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.

Comments

Re:The Author of this article just doesn't get it.

[Junks Jerzey]

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?

Re:What Gate's had to say about OSX

[Mononoke]

I remember some stats from msft that roughly 95% of users dont use their right-click menus in windows.

Wow, so 95% of the users could get by with a one-button mouse?

Some company should come up with a one-button mouse.

--

.NET isn't as bad as you think

[Lt_Kernal]

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.

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 .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.

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 .NET frameworks on your platform, the app will work.

Period.

Imagine going to the store and buying Microsoft Office .NET and just having it run on your Linux box...no modifications needed.

This, I think will be a very exciting thing.

-Kevin, MSCE+I, MCT

Micorosft's bright idea: CLI

[phinance]

From the story:

OS X may look cool, [Bill Gates] 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.

...

Microsoft thinks that the answer might lie in a ?universal type-in line,? an always-active blank space that intelligently processes what the user wants to do at a given moment

Hundreds of millions on dollars spent on GUI redesign and they came up with the command line.

Dave