won't find much in terms of amazing human engineering or honest innovation, just more doodads.
Very unfortunately, the "we must beat the evil empire" attitude has hurt Linux development in a number of ways. Isn't Linus always saying "there is no war"? Doesn't anyone listen?
I added an ugly hack(first thing I ever programmed) to a nice, light and fast WM(http://flwm.sourceforge.net which is really nice on its own), and it works perfectly for me. It stays out of my way, and when I want it to do something, everything is right at my fingertips.
I put it up at (http://squared.virtualave.net/files.html), but I doubt anyone else but myself is going to use it.
Anyway, my point is that all these new GUIs just seem to be piling more stuff onto regular GUI concepts. I found that by adding something simple, yet different, I made a great wm way more convienient and useful(at least for my use). I wonder if the same approach would work on such next-generation GUIs.
"When I decide I'd like to be able to drag one document on top of another and concatenate them? (cat doc1 doc2 > doc3 in good old CLI world). I cannot."
Yeah, if you're using text files. Bet a bunch of people don't.
I think that the GUI is going to need to take another leap and a few bounds, before it actually improves. What OS X really needs to introduce is voice input. Mac has always had great graphics capability. They are showing commercials that show how easy it is to hook a video camera to the system. They need to push some kind of easy to use send mom the video campaign. I started sending my relatives mp3s of me talking to them already rather than a typee letter. Sure they are larger, but it si almost like a one sided phone call. The technology is here and a 1 meg donload over 56k is about 5 minutes, which is not that bad. If Mac could make this the NORM, then I think it it would be a leap in the right direction. If they could make it standard with voice input, even if it is as a side assistant then it would be real cool. Like prody parrot or something.
If nothing else Mac should introduce handwriting recognition devices as part of its top of the line machines.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
OpenDoc was sucky. Sorry... I really wanted to like it. I have a bunch of beta CD's sitting at home for it that I haven't looked at in years. It's pretty much been fulfilled in activeX, and now bonobo. The idea was more that you could embed one form of data in another and each component (i.e. app) would handle the data itself. Didn't understand the data? Get the component (duh!).
So why does it suck? Performance. Interface. Sucky, Sucky, Sucky. Not only did the U.I. make no sense whatsoever, but it was slow as hell. No... what we need is more of each app handling a sort of common data format (XML?) and filtering it. Not embedding.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
every minute a computer user realizes that eye-candy sugar coated user interfaces are a waste of time and computer resources and detract you form whatever it is you were trying to do before a shitty user interface got in your way.
check out this.
Note that this is not a lame link to goatse.cx or otherwise dried up joke.
GONE FISHING
I am currently working on the design document of an "improvement" to (either bash or tcsh). I like to call it NLPsh for Natural Language Parser shell. Instead of running executable files, NLPsh would interpret P->NP* statements. For example: :)
copy happy.txt to sad.txt, print it, and delete it
Basically, I want to merge a UNIX shell and the Zork interface
... as someone who started out with Macs, went to Windows, and finally to Linux, MacOS X is IMHO the best of all worlds as long as they continue to allow access to command line and the ability to hack the interface.
/me ends overshare
I know it's sort of a lame reason to really like an OS. Stability and functionality should be (some of) the most important issues. But I have to admit the only reason I even tried Windows 95 was when I saw that you could replace the shell and use apps like Litestep to totally change the experience. I simply hated MS Windows, but realized the need to get to know it. After that, of course I would be interested in Linux and want to get to know it, since so much of Litestep is based on GUI's used with Linux and Unix. And that helped me get over my admittedly irrational fear of working command line, really hacking the way a computer works, etc.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Last time I checked, I didn't have to type anything to talk to my girlfriend. Why is the CLI somehow the acme of interface with not-me objects? Seems to me like characters on a plastic board is a much less rich form of communication than, say, speech, or even gestures.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
That is the impression I got when i read the article at work in Newsweek or something like that. It seems like the author was a little ignorant. But that is the way with those types of magazines. I love Gnome and Enlightenment, I'll give them more respect because this really isn't an easy task and they are doing a hell of a job.
AK
2. Yes, that was the case in Windows 3.1
3. You can move EVERY OTHER application.
(end comment) */ }
(end comment) */ }
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
I can't understant how anyone can get by without right-click, especially in Windows. I right click everything. Copying/moving/deleting files, viewing properties of just about everything... and for Quake of course, you need at least 3 buttons plus a scroll wheel.
The basic premise of UI and feature design given today's busy desktops is that if it's not on by default it might as well not be there. Very few users change defaults, or even know it can be done. Same with right-click. Very few users know about it or what it does since most of the time right-clicking goves you nothing or nothing useful/understandable.
I think it's just a matter of experience but you can't change user behaviour easily and it's just one of those 'obscure' things most people don't know about.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
they won't own any of my apps
Do you own any of their apps ? If you work in an office (driving Word or Excel), or you sell eServices over the (.)Net, then M$oft want a piece of you as a market. If you're a hypothetical Slashdot reader with a blagged copy of Win98 that you only ever use for games playing, then they don't really care that much about you anyway.
Stop a typical small business pirating Word and they'll buy it.
Stop a home geek pirating it and they'll just stop using it.
IMHO, M$oft recognise that the "home computer" is dead. A population that can't set the clock on its video is just too stupid to need a PC anyway. They bought them previously because they needed them as games machines or web browsers, but no longer. As M$oft does depend a lot on OEM Windows sales, then this is a big problem for them.
Cue the X-box....
You'll keep using Borgware. When you read the cable TV guide on-line (using the X-box's browser), it will be .Net code that serves it up to your local cable co. (and charges them per-view to do so). The cable co. hosts it on a web page running on Win2K++ (and gets charged a per-hour licence for using it) and when you put your CC details in to order the night's pr0n viewing, it's another .Net service that validates the CC details. You might not "own a copy of Word", but M$oft will still be getting its slice of your pie.
Last I checked you could purchase an OS X Beta CD for $29US to run on your G3 or G4. And in a few months the full OS will be available to everyone.
The reason why we use 2D so much is because our eyes only see things from one direction at a time. Put two things next to each other, and I can see them both. But one thing 2 feet behind another thing, and what is the point, exactly? How is "2 feet behind" different in practical terms from "covered up in a two-dimensional image"?
User interaction is another issue. I can point at something to indicate its position in my relative 2D perspective, but I can't indicate how far away it is by pointing. You are not simplifying the user experience with a third dimension, but rather you are making it more complicated.
These reasons, among others, are why nearly every attempt an a user environment analogous to 3D ever invented has been regarded as little more than a curious toy... Great for making the little girl's search for the security system files in Jurassic park a little more thrilling in a movie, but not really useful in the real world.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
When are we going to start seeing mainstream 3D interfaces? With the increase in 3D card tech (NVIDIA) and solid 3D programming libs supported on multiple platforms (OpenGL) why are we still using 2D interfaces? Furthermore, why is information still being represented as mere text on the screen? Frame it in any fancy "window" you want, I'm still reading text off a screen, just as I did when I was working with command prompts 15 years ago. Besides the 3D tech advancing dramatically, what about speech recognition, better audio file compression, ect... Audio, just like 3D tech, is being treated as a fancy extra rather than something that should play an intricate part in the GUI. We do have 5 senses afterall. And the only one GUIs play up to GUIs don't use very well. I'll bite my lip at going off on the potential of M$'s chrome before they canned that idea. But come off it all you GUI "innovaters". When the hell do you let go of point & click and maybe look torwards "speak and move" or some other crappy buzz phrase that they love to quote. 3D environment with speech recognition. It's doable NOW, it's BEEN doable for a while. When the hell are we going to start seeing it?! And I haven't even gone off on text-to-speech translators. Let's start using more than text and flat images!
-
"There is no off position on the genius switch." --Dave Letterman
-
All I ever ask for in a GUI is hot keys. I use them as often as the mouse. That's the only thing I can think of that helps me speed up productivity, whether it's Ctrl C/V/X for cut n paste in just about any app(as well as ctrl+shift for more specific cut n paste) or Alt-Tab switching, I use them all the time. Even the weird ones that make you contort your fingers.
The key is touchscreens. In two or three years we're going to have LEPs on the market, which make possible large, inexpensive flatscreens. With them, we can have a touscreen that covers your entire desk for under $1000, maybe under $500. Take that, just enlarge all of the tangible objects in the GUI to at least the size of a fingertip, and you have a great GUI!
While the job of revamping Macintosh and Windows obviously belongs to their respective stewards, the same can't be said for the upstart Linux system. Nobody owns this Unix-based operating system built around the code first created by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds.
Uhhmmm, actually Linux is owned. Different portions of it are owned by different people. Linus Torvalds owns parts of the kernel, as does Alan Cox and many other people. The GNU utilities are probably owned by the FSF rather than the individual coders who created them. The fact that all of these pieces of code have been licensed under the GPL in no way nullifies anyone's ownership of them.
So many people confuse the GPL with something being in the public domain. If a piece of code was in the public domain, the GPL would be unenforcable. It is only because individuals do own and hold the rights to the code they have created that the GPL has any meaning at all.
Something that a lot of people don't realize is that code licensed under the GPL can be licensed by its creator under other licensing terms which are incompatible with the GPL. Users of that code, who use it under the GPL, do not have such rights, but the copyright holder does. So the next time someone tries to tell you that you can't license your own code to anyone else once you placed it under the GPL, tell them to go study copyright law just a little before they start running their mouth.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
"We want users to be able to run applications without even knowing it," says the company's vice .NET interface that
president of interface technologies, Kai-Fu Lee (naturally, an Apple veteran). This concept is
called the "Universal Canvas" and is an integral part of the eventual
will not only blend the Web with the desktop, but allow users to access the same techniques to
search their mail, their files and the Web.
'Universal Canvas', 'Natalie Portman', 'Mr.Toad's Wild Ride' call it whatever the hell you want...
it still sounds like 'Big Brother'.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Happens with every MSNBC linked article.
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seumas.com
If what you say is true, .NET actually sounds much worse than I thought. First, XML is just a buzzword, one of an infinite number of ways to represent data (it is a useful interchange format, to be sure, but what other vendors does Microsoft want you to interchange your Windows configuration files with?); it does not make object sharing between apps or OSes any simpler than what is available now (read: badly done), it simply makes it more structured for reuse (read: badly done and shared). What you're really saying is the big deal is that all configuration files are accessible and modifyable. I don't believe it but, my goodness, wouldn't that be a absolute support nightmare? It's nice to have a somewhat configurable system, but giving the users the ability to tweak absolutely everything is a disaster waiting to happen.
I went to CompUSA the other day and looked at the new Macs and was totally confused with the Mac OS interface... go figure. Too much command line interface'ing does that to ya.
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
It's not necessary today as having does support more than 640K wasn't necessary when it was first written. The OS-X was written from scratch and will probably outlive the current pixel-based windowing systems, a while ago I read that IBM was able to produce monitors with resolutions 10 or more times better than current monitors, unfortunately we can not use them on our current systems. Systems like OS-X and Berlin are important for the future of such technologies because people won't buy such monitors if their windowing systems don't support it.
Monkey sense
By the way things are moving these days, it looks as if more and more of the open-source movement is coming into play. ;)
.ph0x
Where I wouldn't say that it is coming in 'Rambo Style' it is, however, slowy grabbing hold of more portions of the public.
For exampl MacOS-X is using a base linux kernel, and even hardware companies are moving more toward linux-freindly alternatives to there products, which in turn offers better comunity support.
So in all, it will be interesting to see this 'vapor-ware' team up with some 'vapor-hardware' and some 'vapor-ideas' which really aren't all that vapory to begin with.
We say we want to revolutionize the user experience, but when it comes right down to it, we're out of ideas.
It's time to face up to the truth here. We (and by that I mean all of us) have failed as developers and consumers of application platforms.
One thing that strikes me on reading all of this is how the GUI deliberately restricts and channels the actions the user may perform -- "Here is the metaphor, you must make your actions fit this model". .NET very much present a set of actions, a set of ways to show your data and interact with it (I reserve comments on Nautilus, I can't really draw any conclusions on it from the article). For instance, .NET offers different "levels" of user (Basic, Intermediate, presumably "Expert"). Within these, it seems like you can edit some aspects of what that levels means in your interactions with the GUI.
Both Aqua and
But what happens when the desired action isn't made available? When I decide I'd like to be able to drag one document on top of another and concatenate them? (cat doc1 doc2 > doc3 in good old CLI world). I cannot.
It seems like the "dream" GUI really is the CLI / pipe metaphor taken to the next level -- put data in this widget, output it to that widget, send the results of that to my Web site. If only that were possible and easy to use! *That* is the next stage for me -- a visual environment where I am free to hook up components in a meaningful way, and save that "hookup" as a new widget of it's own (The "spell check, reformat, ftp" widget).
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
so is that why they are trying so hard to recreate the Windows UI in Xwindows eh?
i dont know what will happen with .net, but i do think two main things are the key to success. a good, solid, stable gui with plenty of configurability, and a good, solid, stable backend, which you can administer via a console.
console/gui hybrids are starting to gain popularity (ie: BeOS, QNX, OS X, etc..), and i feel its important that companies continue along those lines.
a gui cannot do everything, which is why many prefer console. however, millions of users (like your parents, grand parents, etc..) have no clue about bash, csh, or what have you. for them there is the gui.
systems comprised of both, as in OS X, and even Nautilus, among others know this. so the trick seems to be...how to make the gui easy enough for your mother, while still retaining its roots for you, and/or other power users.
sorry if this seems more like a rant then anything else...just my two cents worth i guess...
DevPlanet.org
You work in a lab, so I guess you might do things like log data from say a spectrophotometer or something into you computer and then do some stats processing on them... how about if you could just say (to the machine in the roof) "log these samples I'm running" and it does? and when you are finished doing the manual work you say "Run them through statlab with the usual parameters" and it does... my wouldn't that be handy.
A change in paradigm would come hand in hand with a change in useage. Do you really think you need a GUI and keyboard in your fridge just to order more butter???
The problem with voice input is not in the ability to hear, but the ability to understand. It's the AI that we are lacking for this, and when we get that why the hell not use it? Sure your private email might want to be entered by hand rather than dictated, but backward compatability is a powerful tool (just like a GUI) to be included, not made redundant.
In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.
Nautilus is not Vapor! I have it running under RedHat 7.0 in fact. Check out http://jebediah.knac.com/linux/eazel_shots/eazel_s hots.html and take a look. That doesn't look like vapor to me.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
One of the things they mention as a feature they want for .NET (it sounded like eventually, but they might want it right away) is to have one "entry field" where you would do whatever you wanted to - write a letter, e-mail, or paint a picture (I presume) and it would figure out what you were trying to do. Basically, God Emperor of Office Assistant.
.NET and OSX and that other thing seemed nice, they really had nothing at all innovative. I like OSX and the concept of various levels of user interfaces in the other product sounded great, but these are all just re-hashing of ideas we have seen before. Granted they might be very GOOD rehashing as we have learned through iteration, but they are not really unique.
I think that approach is fundamentally flawed, and the constant instance that it is the right thing to do infests all Microsoft products. There's such a thing as the right tool for a job, and just as I would not start framing a basement without a hammer, nails and two-by-fours I also would not start a task of any sort by simply starting to work and then figuring out what tools I need as I go along.
Even in Emacs, greatly and wrongly derided for being the kitchen sink of all applications, you choose a mode to work in before you actually start work and thus many task specific features are made available to you.
My other thought was that while
It's time for some real experimentation. Where are the 3D GUI's? What about a GUI with a lite-brite set used for application control?
One of my own crazy pet theories is that the world of comics offers much in the way of possibilities for computer GUI's. After reading "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud over the years (sorry, too lazy to produce a link right now) it really seems that somewhere lurking in the mechanism of how readers perceive flow and structure in a comic has something interesting, new and relevant to say about the way humans interact with computers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's Steven Levy, not Stephen, buddy. Get your spelling straight before you flame!
No start bar. No task bar. No stupid menu bar stuck across the top of my screen. No silly pull out control bar. No shortcut bar. BUT a configurable start-type menu that appears anywhere on the background that I left-click. How much more innovative should Linux be before it is released from this myth that the Linux GUI is nothing more than a copy of windows & macintosh.
What you are describing is the standard X interface from 1987. The trouble is that raw X--or raw X prettied up with alpha-blended windows--is not close to the usability level of the Windows or Mac, primarily because there are no interface standards. Desktop environments, like KDE and Gnome, are attempts to make Linux more luxurious and pleasant. But that movement, from raw X to desktop environment, is pretty much a "Microsoft is doing it so we will too!" game. That's what this thread is about.
Perhaps the best way to simplify the interface is finally making good use of virtual space - would take a heckuva lot of horsepower to do it and need a lot of serious research and design to get it usable, but 2D just can't get it done for much longer. I think the reason that we don't see much in the way of 3D interfaces is that nearly everything we work with is essentially 2D. For instance, all text is 2D (we've been printing on flat paper for hundreds of years, and I see no movement from that arena.) Our monitors are 2D as well, as is our mouse. (Although, admittedly, 3D input devices do exist.) I believe that there is a project going on to create a 3D window manager ... does anyone have any information about it?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
None of these interfaces offer any significant benefit over the xerox standard from 20 years ago
Go use a Mac from 1984, and try to do a normal routine of opening documents, editing, saving, copying files, etc.
Now use one from 2000. There's a HELL of a difference in terms of what those two OS's are capable of doing!
but does everyone else need to sit around like this?
Define "everyone else." No, really! Do you mean the management types?
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd have a pretty friggin hard time running Illustrator and Photoshop on a PDA!
Face-to-face meetings only accomplish so much, at least for 'productivity' (hey, that word need some defining too), the rest of the time, I'm gonna be back at my desk, headphones on, concentrating on getting my work done.
This isn't trying to be flamey, I just think you need to elucidate on a couple of the excellent points you bring up.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Looking at your example, I'm not sure which one you would like to print and delete... happy.txt or sad.txt... or does 'it' refers to the last emntioned file? ;-)
Nice idea though
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
This from Neal Stephenson explains why almost all of our current UIs are crap myself I find myself in console more and more often also I find that when I'm helping someone I take them into the CLI. It is in many ways just easier now I know this is not for everyone but the limitations of a GUI make it impossible to create something that is *really* good.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Very perceptive, Booch. Our Web operation, with different deadlines and staff, does not always work in lockstep with the regular issue. The screens in the magazine are the ones I helped out with. We had more time and in the case of Eazel we were lucky enough to have a screen produced for us by Eazel folk on the latest version. (Thanks, guys!)
SL
After which the article immediately notes:
"(Gates is well aware of the irony--the old command line, left for dead, is back!)"
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Sounds like another made up statistic to me. And what exactly is the point of a one button mouse - even if it is only 5% of people that use it, it is still used.
Wow, that's cool. I didn't know that Apple gave Xerox stock. I understood that Xerox (this was at the PARC center, I know it's redundant, it just sounds stupid otherwise) was letting pretty much anyone use what they made (this is comming from the biography on Steve Jobs, I forget which one)
BTW, I did not see the Pirates of Silicon Valley, I didn't want to see it because the tv-movie appeared to be inaccurate.
He totally missed the point that any real innovation won't come from a company that has an established base. They're hobbled by the requirement to be consistant with legacy versions.
The really innovative UI stuff will come from one of two places -- new devices that didn't exist in the past (can I get a "whoa Palm!" here?) and from video/computer games, since you get to make a unique UI for each new game.
You want a true 3D environment for a UI? Watch ID software, not Microstop or Addle.
Sorry, Mr. Coward, never said that Apple INVENTED the mouse,etc. Just blew them out to the masses. In an ideal world I would have had more room to go into history (aw, hell, people can read INSANELY GREAT and get it!),but I'm pretty happy I got the space to do this story in our post-election enviromment.
BTW, I've gotten about a half dozen emails on this issue and every single one of these know-it-alls tries to tell me Xerox invented the mouse. In fact, the mouse was invented at Doug Englebart's SRI lab in the sixties. Hee-Hawww.
SL
Gates insists that the only place that's willing to redefine the interface is his own company. OS X may look cool, he says, but it's "just sexy widgets."
Gates doesn't get it. I'm a Linux person, but even I appreciate the new direction at Apple. More than the sexy widgets, OS X sits on a BSD kernal that's a hellava lot more stable than Win ME or Win 2000. He's oversimplifing to a fault. Unlike his latest Windows offerings, Apple is accually marketing something NEW.
In terms of the GUI design, I can hardly knock Aqua, being that it is a progression of the NeXTSTEP interface (but "lickable") and that NeXTSTEP UI is the fondation for Gnome, KDE, WM, and a multitude of Window Managers that we are using.
A couple of groups have attempted to produce a crude graphical interface, but until a new company named Eazel came along, no one was willing to take the step to create a world-class interface.
JEERS!! I'll take my Gnome desktop any day over Windows! Crude desktop my ass! I think the existing GUIs for Linux kick ass! I look forward to seeing what Easle might give me, and Amiga for that matter. But Steve Levy is pooh-poohing what he clearly doesn't understand.
there are a few screenshots of the upcoming whistler on the following review page.
t a1 .asp
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whistler_be
basically MS redid the start menu and made it more attracive to the average joe schmoe's eyes.
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
Somehow I can't see that being a good idea, even for a casual end user. "20 things" seems to be a bit of an understatement, and "10 things you use often" certainly isn't accurate in the case of power users or developers. Maybe this guy thinks that most of the stuff on his HD is a "bunch of crap", but I sure don't. I can't imagine trying to squeeze every app that I use frequently onto one screen, and even if I could I wouldn't because it would get too cluttered. Of course, I spend most of my time on the command line, so what the hell would I know about GUI's...
--
www.scorbett.ca
If the Mac's invention of the GUI, "put a dent in the universe" it was only by falling into a very large Xerox-shaped hole. NeXT gets a mention, but only for the Unix aspects and for Jobs, not for NeXTStep - a bigger leap in GUI redesign than either of the three they showcase here.
We all like to rag journalists for being clueless and gullible, but did anyone find where they'd hidden the content in this piece ?
Gates insists that the only place that's willing to redefine the interface is his own company. OS X may look cool, he says, but it's "just sexy widgets." To go all the way, he explains, you have to define a new style for a new generation of applications. You have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do it. You have to eliminate previously sacrosanct concepts and unify formerly disparate functions.
He is so right there, OSX is not exactly revolutionary, and support for things like vectors ect is not exactly what UI's need right now. I remember some stats from msft that roughly 95% of users dont use their right-click menus in windows. At first I just thought as I usually do that the world is stupid about computers, but if it's not intuitive to 95% of the world then we are the stupid ones for sticking to it. Great article...
We listen. So do the people running the KDE and GNOME projects. Remember that pretty much every modern GUI is somehow a rip-off of the original by Xerox. This includes both Windows and MacOS, as well as most Unix GUIs. As for KDE and GNOME, both have (IIRC) publically stated that their first objective is to match Windows and MacOS in usability terms before they move on and start trying new things, although both are already doing some new things... Windows (the versions I've used, at least) doesn't nearly match the number of interface options available with either KDE or GNOME.
-RickHunter
he's full of shit
GONE FISHING
I'm not so sure the "beat the evil empire" thing is altogether bad. I agree that most efforts seem to be an attempt to out-Windows Windows and that probably isn't inherently good. However it does provide a competitive influence as a driver. Windows sets a benchmark to beat. Right now linux is beating that benchmark in some ways and has a ways to go in other areas. But without Windows (or some similar dominant system) I seriously doubt that linux would be getting as much development effort as it is. You have to admit that there are more than a few developers working on linux simply because they don't like Windows/Microsoft.
Linus himself may not be at war, but for better or worse a lot of linux developers certainly are.
Is it just me, or does .NET feel like a dumbing down of the Windows UI to AOL levels to other people too? Perhaps, I'm not thinking outside the box enough, but where's the desktop? Where do things get done? Does anyone have more info on how the .NET desktop works?
You're absolutely right. Until two years ago, I was a die-hard Mac fanatic. The release of the OS X public beta prompted me to pick up a Powerbook G3 and a copy of OS X.
I have to say I love the new OS and they've done an amazing amount of work to make Unix Mac-like, but they are not quite there yet. I suppose, like any big change, I'll get used to it. Not only that, but they're practically starting over. MacOS 9 is a rather huge change over System Software 1.0, or even 6.0 for that matter.
I still prefer the OS 9 finder to MacOS X, and I miss the cartoony icons, but it won't be long before I either grow to like the new system better, or someone releases some OS 9 themes.
Anyway, all in all, I can't say I'm disappointed in the least with going back to the Mac. It's a wonderful machine, and OS X is spectacular as a development platform.
Did you check out windowmaker?
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
OMG.....This stuff except C# is at the microsoft site....
R L=/code/sample.asp?url=/msdn-files/027/000/976/msd ncompositedoc.xml
http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/
Goto Downloads on the left...
this might work
http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?U
Come on.. it was EASY to find this
Oh I must be imagining these Visual Studio.NET beta's of C# im using.... *sigh* check the facts folks
Jeremy
When I complain that the whole metaphor for desktop objects that virtualize objects like 'folders' instead of oraganizing around work or processes or workflows or the logical reason for collecting objects... I get flamed for CWG (computing while geezer) and that everyone young has no trouble with this. I'll reapeat myself. The entire notion of organizing a GUI around "LOCATIONS" on a PC is completely bogus. The entire notion of creating a desktop on your PC is bogus. I don't want to organize something on my PC I can't organize in the solid world. That's why I have a PC. I don't care about folder names or file paths. Other than the fact that it is a kludgey mnemonic for ME to assign context to a collection of objects it has no bearing. The GUI, to be useful must have two basic attributes: First it has to be event driven so that the appearance and function change with events that trigger it. So the GUI takes on visual attributes that are useful for say document processing vs. ftp vs. backup administration. So that File, Edit, View..... actually have some real context built into them and mean, do and appear like different things depending on what I'm doing. Print for example has no meaning if the app if WinAmp so why would not put EQ there instead (silly example but you get the gist. And second, the GUI has to be flow, or if you prefer, event sequenced context driven object oriented, organized so that if I have 35 different file objects related to task "project 1" and they have different formats and sources, I can collect and use them in-flow without having to open each app and laboriously open-review-cut-paste......print.
Why for example do you have to start an equalizer and then drag artifacts up and down or side to side. Why not just have a functional driver that allows you to 'other mouse button click' swipe the pointer anywhere in any direction to do something like increase volume? Why can't we make use of 'tics' small dedicated mouse movements that trigger discrete events like poping a document, print, pan left-right.
I'm impressed with your bravery. I'd never trust a beta version of a programming language named after a musical note ;)
karma is for the weak >)
PS. I can't wait until the new edition of Hackers is released! I've been looking for it for a couple years now.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
LOL, Its not that bad actually...
.NET but anyways right tools for the right job :)
C# runs okay... it needs a lot with speed improvements, and its good to keep in mind this is an EARLY beta
I like
Jeremy
I was thinking that the article was a semi-decent piece, but after seeing that, I just couldn't help but think what else they got wrong.
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
and why is the common Java joke - write once, debug everywhere.
That debugging effort does not come cheap. If people wrote their JVM's right, it shouldn't be necessary.
But it is.
therefore, it is CHEAPER, in the long run, for a developer to write for one platform only - and if they can eliminate all the other platforms through strategic chicanery, they have all the benefits of single-platform development, without the drawbacks (missing large market segments).
Of course, as we all know, this does ignore the needs of the user. Well, who cares about the needs of the user. If they've got a wallet, that's all the developer needs.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
In fact, nobody *uses* Eros - it just isn't practical right now.
Wow, that's cool. I didn't know that Apple gave Xerox stock. I understood that Xerox (this was at the PARC center, I know it's redundant, it just sounds stupid otherwise) was letting pretty much anyone use what they made (this is comming from the biography on Steve Jobs, I forget which one)
You'll have to do a bit of searching, but if I remember correctly, Steve Wozniak discusses this at his site -- http://woz.org. He started getting a lot of emails when Pirates aired, and I believe he covered this topic in at least one email that was posted to the site.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
This was an MSNBC link, right? Not Segfault?
Are they serious? That has such a Austin Powers, "hilariously frozen in time and don't know what's going on in the rest of the world" sound to it. I can just picture Gates in his silver Dr. Evil suit, explaining to his assistants the potential of the (making quote marks in air with fingers) "commands line" and the "laser".
Hm. OK, I did a little searching, and am now a bit curious as to how it came out.
I think it it first arrived in Mac OS 7.5. I believe it came with a manual all about OpenDoc. CyberDog was included, along with some rudimentary demo apps for word processing and such. As far as developer docs on the subject, though, I'm afraid I can't help.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I've always liked the flexibility that OS/2's WorkPlace Shell afforded me. I could modify the right-mouse-click menu to include links to all the apps I used. This menu popped up anywhere I did a right-mouse click. No need to move the mouse pointer to some silly dock or to the start button on a start menu - always right there wherever my mousepointer already was. Schweet.
I'd rather not have any screenspace taken up by a dock.
Imagine receiving a simple email, and then Bang!, all your desktop now looks like watever-the-kiddie-thought-when-he-wrote-it...
Considering all 3 are still vapor, it'll be even more interesting to read an article like this in a year, and compare it to this. Why, that's actually a good idea. You guys get dinged a lot for seemingly "recycling" articles from time to time, but you've identified a legitimate reason to do exactly that.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
"Creating the interface for the Mac was like being in a jungle with a compass that worked one day a month, not knowing if you were headed for a river or a mountain or a snake pit," Jobs says now. "And thinking there might be a pot of gold at the end, but also not sure if it wasn't a pot of fool's gold."
..
sounds like the old Atari 2600 Pitfall game
Why does everyone keep making these GUIs look so much like damned cartoons. And why incorporate so much unnecessary shit? What ever happened to a simple GUI that is functional and doesn't look like it was designed to entertain 5 year olds.
...and all of this sounds nifty, but:
;-)
1) I'll believe it when I see it -- MSFT freely
emits new strategies and plans and then drops
them a year later. It's a basic FUD strategy to
paralyze the enemy in indecision (because MSFT
can afford to waste time and money, so long as it
keeps them on top -- it's like a defense budget)
2) I hardly trust MSFT to get it right
3) I sure as hell don't trust them to actually
manage and handle the whole thing
4) Open-source hackers will steal the best
ideas and implement them better
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Sorry, that's a little cruel. But whenever I see a piece by Stephen Levy it always starts out with a rant about how Jobs et al. changed the world. Whereupon my eyes glaze over and I have to go do something else.
I mean, even if it were true, I'd be a little tired of hearing it.
__________________
Having tried Nautilus myself I can say its very usable already, if you ignore the slowth and occasional crashes that is. I've also noticed that Nautilus' performance and stability is increasing week by week (yes, more so than with Mozilla), the only thing I'm hoping for is that they put in some more threading.
As for .NET, that is indeed barely a framework-in-progress though their MSN browser already exists though I doubt the ``universal type-in line'' will ever work... it will certainly not be welcomed by Microsoft's target audience, the people who want pretty things to click.
Monkey sense
I believe that all of those features have existed in Windows 95 from the outset, with the exception of anything similar to the dock. QuickLaunch bars are essentially the same thing, but they didn't come into existence until ~1997 when IE 4.0 came out.
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Here's the deal...although the interface now may look clunky (which I admit it does), the .NET strategem includes XML. And what does this mean to you? It means that the whole damn interface will be extensible through just some simple (or not-so-simple, depending on your preferences) editing of XML configuration file(s). This means that your entire GUI, not just the window hangings, not just the widgets...the WHOLE thing, will be extensible to any document format that's supported under XML. I know Apple has got XML configuration down in Mac OS X, but I don't think it's as widespread throughout the OS, as in Microsoft's case. And since ALL MS products are moving to the XML base, theoretically you should be able to click on a link, see your most commonly used Office documents, and then have one of them "materialize" on your desktop, workspace, whatever, SEAMLESSLY. Imagine having several programs/documents open at the same time and be able to seamlessly operate between them, as if they were one program.
.NET frameworks get ported to other OSes (think Linux), this same extensibility will be there in all .NET platforms, with the same commonality features. No more Windows, Linux, or Mac specific GUI's. One person's interface on a Linux box will be able to be used on any other platform. Just copy the XML config files (and the appropriate extensions) and you're done. No porting necessary.
.NET frameworks on your platform, the app will work.
.NET and just having it run on your Linux box...no modifications needed.
And you think Enlightenment is customizable? Heh. MS isn't playing here. This is gonna be a BIG thing.
And think of this...once the
They're going for COMMONALITY here people. They realize the money's not in the OS any more, it's in the applications. As long as you have the
Period.
Imagine going to the store and buying Microsoft Office
This, I think will be a very exciting thing.
-Kevin, MSCE+I, MCT
My posts don't reflect the opinion of my employer, and my employer's opinion doesn't influence the content of my posts.
I agree. for example, gnustep and Berlin are both more innovative than KDE or GNOME, yet only a tiny fraction of linux users have even heard of them, despite gnustep having been around for ages.
Isn't Perl a DWIM interface? It aslways seems to do what I wnat it to, no matter how crap the code I throw at it...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
How it came out? That's easy. Microsoft said "Hey, if you keep working on this OpenDoc thing that makes monolithic office productivity suites a thing of the past, we're going to stop shipping Office for Mac like, today and stuff." And Apple said "Shit. OpenDoc's not going to be ready for prime time for at least two years of intensive development. If MS stops shipping Office, we're never going to sell another computer. Guess we have to shelve the best idea ever."
I hate Microsoft, and this is why.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I know the software was free, but I don't know what happened to it - I think UNM gave control to some company. I do remember it was X11 based, and pretty large. I havn't seen in over 5 years, but it might be something worth investigating.
XML causes global warming.
Again, that would work OK in a relatively private and quiet setting but not necessarily in the real setting of most labs. In my building, we have a lot of shared equipment (including spectrometers, protein purification aparatus, etc). This shared equipment isn't often in a private room, but in same space as other people's lab benches and desks.
Students, scientists, techs, are all talking to each other, listening to music, doing experiments, working on computers. If all the computer and lab equipment use is to be voice controlled, there will be interference from your neighbor doing work on his/her computer (by voice) or on another piece of neighboring aparatus (by voice). The poor schmuck at his desk trying to read a journal article or work out an experiment is getting constant distraction from the student on the computer dictating commands, from me using the spec, from the tech using the HPLC, etc, etc. Lots of extraneous noise above and beyond the norm. It would make a lab sound like the work area of a telemarketing firm. Everyone talking and talking and talking...
There may be some use for this in some settings, but I would strongly disagree that it should be the primary means of computer interface (my wife would LOVE that while she is in the next room trying to read or sleep when I am up late at night working at my computer). The distraction level would be equivalent to sitting next to someone who reads their books aloud.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
The article proposed that humans would spend the same amount of time mastering a computer language as they would mastering the english language: perhaps the first 20 or so years of ones life.
I see the computer interface eventually coming back to a traditional unix-style CLI, even further along to some sort of machine code. People would learn to interface with the computer just as intricately as we interface with each other.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
The author of the article failed to research fully his information. His views are way skewewd towards Mac/Windows.
Here's the scoop Mr. Levy, While your history could be quite accurate, your view on Linux GUIs are quite off. Crude? Hardly. Have you seen KDE or GNOME? Yo mention Eazel, but failed to mention GNOME (kinda goes together sir). If you have even laid eyes on Linux or a GUI/Window Manager for Linux, you would agree that Linux isn't for geeks anymore.
It does have its geeky side, and yes, is not that "user friendly" that we expect from a Mac, but crude it isn't. I take particular joy in the fact that while all of this MS putting Explorer as its file manager BS was hitting the perverbial fan, the browsing file manager is what KDE and GNOME were doing from the start. No one argued with them...
Mr. Levy, if you don't fully understand something or don't have the time to research properly, don't comment at all.
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
You think after the rash of virii this sort of thinking has already spawned, they might rethink it? Not a chance. Just wait for the next level.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
So, you will be more productive in an office loaded with people yacking at their computers? You will like your environment more when people have to chatter at their computer? Noise, noise, noise and lots of distraction.
Send private emails via voice. Eh? What's the point of making them private then if you are going to broadcast the content to the office/coworkers, etc by yacking out loud to your computer?
Ever work in a scientific lab? Want to try to do scientific data manipulation, paper writing, etc, by having to talk out loud - along with all your fellow labmates? Wont work and totally undesireable. We have 3 computers per lab bay in my bio lab. They are used constantly. I don't want to be distracted with the constant chatter that would be required to handle a primary voice-driven interface. I would have to yell "SHUT THE F*CK UP!" all the time so I could think and get my research done.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
You see, there's this competition going on between these two desktop environments. It doesn't seem rational all the time but it's really because of license issues, as long as Qt can not be used freely also in non-GPL programs the issue will remain. And even if Trolltech would LGPL their toolkit (which they won't of course), it's to late, GNOME is already in a too advanced state to be abandoned.
Well, they want to sell services to users (online storage, backup, and in an interview letting the text you just wrote being spell checked by a real editor instead of a program as well as having that text printed by a commercial company and then delivered to your house) and they just happened to think that free software would encourage the use of services, unfortunately the current desktops weren't user-friendly enough and thus they decided to help.
Monkey sense
I think extending the UNIX idea of lots of filters to be put together is the most important thing to be done for GUIs. Why would you want Excel to be an email program too, why not just pipe it in to (*choking gagging*) Outlook?
I think what we need to do is to figure out how to make GUI apps interact with pipes well. It was really easy when it was just formatted text, but what about other data? Is XML the answer to this? That's a distinct possibility. I'd like to see some discussion in this area, of using all major GUI apps as filters in a sense. Not a simple re-creation of what we've already got, but of actually facilitating data sharing on a wide scale. Anyone have any thoughts?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Hmm, lemme think.
- XML
- extremely configurable UI based on XML
- cross platform
- framework for cross platform apps
Ahhhh, it's all coming back. Does anyone recall that nifty app called Mozilla?
The article appeared in this week's issue of Newsweek. (Unfortunately, if you go to www.newsweek.com, it takes you to MSNBC.) The interesting thing I noticed was that the screen capture of Nautilus is completely different in the print version, while MacOS X and Microsoft .NET are the same as in the online version.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Perhaps the best way to simplify the interface is finally making good use of virtual space - would take a heckuva lot of horsepower to do it and need a lot of serious research and design to get it usable, but 2D just can't get it done for much longer.
Any spoon would be too big.
This is simply untrue. You can download Nautilus PR2 and test it and the Eazel services out. In addition you can download hourly RPM builds of Nautilus. I've been running these for a few weeks now and it's coming along nicely.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
OS X is NOT vapor you moron!
;-))
Server has been out for over a year (okay, not relevant to the GUI discussion) - and X consumer has been in beta for two months with tens of thousands of users. Nothin but screenshots is vapor. Actual CD's is substantial.
An uptime of 3 weeks for a beta - is phenomenal (disclaimer - I'm used to Windoze and Classic Mac OS; my new e250 at work is doing pretty well too
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I bet they code most of their user interface using DHTML and obscure JavaScript hooks, just like they did for windows media player...
Ugh.
Learn from your parents' mistakes: use birth control.
Well, you took the words right out of my keyboard. As much as I like linux - unless I want to play some game linux is the only thing I use for EVERYTHING else - it is NOT innovative. Don't get me wrong, I like it and it is nicely functional, but everthing in it is cloned from old unix or copied from windoze or the mac. The Gimp? A clone of photoshop. KDE and Gnome? Both borrow heavily from windoze (and one could argue from OS/2 Warp). You can even make KDE pretend to look like Aqua OR the old MacOS.
As I think about it, I can't bring to mind ANY innovative design or software package that is really something only in linux and not preexistent in windoze or the mac world.
I will keep on using linux, that is a fact, but I honestly cannot say there is innovation there. It is a good game of catchup, but not of "catch ME!" with linux. Certainly not yet, at any rate.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
No.
You do not understand the purpose of GNOME and KDE. They are not intended to be good GUIs! They are not intended to be revolutionize the user experience. If you go into them expecting that, then yes, you are going to be disappointed.
Listen to Miguel some time, and he will tell you exactly what he is doing with Helix, and his reasons really apply to all the GNOME/KDE stuff. This software is intended for infiltration. They are deliberately intended to be like Win9x, so that Win9x users will feel at home. The purpose of these GUIs isn't to make Unix easy to use; it's to make Unix familiar to former Windows users.
Once you understand that, then you will appreciate GNOME/KDE more for what they are. And yes, you will also become restless and wonder where the real innovation is happening. And I can't help you with that, because I don't know either. But KDE's lameness doesn't prove anything, except the obvious: software that deliberately attempts to be lame, will succeed at being lame very well.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
They need to be able to see what things are. Right now, our system of icons just doesn't work well enough -- see the iloveyou, which apparently was partly perpetrated by the fact that the text icon looks similar to the script icon. (At least, that's what I heard.) Documents often have the same icon as the related executable. When the icons are small, they're had to identify. Etc, etc. One person suggested that they'd like a color-coding system: for instance, all text/word processor documents are green (or shades of green), perhaps along with an icon to identify exactly what type it is. Executables are red. A directory window full of music might have a blue border around it, but the documents folder has green. Nautilus makes a big deal of quickly seeing what information is where; perhaps this will be a good step.
The other thing they want is application integration. For instance, if they go to file/open, and open a text document, they want an editor. If they then open an MP3 file, a player should show up. You should be able to click a button in your spreadsheet program and have it sent via e-mail to everyone in your address book. This, of course, runs counter to the unix way of doing things in a lot of ways -- lots of small programs that each have their seperate task. (Disregard that if you use emacs, of course :) It seems that M$ has the jump on everyone there, with the mentality that every program should do everything. (I think it makes for shoddy software, but apparently a lot of people like it.)
To make the unix way of doing things more attractive to these people, I think the best move is to make sure that all programs work together in a standard way. Right now, we have the GNOME and KDE projects that try to set standards, but what if we think a bit bigger? For instance, a body could be chosen that could set exacting standards for how specific applications work. (For instance, an e-mail program can be invoked like so, reads a global address book from such-and-such, etc.) Then, I can imagine (for instance) a toolbar or global menu that has a send e-mail button on it. If you press it, the system tells the current application, "The user wants to send something via e-mail." The application returns what it is they want to send (for instance, the current document.) Then, it's sent to the e-mail program for processing. You could switch from one program to another and continue to use it in the same manner you always have been.
I don't know if that's the best way of doing it, or exactly what kind of interface and technical details would be needed, but it's definately within our grasp. (And here I am, the one who usually says that we don't need to pander to the Windows users, but ... hey, I think this would be useful too.)
Finally, about this stuff about getting rid of the files/folders analogy: all the people I've talked to say "don't." As has been pointed out, there's a lot of data on a computer. Some sort of hierarchical method of organization is necessary. I've heard suggestions of organization based on type of data, rather than by what's related to it (like we generally do now), and that may be doable, but the folders analogy makes sense to them. Until someone can give a convincing alternative that makes more sense, we should hold on to it.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The speech synthesis software was outsourced, for demos only, but when the 512k "Fat" Mac became available, punters wanted it. Apple eventually released it (as Macintalk) but never obtained the source code. Eventually it stopped working, and Apple re-implemented it from scratch as Macintalk 2. The current Speech Manager encompasses Macintalk 3, Macintalk Pro and Plaintalk, the speech input software.
BTW, the claim upthread that Plaintalk is keyed to a single speaker is bogus; it's completely non-adaptive, keyed to "average" North American males.
Nah, they won't own any of my apps. I only need a single Windows box for playing games. If they want to lose lots of business due to a stupid zealous need to grasp the user by the scrotum and control every aspect of their computing -- it's just fine with me.
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seumas.com
It's beta, I've used it. Anyone can purchase it. That qualifies as vapor?
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
Granted, it's arguable whether this is appropriate or destined for success, but I'd like to see it fleshed out a little farther before I discount it. I myself actually prefer tree-ed information structures, not the bombastic "hot-links/favorites" approach most web pages now seem to have. Navigation through the whole computing experience, from some root position, may just work for me.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
I suppose this quite usable beta's of ASP+ and the .NET stuff and C# im using are just my imagination... yes thats it... I hate bias like that without obvious and ismple fact checking
Jeremy
Now, these "vaporous" GUIs. They don't emit any harmful vapors do they?
.NET!
Agh! I'm choking on a
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why is it that the future of GUIs is a lot like the future of commercial fusion or sending a person to Mars? It's always another 5 or 10 years from wherever you are in time.
Arm yourself with knowledge.
While the job of revamping Macintosh and Windows obviously belongs to their respective stewards, the same can't be said for the upstart Linux system. Nobody owns this Unix-based operating system built around the code first created by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds. And so, transforming Linux, whose interface reflects its roots as a geek playground where civilians are unwelcome, has been a job up for grabs. A couple of groups have attempted to produce a crude graphical interface, but until a new company named Eazel came along, no one was willing to take the step to create a world-class interface.
What a pud. More innovation has come out of development on Linux than from M$ and crApple combined.
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
The author of the Gnome Panel, whose name I shall not attempt to spell, works for Eazel. I think it's fair to say that it's being developed by them even though it's not part of Nautilus.
I've been using MacOS X PB for a few months now and I still for the most part don't like the interface (too much fluff). But... I really have started to loose the sense that I'm running individual applications.
The windows from any 'application layer' can be interchanged (I can have a browser window from IE, then a terminal window, then my Macster window, then another IE window, etc.)
I rarely end up using the 'desktop' to search for applications anymore as I've but 99% of my most used Apps in the dock...
Anyway... strange sensation...
Not to make a federal case of it, but should the browser be an adjunct to the interface--or should it become the interface itself?
God help us.
and maybe the results will infuse new energy into the aging PC itself
sarcasm.start(cluelessauthor); What we need to do is replace PC's with a better - more NOW! - interface... yeah! Video, Sound and Text dont cut it anymore... we need a new paradigmn man - we need to think outside the box...sarcasm.end(cluelessauthor);
What a load of crap. Dont get me wrong, I love change, I love to see new technolody and real innovation - but does anyone else get the feeling that there is a force right now in computing pushing 'change' for change's sake? I dont get it, Im pretty convinced that the PC 'idea' is still a pretty good one. Other 'technology devices' have value for specific functions, but its pretty hard to argue that the power and adaptability of a PC. A PC has a lot to offer to those devices in order to 'empower them' to some degree. Short of creating all 'tech devices' equal (making them 'self-aware' and 'self-discovring' in an adhoc 'peer-to-peer' network) I cant see the PC being replaced any time soon.
As for the first quote above - what a horrible prospect... havnt these people ever heard of XWindows? I mean, isnt the browser a replacment for the 'network portability' of an X App? How much 'easier' would life be if a browser was an XServer - or tech of similar mind... just an idea...
KDE 2.0.1 is right now the most attractive and friendly desktop available. At least to me. Mac, Gnome and Windows users will DEFINITELY disagree.
However what isn't up for debate is that the current release version of KDE is in the same league as the vaporware and BETA version from the other GUIs. So why was it not included in this review ? After all, KDE has plans just like everyone else. They will be doing really cool stuff next year too.
The reason is that KDE doesn't have an effective marketing department. It doesn't have someone who explains to writers at MSNBC how it will revolutionize the desktop.
Maybe that KDE League thing wasn't such a bad idea. They just need to start doing some work.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
MSXML.
.NET exists on other platforms, it will be to lure people into dependence on .NET. Then, when .NET achieves dominance, they will slowly decrease cross-platform parity. Certain features won't be implemented on non-windows. Performance and stability on non-windows will lag. The disparity will ramp slowly, until people who may have been on other platforms, slowly migrate to windows to mitigate their own support costs. Cutting development costs on MS's end is the main goal, but dominance is a sweet side benefit.
'nuff said.
no. not 'nuff said. The money is not necessarily in the OS, and never was. It's in control. Domination. The middleware. The platform. Sure, MS may port to other platforms, to get seats - but don't believe for one minute that that will not be used as a migration tactic. Cross platform development doubles the developer's costs. Even with Java. If
Same shit, different day.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Maybe I've missed something, but this is the first I've seen Linux mentioned in the broad market press as being among the major desktop platforms. Server, yes. Desktop, no.
Of course, I think that assessment is wrong, Linux as a major player on the desktop is still some ways off. BTAIM, it's like the first time I saw Fox mentioned as one of the major networks -- something has changed.
What's a sig?
Really? I guess the definition of "crude" is subjective, but I don't know where the "no one was willing" bit comes from. I guess both the Gnome and KDE folks are trying for a barely mediocre interface, too fearful of what the fame and fortune of being "world-class" might bring them....
And, just my opinion, but I felt that particular prototype of .NET looked damn dumb - very busy, much like a poorly laid out web-site or magazine.
I'm really curious to hear other opinions on this... I've never really heard a really good argument as to why every damn window needs to look like a browser, or why some people have this driving desire to get away from "simpler" GUI layouts.
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
But the closest thing to their realization can be found in the new version of the MSN Explorer (code-named "Mars"), which Microsoft openly describes as a test bed for some of the .NET ideas. And one of its key architects has been Steve Capps--who was one of the main designers of the famous "Finder" file-management system in the original Macintosh, and then the honcho of Apple's ill-fated Newton personal digital assistant. It was partially through Capps's influence that a persistent media player wound up on the screen; it is also Capps's minimal esthetic ("I'm a Bauhausian," he cheerfully explains) that helps keeps the MSN screen coherent in the midst of a surprising amount of activity. "Folders are ridiculous!" he says with a snort. "Computers have 20 things that are important, 10 things you use often and a bunch of crap. Let's put it all on one screen--go for it!"
I think that quote pretty much speaks for itself. I use MSN explorer almost exclusivly in windows after 4 years of working with linux. It's for beginners but I think its great, very very simple with everything I use allready. Linux is stuck trying to conform to posix or whatever direction linux is going (Does it have direction?) while the world passes it by.
>Eazel's entire existence is a collection of screen shots thus far
You can download Eazel's Nautilus from their web site. I've been running it for weeks.
I always thought vapor was a reference to something that is currently nonexistant and may never come to be. That's how I've always used it anyway. Looks to me like all these interfaces are in some form of beta stages.
.NET is really nice too. Very slow though... 256 MBs of RAM recommended.
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." - Tao of Programming
I want your copy of perl, then. When I write crappy code, it complains at me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
(warning bad advice follows)
don't use the -w flag then.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
The other thing they want is application integration. For instance, if they go to file/open, and open a text document, they want an editor. If they then open an MP3 file, a player should show up. You should be able to click a button in your spreadsheet program and have it sent via e-mail to everyone in your address book.
I know how elistist this sounds, but you pretty much just described OpenDoc. It was a document-centric application technology that shipped as part of some previous versions of Mac OS. There were container applications that could open spreadsheets, word processing docs, graphics, etc. There was even a component-based internet client called CyberDog. It became apparently that the world wasn't really ready to take this concept on yet, though.
Now, from what it sounds like from reading this article, an ex-Apple guy is championing a similar concept at Microsoft.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I don't know about the rest of you but I'd prefer a more basic user interface. It might not be pretty, but it gets the job done...
How about an HAL 9000 style interface?
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
not trying to troll, just trying to point out that Microsoft did NOT invent the GUI, that was Xerox, but Apple had the first commercial one.
And furthermore, Apple had Xerox's permission to use those concepts, contrary to the way it was depicted in "Pirates of Silicon Valley." Apple gave Xerox tons of stock to be able to work with their engineers. I suppose that aspect was not dramatic enough to be included in the movie. Unfortunately, now most of the country has a distorted version of history implanted in their minds.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Of course, he thinks they're going to come up with a DWIM interface, too. Someone should tell him that other people have already been trying that for years without success.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Considering all 3 are still vapor, it'll be even more interesting to read an article like this in a year, and compare it to this."
This would make one hell of a slashback...
But all three are in beta now, will they actually be released in a year, or will they still be in beta? Hm...
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
You can download nightly builds of Nautilus at nautilus.eazel.com. Hardly vaporware.
Sensual: Running a feather down your lover's body
Kinky: Using the whole chicken
It's a very dark ride.
Anyways, I love the MacOS. I think it is much more beautiful and elegant than any other OS I've used. However, I sold my Mac a few years ago and bought a PC for a couple reasons. Most were small except for one: Until OSX, the Mac has no true multi-tasking.
Ah, the thrill of waiting for Netscape to load so I could switch back to my IRC window. To me this was my biggest frustration with the MacOS. Now that OSX is out, I might purchase another one.
Yeah...and then I can enjoy seething over Apple's numerous poor marketing decisions. Heh.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Does anyone know what IBM is working on these days, as far as UI? I remember hearing about thier R&D doing some truly crazy things with UI. One of the most impressive was the computer tracking your eye movements, in conjunction with voice and hand motions, to interact with the computer. They actually demo'd a sorta working prototype and it was pretty snazy (although it had ungodly system requirements)
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
why don't they focus their work on a 3d interface, or input devices? if i have to use 64MB of memory just to run the OS i'd like it to have some sort of 3d functionality in conjunction with a touchscreen...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Interface Should Be Invisible
Only recently have I encountered this concept starting to surface in places like the Enlightenment WM. If you're running pure E without Gnome, there is no start menu, no status bar, no obstuction to the task at hand... If you're not running something, all you see is the background, fullscreen. The menu comes up when you click. That has its PROs and CONs, of course... If you're running lots of windows, it is too much easier to click what *is* there than what *isn't*.
Instant Readiness
"I should be able to pick up my MIDI keyboard and start playing. I should be able to draw five lines on the tablet, at the computer should know it's a staff for composing music." None of this wait-ten-minutes-as-I-boot crap either. BEOS lowered the bar on unnecessary boot times. MS Windows swears that Whistler and whatever follows will boot in 20 seconds and 10 seconds respectively. (I gotta SEE that!) But these stupid enumerations and initializations are not what a computing appliance should be wasting our time doing. Today's sleep and suspend modes are just a hint at *the right thing*, at the ready, and even those aren't as instant as they should be.
One of the best lines in the video was his description of the Amiga applications of that day. (Like most older European software...) "Some programs were really bad... I mean, CREATIVELY bad! You'd have a maze of buttons, all alike, and somewhere in the center, is the exit!" We've come a long way...
These GUI's are just more of the same old sh*t. The more I work with them, the more I hate the "click-button, pull-down-menu" metaphor. When you are working with large volumes of data that need to be processed in nearly the same way, it is hard to think of a less-efficient way to go about it.
Personally, I think that the next big breakthrough in GUI design will be to make them more flow oriented. UNIX style pipes give you a crude way of arriving at the same thing, as do scripting languages, but they fall far short of meeting my requirements. As an example, pipes tie one output to one input, so the process is very linear. In my work, programs are basically filters for data. Some programs require one or more inputs, and almost all output several files, each of which will be input into more filters. Until I have a way of graphically tying it all together, with each program understanding what it requires, what it outputs and how it needs to tie to the next program in line, I will not rest.
What I would like to see would be something like a circuit board diagram. You notify the first program about some data to be processed and the result comes out the other end of the arbitrary filter bank.
This approach won't work for all software or data flows (like word processing, where every time the process is different,) but for many key areas (like server OSes) it would be a true leap in the field of GUI design. Not just more of the same.
Hundreds of millions on dollars spent on GUI redesign and they came up with the command line.
Dave
Andamooka: Open support for open content.
Face it: None of these interfaces offer any significant benefit over the xerox standard from 20 years ago, it just adds more layers of goo to make it look pretty. It doesn't really help people's productivity, in fact at some point it starts to get in the way.
If you look around your office now you'll see nearly everyone hunched over their computer staring at the screen. Sure, coders (like myself) need their command-lines and 7-button mice, and secretaries need to type spreadsheets and memos, but does everyone else need to sit around like this?
No real change will happen in productivity until people get off their asses and do some real work, talk to people face to face. Maybe when PDA's become powerful enough the desktop computer will get tossed and people will start getting things done again. Until then, a slicker interface just glues them to the seat even more.
I don't see the GUI as being a major wall anymore so much as it is the desktop metaphor and, by extension, the file system it is built on that gets the way. As we start managing larger amounts of information, we're starting to see a need to look at it differently, and not by putting a prettier front end on it, but fundamentally altering how we manipulate it. I predict that within the next few years (OK, it's something that I'm working on that has just such a projected release date :-), the file system will be abstracted up to the level of an object system. It's already started in some respects with Easel and Mac OS X, but more significant work is being done, and just maybe it'll make the desktop easier to use, and further allow the desktop metaphor to be abandoned for . . . I know not what.
It doesn't even have a shell, so no, you couldn't use it interactively.
As an embedded-type system, though...
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
the .NET beta does have the new gui you know, so it isn't vapor..
If by describing OSX as Vapor, you mean freely usable in its Beta form, then I guess you're right. Somehow, I'm thinking you're not, tho.
.NET is barely a framework-in-progress...
I mean, come on, Eazel's entire existence is a collection of screen shots thus far, and
What does it mean to wake out of a dream and be wearing someone else's shorts? (BNL)
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
Current GUI's are not all that awful. Sure, some of them are confusing -- but there are others that are not. I can't make heads or tails of a Mac interface (then again, I've never really tried) -- but sit me in front of a CDE or Windows or anything else and it's as comfortable as the command line.
Keyboards, mice and their current alternatives, however, suck much ass. Cramps, slow input, wilting eyesight . . . The few alternatives that exist today are just as likely to disappear from shelves tomorrow and even when they work, they are either expensive or difficult to operate.
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seumas.com