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The Next Computer Interface
BoarderPhreak was among the several readers who pointed out "an interesting article on the various alternatives to storing your files using a 'desktop' metaphor" at TechReview.com. "New styles like time-indexing, 3D sphere ala SGI's file manager, and even a 3D virtual 'task gallery' from Microsoft. Screenshots available in the article." All of these have been floating around for a while; hopefully soon some radically different interfaces will actually gain widespread acceptance.
There's a great Slash-based site with loads of articles examining potential next-gen interfaces. Not a huge amount of traffic yet, but the editor seems to be consistently putting up new articles. Check out Nooface.
--LP
So - that means all of us with steady jobs, are gonna have to stand up to do our jobs?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
The future of interfaces will be controlled by the user. Not all users work best in the same way. Sure you can spend money researching to find the common interface that everyone is average in their productivity, but in the end the productivity is with in the users themselves, and the interface that works best for them. So the future of computers in general is adaptable interfaces.
disclaimer : My views do not represent those of every one else in slashdot.
When it comes to organizing my files/folder/shortcuts, I very rarelu use the Start Menu. Instead, I've been using The Brain, which treats documents, programs, shortcuts, program groups, etc as "thoughts" which you can link to any other thought. Pretty cool.
Expecting lots of screenshots on the front page...the first thing I saw was the title "The Next Computer Interface" and a picture of that guy.
Run for your lives!!! =)
what is the diference between start->find and scopeware,except that scopeware looks better.
the tree menu is intressting, but will confuse a lot of people.
and I wonn't even start about microsoft bob 3D
Graphics are nice , but useabilty is more important in the long term.
... and there was me thinking the NeXT computer interface was the ultimate computer interface ...
All of these gimmicks tend to miss out on the fact that a simple linear system is much better for _people_ than the fancy gimmicks which developers think are cool. Voice interaction is a classic example of something that can be thought of as "cool" until you have an open plan office with 30 people talking at their computers.
3D is another dead end. IBM's Home project found that people would "lose" things in a 3D environment and in fact the visual cues of the 2D desktop were better suited to the task.
At the end of the day the mantra should be KISS. These break that mantra and add very little except cool graphics. It looks nice but doesn't function well. An everyday example of why simple is better are the icons used to denote things like "radiation", "poison" etc etc they don't actually represent the thing themselves but provide a simple shorthand for the thing. This simplification makes them much better at describing and classifying than attempting a "realistic" presentation.
Good examples of 2D simple interfaces are things like Google. Why would 3D make Google better ? It wouldn't.
Pretty != better. More Gimmicks != simpler
KISS
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
that tests have shown that GUI`s are inefficient and that typing is the way forward? Isnt all this a waste of time?
.... the desktop/hierarchical structure thing isn't just a metaphor. people STILL USE in and out trays, filing cabinets, rolodexes, pen holders, noticeboards and so on. the desktop is one of two things :
a) a tried and tested system which works, and is already fairly* well established in the minds of billions of well-organised people, and was evolved over hundreds of years of trial and error by people who actually NEEDED to organise stuff
b) outmoded and ready for the trash heap.
take your pick.
I applaud the effort to find something better, but really, i think "natural selection" would have found a better real-world parallel if it existed.
relationships between files in the structure is a brilliant idea, but that's just metadata and cross-referencing.
- says the man with the cluttered desk - at least my machines don't have virtual beer bottles leaving ringmarks on my HTML documents.
*irony
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Many people prefer 1-dimensional (command line) to 2-dimensional (desktop), so why "move on" to 3D?
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Instead of not being able to find where you put that folder or document, people getting lost in virtual hallways of a library containing all their files..
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Seems like the topic of VR/3D methods of information presentaion come up regularly. In Web land years back, we had people enamored of VRML: they wanted to use it as the primary navigation on an important site, and we pretty much nixed the idea as being too expensive, non-intuitive, and annoying to the user.
The major problem is that the computer is a 2D display device, so whenever moving to a 3D representaion, you are really getting a 2D representation of a 3D represenation of information, with only 2D tools to use to get at that info (i.e. mouse, keyboard).
I tried to use a 3D file manager for about a week, once, and found it unintuitive, silly, and a general pain to try to use. Why? Because I don;t want to wander through virtual galleries of items before finding the one I want: I've got a memory/filing system that makes it easier for the 2D computer system I use.
Unless the peripherals and OSes become 3D oriented, I don;t really see that changing. The desktop metaphor works for the type of information we store on our computers.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
why don't we replace the usual desktop metaphor by a game metaphor?
Just imagine: To delete a file you don't have to drag it to the trashbin but you can shoot at it. And depending on the type of weapon you are using there is a chance to recover the file if you (of course accidentially) hit the wrong file...
From my point of view a computer was designed to take work away from the user and not to put extra work on him by applying some stupid metaphors. Every metaphor that requires interaction like mouse movement and klicking is wasting the users time because its hard to make it automatically. But that's what the computer should do, doing the jobs automatically. I don't enjoy a copy job that requires me to push and pull a mouse and gives me as a sort of reward a stupid animation of flying papers.
on in what way you think. some people would probably be much better in this "3-d" environment. or they would be much better in the weird tree like think they had on the second page. i vastly prefer directory structure and simply putting things where they should be based on my own sorting procedure. i think everybody finds what works for them best. if this works for someone, more power to them. if on the other hand you like a structure like: /mnt/win/d/hd/f/pictures (i swear i know a guy who has directory structure like this . . .) then go for it. if it works best for you, that's what really matters.
(as an aside, i don't see this really taking off, but i can't see it hurting anybody much by merely existing.)
It's like this crazy window that uses letters and words to represent your files and folders. It doesn't stop there... you can use actual words (using a "keyboard") to manipulate the files and folders. I call this "typing". The "keyboard" is simply a large, flat, rectangular mouse, with over a hundred buttons instead of just a couple, and there's no ball on the bottom.
I'm calling it the Crazy Little Interface (CLI). Let me know what you think!
When I use 3D interfaces on PCs, I tend to get seasick. A CAVE, with motion tracking and powered by a real computer, is much better in this regard, but motion tracking works only for a single person at a time, and suck caves are still quite expensive. I bet some people get seasick when using them, too.
The main problem with current desktop systems is not the metaphor of a 2D desktop itself, but rather that as computers have become more powerful, and more complicated, we end up with more junk to wade through. It's exactly the same with a "real" desktop too. The more files you pile on your desk, the harder it is to find something. So it would seem that in keeping with the KISS principle, we shouldn't be trying to find a new metaphor, but instead improving our current one.
/home/
One of the main problems today is that the OS doesn't make the best use of the information available to it. The OS can know the file type, the application(s) associated to those files, when the file was created etc. but in general, it doesn't do much with that information. Sure, if you double-click on your file, it can find & launch the application associated to the file type, but you're still left with the problem of finding that file.
My own proposal would be to make better use of the file information that the OS has available to it. Its theory, but basically you place a database layer over the filesystem. We should also make use of MIME types for each file, and create a hierachical directory structure, one for each MIME type inside the users "home" directory. As a simple example, you may have something like:
user1/
files/
image/
jp eg/
pn g/
x- bmp/
audio/
x- mp3/
Now we have this, we can put the information we have to good use. Whenever a file is created, rather than asking the user for a directory and a filename, we ask them for a description of the file. Create the file in whichever directory suits the files MIME type, with a system generated filename, and add an entry for the file into the database which is layered above the FS. The record should include the users long description, type, creation date etc.
Now when the user wants to find & open a file, they can easily find their file by e.g the decription, using a wildcard if they wish. Or the creation date, using a range is they want to. The major advantage is that they don't need to navigate through a heirachical directory structure, nor do they need to remember what type of file their looking for, as the OS can present all of the files that the user can open as a flat list in the dialog.
O.K, it's a clumsy description, but the basic premise is that a) The OS can handle placing the file on the FS instead of forcing the user to decide & b) We know have a flat list of files to manage, instead of a possibly very complex heirachical tree. We do retain the advantages of the hierachical tree for the filesystem, however.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
back in the early 90's a few students at MIT were working on this. with the vr3d engine AFIK.
files were organized as cities on a 3d landscape, files that were not for you (permissions set so you couldnt access them) would run away from your avatar and other file types would quiver, grow, etc...
Directories or cities that were off limits would grow walls as you approached and system files (Like logs would change color depending on errors contained inside.) would change according to what was happening.
I remember seeing this on television back in the early 90's but I cannot find it anywhere on MIT's webservers. anyone know if it's stored in the archives? or maybe moved from MIT?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
These people should really learn that the desktop is the best way to handle a two dimensional computing environment. The only possible ways to make the current computer interface better is to either add new hardware to interact with the computer (3D goggles, hand sensors, microphone, what have you) or to tweak the current desktop interface to make it just a tiny bit better.
These people are trying to reinvent the wheel by making it a square or a triangle. My wheels are fine the way they are, thank you very much.
And yet none of them have taken off. Why's that? Maybe (heretical thought!) it's because the current model actually works quite well for most people.
I don't want a system where the computer organises things for me. I can organise them better myself. (Occasionally I might lose something, but probably less often than if the computer was filing stuff for me. Anyway, we have good 'find' tools on Windows and Unix.)
I don't want a 3-D interface. It's much harder to visualise and navigate than a 2-D one. (A set of 2-D interfaces, as in Mozilla's tabbed browsing or many window managers' virtual desktops, is good. This is perhaps one of the real UI advances in recent years. Windows could do with virtual desktops.)
The article says: "Conceivably, an inference engine can be made so intelligent that [...] machines would automatically present information to you as you need it." Well, maybe when that's true I'll change my mind.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
My point is that these attempts at deciding the future of GUI are pathetic as they don't even take the current GUI's limitation in consideration:
(Note: if you don't agree with the following then you had to adapt yourself to these. Take anybody who doesn't use computers and just observe him.)
Future GUI concepts should take the problem the reverse way:
I am actually working on a GUI concept which will *not* be 3D. This will be Open Sourced.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
have you already tried XCuise for linux ? .. but we could imagine a file Explorer with links to some programs using associations . ..)
Quite cool as a 3D file navigator. You can only cruise
That would be cool ( Even if bnot productive
The folks at ID software should pick up on this. I think QuakeOS would be a nice operating system, we would all be used to the concepts involved.
Imagine the following features.
Virtual Conferencing:
Walk into the room where you wish to have the meeting, see the others present, and interact in real time.
Choose your own skin:
The boss could be an Ogre, the marketing manager a snake etc.
Security:
You need the red key to get into the room with the accounts files.
Office Furniture:
The "Aaron Chars" upgrade would only be $9.99.
Delete files:
With the rocket launcher.
Intrusion Detection:
And imagine the fun you could have chasing a hacker thought the system!
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
So I agree with you on one point: organize your files like you want. I don't like the default Windows "My Document" folder and by hacking the registry it is very well possible to use for example D:\Users\%USERNAME% instead, which corresponds better to my way of thinking. Under Linux I just juse /home/$USER because I like that structure.
The problem how to manage your files is beyond that for "joe sixpack". A lot of end-users don't even grasp the concept of a directory (or as it is now called "folder", what happened to the old terminology?). Honestly, I have seen users that save everything in their "My Documents" folder, and that includes their 1200 MP3's, their 50 Word documents, their 20 Excell documents and the 500 jpegs of pr0n. All flat in one directory, I kid you not! If you even try to explain what a "Folder" is, they freak out that you are being to technical. If by accident an application does not save their stuff in "My Documents", well they are hosed because they will never find it back. Sad, isn't it?
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
In case anyone hasn't noticed, we're in a recession and the computer industry is in a severe depression. Companies have lost billions on the last fads, "web interface" and "enterprise computing". What organization is going to want to spend money on:
- replacing all their hardware
- replacing all their software
- rewriting all their internally developed business applications
- retraining all their workers?
And people talk of "new interfaces"?
The current trend is to abandon the high-tech solution. It's back to the 1970s.
Here's the new interface for you. Pens. Paper. Books. File cabinets.
perhaps keep 2d for things we use right now, like reading text, viewing images and movies, and to an extent, file management.
For file management, maybe as was mentioned above, using icons/objects that vary in virtual size with the actual size of the file, maybe with a hyperbolic file manager.
3D will really come in useful in more futuristic applications, mostly dealing with non-local entities... talking to people, viewing data on other servers, etc. I think that entertainment and communication will be the two largest areas to be able to exploit 3D interfaces (that means *with* VR glasses and various sensors and such)
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
The Hierarchial Desktop is dead?
WTF? Sure it's old, but I'm still using it, your still using it, pretty much anybody with a computer is using it, and all of us will be for quite some time still. I find it funny how they refer to the Desktop Metaphor like it's so outdated that it never really existed at all.
I saw nothing even close to a suitable repacement to the Desktop Hierarchy in this article. The Rotating Star Tree could be useful to some, but most end users would'nt understand any more than looking in a folder tree.
The author almost makes Scopeware sound like an OS all its own, with a new type of file system and "Desktop Display". Upon further resarch you'll find out that it's nothing more than "Microsoft Internet Explorer".
For some reason I don't believe writing a new way of displaying a hierarchial tree qualifies as replacment of the Hierarchial Desktop. Nobody seems to think that Microsoft has changed the "Desktop Metaphor" with all the office PCs that boot directly to Outlook, but if they were to shell to some fancy page in MSIE we are expected to accept this as a radical change.
Complete Bunk. Offices have been shelling to special pages on their LANs for years now. The "Desktop Metaphor" is still the same, it's just displayed in an easier mannor for the users to understand.
As for the 3D Hall of Desktops, same stuff, just more of it.
Call me when you have something real.
Opinions Expressed by Me should be Forced on Others - PbHead
"We wanted to find people who didn't understand the function of file folders, how to open files, how to delete files. We couldn't find anyone. That makes it hard to change people's expectations of how computers should behave." - try 3rd world. I know lots of ppl here in Brasil that never saw a computer in their lives and that still fears that a HAL 9000 can someday takeover the world.
But that's not the reason of this post.
the real reason of this post is to say that the solution to the desktop mess may already exist, living right in our POCKETS... yes, I am talking about PalmOS.
Palm os is task oriented. you want to type a text ? fire the text editor. all your texts will be registered as belonging to that app, and will be an inseparable part of it.
Want to draw a picture ? same thing.
The job of organizing files by date, size, content, name, category, etc will be handled by THE APPLICATION, in a way that best matches the type of aplication you're using. Keep in mind that organizing AutoCAD drawings is completelly diferent than organizing texts or bitmap images.
What ? Me, worry ?
They claim that the desktop is dead etc, etc. I'm not so sure. Shit, I swear I saw a picture of MS Bob (enhanced) there, that was weird (the MS gallery interface). Anyone remember the hacked version of that called MS Bubba (trailer park motif, shotguns, malt liquor etc, funny as hell)?
:)
Anyways, I think the problem is this. We all have a shitload of files - on my 100gb drive, I have 85,120 files taking up about 80GB. This is my "extra storage" drive, I got 45,920 files on my C drive. Ok, perhaps I'm extreme, I have a shitload (about 40,000) of text files, books in pdf, etc etc..
Now, how the hell are you going to make it easy for me, or anyone, to access a good 120,000 files, preferably within less than 5 user interactions (clicks, speaking something, etc..)
OK, a new gui, cool, but if it is going to succeed it will essentially be a sytem based on "Organisational units that hold things" i.e. Folders / directories / objects.
A Chronological system won't work for a situation like this, it'd take too much of a mental effort -answer this - what did you have for dinner 1 week ago? I think that would be a perfect question, because things on the computer tend to be "routine" - did I work on this or this? It doesn't take a psyc major to tell you that humans suck at remembering what happened in the past.
With a hierarchical structure, it is painfully easy, and it scales well.
i.e.
e:\asdf (ok, ok, its easy to type and a throw-back to my 286 days, wee didnt have no stinkeen gooey)
e:\asdf\music
e:\asdf\music\Rock
e:\asdf\music\Rock\Prodigy - minefields.mp3
Moreover you can actually communicate the location to someone else, not "a file from sometime last week", or "the file in the Blue gallery on the right wall in the clipboard". Ever try to explain over the phone how to get to your house? Ever get lost becuase the directions sucked?
I can't argue with the article too much though - clippy the annoying mother fucker gets bashed on
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Incidently, I am this }{ close to losing the GUI alltogethor. With the fantastic (but slightly unwiedly)mplayer, and Q3 now working from the CLI, I see little purpose (personally) for those quaint little GUIs.
A mouse is what you play Quake with.
So, others here have noticed that MS just can't lose the Bob metaphor. It was a livingroom, now it's a hallway.
Could it be that Mrs. Gates (former Bob project leader) is using her influence to get a second chance to screw-up?
The article mentions how annoying Clippy is, but says that MS researchers still think a 'helpful' interface is a good idea if done properly. Can anybody think of a good way to do this without it becoming annoying?
One thing that I really hate about those little characters is that they get in the way and take control of the computer away from me. But what if a little box on the task bar showed the three 'most likely' things you wanted to do and you could activate them (complete with little wizards if the task is complex) by clicking?
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
OK, so I use a text console most of the time, easier on the eyes, etc, but when I do use a GUI (one does what one must, when supporting CAD users) I sometimes wish I could zoom windows in or out. You know, use shift-scrollwheel or something to zoom the active window out so it takes up less space, the fonts are smaller, etc, but you can still see it. (Perhaps two modes, one which resizes only the borders as is already possible, the other also zooms the window contents....) This wouldn't replace the 'normal size', 'maximise', and 'minimise' commands, of course - in fact, 'normal size' would be even more useful than it is at present, as it would snap back to normal zoom factor.
Shouldn't be all that hard - scalable fonts were probably the trickiest bit and they've been around a long time now. An application would have the option of scaling or not scaling other elements of a window.
SGI almost did this - many of their IRIX desktop apps let you zoom stuff in and out by dragging a graphical "volume control" thing on the left side of the window. I believe this was primarily their way of showing off their vector-based icons. But this didn't resize the window itself, only its contents. And those were the days before mouse wheels.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
A directory structure is ill-suited to conveying file metadata because:
* files cannot be located with other files relating to the same project, making file management across multiple projects/efforts, data archiving and deleting obsolete files more difficult.
* it is trivial to place a file in the wrong directory, breaking the system. Metadata should be assigned by the creating application, and editable by the user from some obscure location or utility.
* your method can only be used to convey ONE piece of information
Some file systems (MacOS) currently use metadata to store attributes such as file type and creator, so that a document is always correctly identified iconically, knows what application to use to open itself, and other application know (without testing the file) if they can parse the file.
I agree that metadata is underused. We need more metadata about file attributes.
"You have liberated me from thought."
Voice interaction is a classic example of something that can be thought of as "cool" until you have an open plan office with 30 people talking at their computers.
I agree about offices, the technology to make voice interfaces work is here today, but the applications is not, however but Voice Interfaces offers a lot of potential for much more personal environments, like the car home & SOHO.
VI offers a number of advantages over conventional interfaces, biomentric security, easy of use & accessability, even for your technophobic mother/granny.
Imagine a home entertainment gateway accessed by voice, no worries about little Johnny snooping your adult PIN. The inherent Biometric security, will make no difference, if he overhears your PIN.
Imagine re-tuning you IP Radio Alarm, by voice, without opening your eyes.
Imagine switching off your security alarm, by saying 'Hello House', and then following up it up with the query "Messages?" without having to log in and remember your password.
Or change channels without having to figure out which of those six seperate remote you need to use, simply by saying 'TV, select channel 4', or 'TV, News' or any number of other scenarios.
I think the killer application for VI is Home Automation.
All the metaphores are about helping the user to perform the actions of storing and retrieving. WOuldn't it be an idea to let the OS handle those things. Wouldn't it be conceiveable to integrate an AI or neural network in the OS that decides how and where to store stuff, and how to retrieve it? The AI would decide on how to store and index the document using keywords and one or more names. Maybe not quite concieveable at the moment, but I think it could work...
"...this expanding collection of files, folders and lists. Yet "our neurons do not fire faster, our memory doesn't increase in capacity and we do not learn to think faster as time progresses,' notes Bill Buxton, chief scientist of Alias/Wavefront, a leading maker of graphic-design tools."
hello? Yes we do. Generally speaking the more mental exercise we do, the better our brains get. Otherwise I guess we give up now.
This guy is 'chief-scientist' - what does he have a doctorate of? phsycology? human behaviour?
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
Yeah - it's probably gonna fade away into the quite world of oblivion beside the Amiga, but the BeOS filesystem actually has this VERY neat and usefull metadata. E.g. with standard mp3's, the filesystem knows that those files has ID3 tags, and add those to the metadata for the file. Same with tons of other file types. And you can add/remove metadata for file types at a whim. And change what application opens what kinds of files (based on MIME type of course, not extention).
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Hmm ... let's see. My father uses his computer at home (Windows) mainly to suft the web, check his email and write a few letters. Seeing how he can barely remember my email address, let alone the name of his email program (outlook express), I don't see how it would be faster for him (and millions others like him) to use a cli. Just to add insult to injury, he types at aprox 20 chars per minute. Not alot of fun trying to start your email client with
progra~1\Outloo~1\msimn.exe "mailto:hektor@somewhere.com" "subject=how do I start this program without having to type in these long commands?"
But then again, you probably knew that already, but think that people who can't tuchtype more than 250 chars per minute and can remember the most stupid and awk-ward [pun intended] commands should just get grep [pun intended].
Life is too short for not using the right tool for the job. Or do you do all of your painting with a cli-tool?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I think you are missing the point of the article. Basically, Google does one thing - searches the internet. You only have to type in one box and click one button. So, of course the interface, which is uncluttered and intuitive, works fine. The article is about systems that involve thousands of files, and how to allow humans to manage large amounts of information. You make arguments like people will lose information in a 3D system. Well, people are already losing in formation in their 2D system, so this argument is fairly weak. In fact, being overwhelmed with directories, file systems and storage is exactly what these people are combatting with their research. Our current system is far from effective, and if they can come up with something better, then great. Personally, I find the idea of sitting in front a box and typing to access information to be ludicrous and backward. We should stop trying to perfect the GUI and move on to the next step in computer integration. The fact that you have to take a course to understand how to use a PC indicagtes that our current interpretation of PC'S is failing. You don't have to take a course to use your fridge, and computers need to be that integrated in our lives.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
Is this one!
Best Slashdot Co
"That's why many researchers-at universities and startups like Gelernter's Mirror Worlds as well as giants like Microsoft and IBM-are searching for alternatives."
or
"90% of computer interface is already done. Most people with a disorganised computer environment are just that disorganised. They don't need new interfaces, perhaps some classes in lateral thinking and organisation. Thats why the MS's and IBM's are searching for alternatives. They need a new product to sell to consumers because they now people are too lazy to take responsibility for their own filesystems."
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
"We wanted to find people who didn't understand the function of file folders, how to open files, how to delete files. We couldn't find anyone. "
My parents could have made a small fortune as IBM guinea pigs.
I guess these guys didn't try to hard.
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
Something on what people are still working with lots of conviction in some universities is the replacament of the control devises ( mouse, ...) like for the VisualGlove project.
I worked on the basis of this project creating the so-called Mouse project.
I really believe in that kind of human-compiter interractions, even if it's not for a classic computer use.
Lots of work is still to be done in this area to help the Blind people, for instance in order to recognize the gesture language.
You weren't the only one; there seemed to be some sort of glitch last night.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Two paradigms that actually are a bit more interesting aren't mentioned. The first is "active notebooks", as found in MathCad or Mathematica, related to a number of earlier toolkits like CLIM and DynamicWindows (now defunct), and also in some vague sense related to HTML/JavaScript/DOM. Such approaches combine text and documents with behavior and interaction. We might call them "document-based UIs" and they can be a lot easier to author, and they provide a lot more useful information and help to end users, compared to toolkits like Motif, Win32/MFC, Gtk+, and Qt.
The other interesting development is zoomable user interfaces, as in the Jazz toolkit. Zoomable user interfaces can be viewed as a very restricted form of 3D toolkit, something that is actually fairly easy to understand for users and reasonably consistent and straightforward to program for. Zoomable interfaces can also be viewed as the "structured graphics" document type complementing the document-based UIs I mentioned in the previous paragraphs.
If Linux or the open source community wants to break ground in delivering new, more usable, easy-to-author UIs, zoomable and document-based UIs are the way to go in my opinion. Hyperbolic browsers, 3D rooms, and time-ordered display are little frills around the edges.
Anybody remember seeing the movie version of Disclosure?
There was this supposedly state of the art revolutionary 3D Virtual Reality immersive file system they were using (enough mid-90's buzzwords in there for you?)
So anyway, there's Michael Douglas and he's looking for a file. He's on some techno-trampoline with clunky VR goggles on. They show his visual perspective, and he's jogging down what appears to be a library hallway, looking at virtual books on the shelves. After several minutes of jogging he finds the book he wants, selects it from the virtual bookshelf, and opens it to find the file he wants.
That scene always cracked me up. What are these people thinking? We have computers to store information so we don't HAVE to jog down hallways to locate a book.
I'm not saying that the interfaces in the article were nearly as convoluted as that, but researchers keep beating up on the desktop for no apparently good reason. People make all kinds of emotional claims about how much the desktop sucks, but every system that gets proposed (for example, this weird-ass filecard system) appear to suck more.
Whatever. As long as I can still get to a command prompt, I'll live.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
For the UI technology afficionado, I didn't mean "lens", I meant "hyperbolic browser".
"Hey sweet thing...you wanna see the Next Computer Interface? Step into my shed, I mean my office and I'll show it to you"
------
Let me give you the lowdown
Who uses just one interface? Think about it. The web is orginized in a different way than the desktop. MS was afraid that they'd be shut out by Netscape with this new metephor. And how about everyone with access to a CLI? Don't you switch to that for some things and use a desktop for others? With OSX, there's the CLI, the desktop (which they really wanted to kill off) and the NeXT styled Column View. I use a mix of these to get things done. I don't think there can be one master interface that will bring all the data and in the darkness bind them, using current technology.
I drank what? -- Socrates
However, the file-cabinet view of the desktop have lots of nice alternatives. I really want a system that treats my desktop like a giant mind-map. Every project that I work on, and all the little notes that I find myself writing all the time would fit great in a mindmap structure. Also having the entire map in a zoomable format would be a better way to use the background than just putting the standard Manga/Astronomy/Softcore/Whatever-floats-your-boat pic there.
Furthermore such a desktop would interface nicely with remembrance agents. Imagine having an interactive system (perhaps integrated in emacs, like the one in MIT) that monitors what you write and suggests related nodes, that you have written before.
And it doesn't stop there! If you have a little checkbox for 'public' on each node/note, a mindmap maps well to a html-site (like MindMan does), so you could easily transform a set of loose thoughts on a subject to something that the entire world can benefit from. The RA could perhaps also interface with something like Everything and the mindmap desktop could have an easy function for uploading nodes/groups of nodes to the community. The entire hivemind of such a network would have an enormous potential.
Got interesting incoming mail? Tag it with a few keywords and give it a place in the hierarchy and the RA will pop it up when you need it again. The mindmap structure is immensely powerful. Got a whole slew of files in a programming project? Using the same system as you do for all the rest of your documents, you could easily arrange them so as to get a nice visual overview of their interdependence.
Can you tell that I've been thinking about implementing a desktop (probably in scheme for that schweet scriptability) that does something like this, for a while? ;)
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
<with apologies>I think you are missing the point of the article. Basically, a fridge does one thing - keep stuff cold. You only have to open the door, put stuff in and close it again. The article is about systems with thousands of food items, and how to allow humans to manage large amounts of temperature requirements....</with apologies>
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
I've always wanted to have a 3-D desktop - so that the documents I had most attention on were in the foreground and the desktop itself was in the background. This could be done by (eg) using a double output graphics card outputting interleaved frames to a single monitor whilst wearing rapidly switching LCD eyewear. The 3D effect would be a little unreal (no parallax effect so you can't peek behind stuff) but would be a much better way of organising attention and importance (and it would be cool to see the mouse pointer zooming off into the distance). This technique would also work for a VR headset (motion detection not necessary).
In the end, the only way any of these are going to replace the desktop metaphor is if they can be shown to be better then the desktop. All of these fail at that task.
Although the idea of chronological storage is intriguing, and will work well for small groups of files, it breaks down completely once the user starts manipulating many files. This can be mitigated by storing them hierarchically, but this then ceases to offer much advantage over a desktop list view that's sorted reverse-chronologically by date.
3-D has two main disadvantages, both stemming from this notion of "space" as a way of managing files, as opposed to a flat "surface". The first is speed. Because there is more area (or, to be more accurate, volume) to navigate, the user has to spend more time looking for stuff. Second, as the article points out, things become easier to lose in 3-D space. You can alleviate some of this if you add the notion of "hallways" and "rooms" in which to organize things, but if you do, then you're still thinking in hierarchical terms, and that puts you right back on the Desktop.
Then, there's that funky sphere idea. Somewhat less of a problem than true 3-D, because you're still dealing with only one surface rather than a space Less easy to lose things. However, with all the spinning and zooming that you'd need to do, you lose speed, big time.
Microsoft's task-oriented stuff just doesn't work out. It's well-suited to carrying out actions, but not for organizing files. You just get dumped onto the Desktop.
It's true that the desktop metaphor has its flaws. In fact, truth be told, it's pretty bad. But it's like democracy in that regard: the only thing worse is everything else we've come up with so far.
Then apple bought NEXT...
But the interface lives on as "Afterstep"!!
Long live Afterstep (untill something better comes along...)
3D may be the next dimension to graphic designers, but has nothing to do with file organization and structure.
Currently, disk contents are arranged in a nested heirarchy. This fits nicely into a desktop-folder-file metaphor. Each file may be enclosed in one folder (which may be enclosed in more folders) which is contained by the desktop. A 1-1-...-1 relationship. Aliases are currently used to sidestep this structure and randomly access files outside of this struture.
It seems to me the next step is a relational file system. In this system, the physical location of a file is mostly irrelevant. Just like in a relational database, all files may be displayed by search criteria. An OS would have default views which would show "all user created data", "all system applications", etc. Each view is merely a database report which could be further refined.
A XML-ish standard structure for embedding attributes about each file (metadata) would be very useful. File type, creator, preferred editor, preferred viewer, and other user defined attributes, as well as some content-based indexing would make this possible. Users could have their own file system views based on search criteria of file attributes. It would then be trivial to view "all html documents containing meeting notes from last week" (files matching 3 attributes).
Files would no longer merely be viewable by heirarchial location, although you could still view by directory structure for maintenance, housekeeping, and organization.
Window management is another big deal I'd like to resolve. Layering of windows places the burden of managing the display on the user. Why can't my OS handle much of that for me?
I applied at Apple for a senior UI design position several years prior to OSX , presented many of these ideas in the interview, and was told, in essence, they were more interested in animated widgets than reinventing the desktop. Now Apple has undermined use of metadata in OSX. It's sad to see a company once so keen in user interface to take a step backward, instead of some forward direction.
It's also sad to read about such crap as in this article being presented as the next step. Geesh. What a maroon! I've been hearing about 3D interfaces since at least 1990 and have yet to see one with any promise. At best they are eye candy. At worst, they are a counter-intuitive kludge from forcing a concept onto functional need. (Ahem. It flows the other way, fellas...)
-c!
"You have liberated me from thought."
Hummm, does this remind anyone of the filesyststem in Jurassic Park. (Which apparently was that of a Unix system!)
To get some thing other then a desktop model to
work we need a different way of interfacing with
the computer. Once voice recognition gets up to
Star Trek levels or we get away from the mouse
for movement it opens up a lot more possabilities
for things like a FPS type perspective. Or
other interfaces where using a mouse just doesn't
work well...
-Galapas
Hey when do we get to see the Tower Block style interface seen in Hackers? Complete with silly lit up tune playing keyboards! I can't wait to fly round like and electron inside my puter..
When I write something in a notebook I don't have to "save" it, or give a special name etc.
For example, I've used a wordprocessor, called "YeahWrite", that does away with files. You simply open new pages and write. Everything is automatically saved and you pages are arranged in time order. This works great for people who are not computer expersts and are not interested in learning about computers.
In "The Humane Interface" Jef Raskin describes an interface that's based on plain text. There are no documents, just one big text stream that contains separators. The user interface just manipulates this text.
Finally, do these usibility experts actually watch people work? One of the most useful UI features is the idea of "Virtual Screens" (as implemented by Unix window managers). Each virtual screen keeps the context of a particular task and makes it easy for me to switch between them. Why hasn't this become a standard feature of Windows is beyond me!?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
After messing around with firewalls all day, I wonder if something like PSDoom could take some of the drudgery out of that...
Picture this:
You've got a large stone wall with ~65,000 entrances, a machine gun, boiling oil and a six-pack of beer.
Sounds like a lot more fun than how I spent the last few days...
When you get a really solid firewall going, you can pick off valid packets just for fun...
-- My Weblog.
Basically, the user interface really isn't that important. The main problem, as I see it, is that heirarchical data storage just doesn't work for most _people_.
This is especially obvious to anyone who's worked in teams of more than, ooh, one person who have had to share a single file structure. What one person perceives as a logical structure (/docs/reports/outgoing/date) another would view as being totally redundant (/docs/date/out/reports). You end up with a compromise that suits neither party, and by the time you move up to >100 people sharing a file structure you're in real trouble...
You also get into real trouble when a document has to exist in more than one place within the heirarchy. F'rinstance documents that need to be organised by Date or by Customer or by Author or by Cost code etc etc.
Shortcuts and/or logical links can help some of these problems, but they're both pretty messy solutions.
I have seen, and worked with, several database driven document management systems which show a lot of promise. Whether this is the way forward is a debatable point, certainly having to host a database complicates the implementation for the average desktop user.
Until some form of document management can be incorporated into the operating system all that a new GUI can do is to further obscure the core organisation.
What I want is a document management system which allows me to look at my files in the way that I choose, allows my co-workers to look at the same files in the way that they choose and hides the files completely from people who have no interest in them. The organisation of the files on disk shouldn't be something that I (as a user) have to even care about - slap them in a flat structure for all I care.
Fer [insert deity here] sake, if we were designing a file system from the ground up we wouldn't seriously contemplate a heirarchical model for more than five minutes. There must be a better way!
Cheers
Chris
You're not wrong. However, we must also remember that fridges don't take a minute to turn the light on and let you have access to your foodstuffs. You could reply that fridges are on the whole time, but if you leave the PC on the whole time, who pays the electricity bill? /bad thing/.
PC/human interaction is vastly different from real-world physical interactions in many ways. Trying to force them into being analogous is often a
The future lies in places like the Xerox PARC of old, and in usability labs, where people can simply brainstorm interface ideas, and fitness/evolution will take care of the rest.
Note, however, that there _isn't_ a single solution. People have many different prefered ways of arranging data not just in their head, but externally too.
THL.
Keeping
I like the idea of a 3D interface. really. I do.
However, as long as we're still sitting in front of giant, flat 2D displays and using the same old keyboard & mouse devices, it's not going anywhere.
I dislike sitting in front of a monitor for $x hours a day. I want lightweight glasses with a display in them, I want head movement tracking, I want gloves for manipulating and entering data with tactile feedback. I want to be able to look around my room and have all the screenspace in the world. I want to be able to open xterms on one wall, turn my head and look at my netscape sessions virtually displayed on another wall.
Any concept of a 3D interface with our current display and input methods is screwed from the get-go. Current experiments with it (SGI's 3D filemanager, Xcruise, etc) are cute, but until I have some kind of method as I described above, cute is all they are.
If you think my computer's desktop is a mess, you should see the real desk that my computer is sitting on!
In fact, my desktop's backdrop image is a picture piles of paper, magazines, and coffee rings... it's a photo of my desk.
Hmmm.... time for that spring-cleaning I keep procrastinating about...
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
This reminds me of the "personalised menus" concept in recent versions of Windows. It's a great idea: Now that we've got users to finally understand the concept of a dropdown, we make sure it looks different every time!
Ingenious!
And found the greatest interface to the moment. The command line. I never use graphical file managers. Why? because they don't add anything:
a) They make me click around for deleting/copying/moving
b) Pretend that the only way I'm going to want to treat my files in groups is by selecting them one by one.
Shells however have many great advantages:
a) Nothing I've seen so far beats the file matching done by shells (*? are very powerfull primitives)
b) "Selecting files" is very easy with tab-completion
Of course there are advantages to graphical file managers. The fact that they show a nicely formated tree of your filesystem side by side to the place you're working on is nice, but redundant... Since all this is stored internally in my head and I can reach it faster in a shell with tab completion.
In fact directory trees are just compensation for the fact that selecting a directory is usually very difficult in a file manager. (Konqueror does have tab completion though).
So while I applaud whizbang technologies like 3D or voice recognition they'll only be useful when we also get AI. So that I can, instead of saying "Move all files from directory foo to bar", Instruct the computer to "Give me all my files from the last year indexed by importance, highliting all of those that are about subject A in red and B in blue and then mail them to Joe asking if that's what he wants." Computers will replace secretaries then.
Which leads us to the next point. The interface to computers works fine as it stands. What we really need is better metadata. For every file a full quiz should be filled out. And then we'll have a truly functional filling cabinet. And then graphical file managers will have some importance to me. As they stand they're just a barrier between me and the filesystem, they should become something that powerfully interprets and organizes it.
Pedro Côrte-Real.
Does anyone remember Microsoft BOB? It was an ill-fated attempt to hide the complexity of the OS behind a silly front-end.
And then there was that insane navigation screen used in Jurassic Park. The girl managed to use it easily enough in the movie, but it didn't look like the easiest system in the world.
In short - there have been plenty of attempts to come up with something better than the desktop, but although they're all very pretty and innovative, most of them have been pretty useless to actually use.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
There is a "NEW " technology than can defeat voice rec...it is called a tape recorder...easy to plant.
I just can't wait until all those laptops have voice activation, so I can get up on my morning train and yell: "format C:" !!!
...richie - It is a good day to code.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Creating a 3d interface only makes the whole interface concept more complex and will enlarge the learning curve if you ask me.
Creating a Simple 2d interface build up out of 3d objects/widgets could lower the CPU load, cause instead the GPU is used for drawing complex interfaces. You could then show the Interface in a 3d structure to show how the program works or how it calls functions on what objects. So people can understand how the layering and program works even for non programmers...(this can also be done with 2d objects ofcourse, but i guess management needs a good visual to understand what your saying.)
When the whole 2d interface is in 3d ala vectors, that means you can rescale your whole interface with ease, more idea's come up here like texture mapping a streamming video on a cube, you can move,rescale and turn it around with great ease again, without giving your cpu a hard time.
I think we should use that great GPU in our computer systems for something more usefull things then games and rendering, sure people can come up with good idea's about this...
Everything is becoming 3d today, which i think sucks, but in the end thats way we are going, now if we implent a 2d interface in a open 3d API, then all kind of programmers and creative people can start playing around with trying to design nice 3d working interfaces which will be of ease in use. But we can keep going on with the way we are working now.
Quazion.
All this research seems to want to throw away the desktop paradigm because it is just old, and computers can do so much more now. It seems less attention is given to how people use computers than what the computers can do. The current desktop paradigm is good, with virtual and multiple desktops, you can group information as you see fit. You don't need to use a clunky, harder to navigate 3D interface to do this same thing. The 3D paradigm has great benefit to games/simulation where you actually *want* to take the extra time to explore the environment. When you are just trying to get work done, 2D is much easier to see and wrap our heads around. Just like in real life, when we play, we do so in 3D, when working, we sit down at a desk and lay everything out in 2D. There is a reason why, for example, more people paint than work in plaster. As far as these other paradigms, they seem to be all about deciding for the user what the user wants to see and how he wants what he sees to be organized. This is a very bad mode of operation, people are intelligent enough to know what they do and do not want to see, and how to organize it. No matter what algorithm you use to guess what the user wants, it will never be 100% accurate, so just provide convenient access to everything, and be flexible enough to let the user modify it as he sees fit. Just because a concept is old, does not mean that it should be completely scrapped. This is a bad tendency that computer research people have, and they need to come to reality sometimes...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Prodigy should be under "dance".
All the "new" interfaces are just the same thing.
You need to find files. A hierarchical setup is like a B*tree. Unfortunately, most people refuse to maintain the tree (and it a wonder, since it's so easy to do), and they put everything everywhere. Now someone else needs to clean up. So a "new" interface comes along and everyone oohs and ahs, but nothing changes.
Think of Microsoft's "Quick Launch". It's a horrible thing when people put *all* their programs there. I've seen computers with clutterd "Start Menu"s (apparently only the radical few actually organize it!) (also, hardly any installations tools allow you to easily choose a sub-folder ro install into) and have the same icons on their desktop and Quicklaunch. I've even seen folders on cluttered desktops of cluttered icons from when people tried to clean it up!
A new interface would change the *interface* not the *structure*. Heirarchy is going to be used is some form. Whether the heirarchy is created by days on the calendar, parts of your living room, walls is some 3D get-up, it's still a heirarchy. A new interface would mean a different way of thinking. Like, something other than "files". I do not know what, but whatever it would be, *that* would actually be "new".
The desktop is fine. We just need to teach people how to use it.
Have you read my journal today?
The article claims that the desktop metaphor was designed for the age when computers consisted of no hard drive and only a floppy drive to run the system. I can't see how this is really true. Apple's Macintosh, from the very beginning, allowed folders to be nested inside folders, allowing an infinite amount of scalability -- something that Windows 3.1 didn't offer at the time. It's clear that the Mac OS was intended to scale to large numbers of files and folders, and allowed the user to customize how they wanted things organized. It worked well, and still works, because many many people are STILL coming to computers from a non-computing environment, and need that kind of simple familiarity.
Of the options listed in the article, Scopeware is the only one that looks remotely intuitive to me -- and that's only because it's basically a search engine for your computer. Call it a diary metaphor all you like, but it's basically a combination of two things: the "Recent Documents" history that my browser uses, and a database-driven search engine that indexes every document as I create or modify it. Sounds a lot like my web browser to me. Nothing too revolutionary there, it seems to me.
Why does there have to be one prevailing 'metaphor'? Why can't we use metaphors specific to the task? I mean, I really like using the command line for a lot of things, but at the same time, I'd like to see thumbnails of images in my directory listings... XML-term is great for this - it merges command line and gui (although not very smoothly yet). Also, 3d works for some things, as does aural; but not for many other things. Use the right tool for the job, not the most cool.
There was a fair amount of GUI experimentation
in the early 1980s. However as much I admire
Apple in bringing the Desktop metaphor (developed at Xerox) to the masses, it had the counter effect of freezing this metaphor. Especially when MicroSoft with the inventive creativity of a dead fish copied it and put it on every desktop.
The evolution of the desktop interface is multidimensional, but not in the 3D + voice sense. The additional dimensions are time and social context. A truly discursive interface is more closely matched to the human user's cognitive habilities. Naïve users intuitively keep attachments with their messages in Oultook instead of saving them to the filesystem : what they are doing is actually conserving contextual information. An look at all the weblogs : this is only information storage, but with emphasis on context. The diary metaphor, not glitter and glitz is what will pull the desktop interface toward the future.
I wonder, will these new interfaces require javascript to open files? (stupid javascript image links...)
one thing that was mentioned in the article briefly was "star tree" from Inxight. I saw a presentation on this recently and it seemed pretty slick. it wouldn't destroy the (very useful) hierarchical structure of the current desktop, but it is a much improved method of navigating the hierarchy, in a 2d and intuitive way, but much faster. try it out here. i've wanted to use this in a file system since i saw it... i didn't know they were actually considering it.
A CLI can be set up to be fairly easy to use. I mean if you've ever seen some people sift through their sea of icons on the desktop or the kludge of a start menu, that can get pretty messy too. Seems much easier if you could simply type "mail" and it sends you to your e-mail client (or hotmail/whatever).
Personally I'd like a blending of the desktop and CLI. You have a bar to type stuff at like the windows "run" command, but it's always visible. It has an easy to access shortcut key, and you type whatever you want to do. It introduces problems like spelling errors, but would cut down on all these messy menus which tend to prevail now days. Right now (while using windows) I just hit the windows key and 'r', then type, but I'd like to see this take a step further.
1) Finding files is easy. Period. It's easy to find files as long as you put them in a logical place. If you don't put your files in a folder/directory that makes sense to you, no OS can help you be organized and efficient. DOS/Windoze (I am not very familiar with *nix) does this - you can put all your work documents in c:\work, or in c:\my documents\work etc. Or you can put all your Word files in c:\program files\msword etc. if that's what makes sense to you.
2) *Hiding* files is also easy. If your workstation/home PC is not secure, it's dead easy to conceal your {warez/pr0n/job application letters to competing companies} from your {significant other/boss} by burying them in a folder where nobody would think to look for them (eg. "c:\program files\the microsoft network\setup files"). I know that "security through obscurity" doesn't really work, but I suspect this system works very well for many thousands of people.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I am wondering if there's a really good explination of why the desktop metaphor is, to borrow a phrase from "1984", un-good. To be honest I don't see any of the new metaphores solving the one big problem of data storage; lots of crap with no common organization.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
C-x C-u 100 all-hail-emacs
Bush Lies Watch
Whenever I hear someone* declare something to be dead, it's a good indication that it'll be around for another hundred years or so. Yeah, the desktop metaphor is dead, just like paper is dead.
* Someone refers to the researcher who's inevitably researching what he thinks will supercede what he's declaring dead.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Just read a couple of White Papers from software vendors - next version is always announced as supporting "Read My Mind Computing"
I am skeptical about environments such as Microsoft's Task Gallery. Most people misplace car keys and the remote so providing even more stimuli for the brain to digest in addition to the miriad of screensavers, background images, system sounds, MP3 players, icon factories, and skinnable everything could reduce already low productivity levels.
I imagine situations where the file system implodes and the 'office space' resembles a post earthquake news spot, complete with the MS Office assistant appropriately hiding in the doorway.
Just wait until your accounting department takes a group meeting to the park and misplaces the quarterly report on the park bench.
Maybe Google will license their system to each organization so that everything is just a search away.
The is a cool Desktop Replacement And i know there are some others out there that ppl have been screwing around with that arent that bad.
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
Books have used the same "interface" for centuries. We tried stone tablets, then scrolls, then settled on the book. Who's to say that computer interfaces haven't arrived at a similar place of relative stability, where there isn't a big leap to be made?
Sure, there will always be innovations, the computer equivalents of pop-up books and scratch-and-sniff, but why does everyone assume that there must be some new revolution that will render today's interface obsolete?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Plus, will all the cool effects of windows zooming on to the screen (this is a new one), and windows zooming off the screen, I the interface looks bad-ass and I look productive.
Hehe, fooled them didn't I?
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
There are two aspect to the desktop metaphor: the overlaying of documents on the window (very good -- we should keep this), and the hierarchical storage of documents (very weak). The hierarchical storage of documents is precisely how you are not supposed to handle physical files. Physical files are supposed to be organized one of two ways: chronologically or alphabetically. There is a one to one correspodence between hanging folders and inside folders which immediately tells you whether a file is missing. Files are never ever nested. This is a kind of discipline which is imposed to make filing systems comprehensible between people; they also reflect physical limitations (a file can't be in two places at once; a file can refer to another file but won't necessarily help you find it).
The very image of "files" being stored in a "tree" is so incongrous it is funny.
The storage of files in an unique tree shaped hieararchy is itself a metaphor; we all know that on disk storage looks nothing like this, but we accept the hiearchical structure unhesitatingly. This is an obstacle in people cooperating with each other, except when certain hiearchies are so engrained they are second nature (e.g.
I think a good system would allow users to do the following (concepts poorly supported currently are italicized):
The more I think of it, the better it would be to organize files around the needs of project and task management. I was going to add above things like "prioritize" files because people often do -- segregate their "hot" files from the rest. However , this doesn't really make sense. It's a task that is priortized; when that task is back burnered, then all the files associated with that task lose their hot status. In a sense, this complements a post I made earlier in an article about "groupware". Groupware shouldn't just be e-mail or e-mail and calendaring. It should be about managing the flow of information between people. In some sense the same things are needed by an indivdual working alone. The big problem is that they way I think about things (and how they need to be organized) may change as I change my focus between tasks, or as I change my thinking over time.
I think a system that supports these kinds of tasks could be done with a special shell or even a web client, with metadata stored in hidden files or in a database. Ideally, we would have a file system with extensible and well indexed metadata, version tracking and cryptographic signatures.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As I look around this open plan office I see endless filing cabinets, spiral bound notepads hanging off them entitled "Document Control and Issue Log".
In the foyer there are boxes marked "for archive".
In the corner the IT support guys are complaining about the lack of storage space on our Exchange Server because our average users mail box is over 100 meg.
Why do our employees cause our company all these storage headaches? Because they can.
I say give people 5 meg mailboxes and force them to delete stuff, but they argue that they might need to refer to in the future. Might. But they probably won't..
The same goes for all those filing cabinets and archive boxes that we're paying some storage company to keep hold of, just because we might need the odd document again.
If there's a need to recover a document that you no longer have then there's a cost associated with the additional work involved because you couldn't retrieve it. But that cost is way smaller than the cost of storage for what 99.8% of the time will never need to be referred to again.
I think.
Ok, these are the guys that are trying to design new user interfaces? They had trouble learning how to use a mouse? Something seems very wrong with that.
There are just so many things wrong with this statement... Do you want "radically different interfaces" just for the sake of being different, or do you want them to be functional too? And of course, "radically different" and "widespread acceptance" very rarely go together. Most people accept what is familiar, so none of these new interfaces are going to take off overnight. While we're at it though, why don't we have radically different automobile interfaces, or radically different food packaging interfaces, or radically different building access interfaces?
The whole point of an interface is that it is accessible. The key here is to make it work for the users and not make the users work for it. When you start having the interface share some of the work of organizing files (as Scopeware does), you may take some work away from the user, but now you've essentially got a co-worker you need to deal with whenever you want a file. Imagine two people sharing a cubicle (yes, this is a desktop metaphor for a non-desktop metaphor replacing a desktop metaphor), using the same files and reference materials. Even if one is only tasked with organizing everything, there's still a gap between the brain of the user and the brain of the organizer. If there isn't a perfect match between how the two think, you'll hit an endless cycle of problems. The only solution is to either force the user to conform to the organizer, or customize the organizer to the exact specifications of the user. Neither is likely to be better than just giving the user the task of organizer.
All of these nifty high-tech interfaces may be fun to play with and may succeed at getting funding, but their final test is always the typical user. Now, I know the typical user is held in low regard around here (we are the elite after all, or at least we like to think we are), but at some point you have to interact with reality. The desktop metaphor just won't die for a reason - people can use it. As an IBM researcher said in the article, "We wanted to find people who didn't understand the function of file folders, how to open files, how to delete files. We couldn't find anyone." Throw some weird abstract 3-D creation at people, and some won't understand. A lot of people can't even handle the concept of multiple ways of completing a given task; increasing the complexity of the interface would actually make things more difficult for them.
The real solution to this problem won't come from the interface side - it will come from the user side. You can't design an interface until you can understand what the user wants to do. This may not be as attractive a project for venture capital, but reality seldom is. In the end, I have a feeling that there will be no general agreements between users, making a single unified advanced interface impractical.
Yet again, the solution is on the user end. The desktop metaphor is a lot more useful than many people give it credit for. For example, the paragraph describing Scopeware really describes a generic file search program that already works perfectly well in a desktop metaphor. However, expanding it to fill the entire GUI is pointless. If you want to be able to find something, just put it somewhere that makes sense. In a year or two, will you really remember what day, or even what month you last used a certain file? If you file it away in a logical place though, you can use that same logic to locate the file again. Instead of file-specific knowledge, all you need to know is how you think. Sure this requires you to think in the first place, but that is the key issue here. In any interface, usefulness will be determined by how well files are maintained by the user. The current desktop metaphor requires very little from the user, just moving files around. Linked interfaces or fancy 3-D interfaces require more from the user, otherwise there will be no benefits - you still have to create the links or move files around spatially. If managing a system of files and folders is too much work for some people, will these new interfaces be any better?
So for those of you who survived this entire comment, I will sum up how to improve the computer interface for the masses. Teach them how to get the most out of the existing interface, based on their individual needs. Learn where they run into problems caused by the interface. Refine the interface to the point where the user is truly in control and isn't restricted by how the interface thinks things should be done - leave the thinking to the humans. We don't need any fancy interfaces on a general purpose computer. And yes Apple, that means cut it out with all the prettying up/cluttering up of the GUI. Just make it work and leave it alone.
I can't wait for the day when I, as a misunderstood hacker, can get in front of some super-villian's computer and say "ahh. This is Unix based!" and start virtually flying around the "city" of databases, looking for the right window to break into.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
In that context, 3D and a voice interface both make sense.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"That kind of thinking is wrong," says Gelernter. "The PC isn't a Swiss Army knife. It's like a hammer. People don't want a million different tools. They want a single hammer that can do a million things, because it's a tremendously flexible, elegant and powerful tool." :)
I saw this and thought of you immediately
Put identity in the browser.
Sorry, they won't fly. As I see it, the only desktop that will replace the current desktop is one where I can verbally say: "Get me the file on the Smith account" or "Get me that document about all the fish" and have the computer either return the file or all the potential files. But this would take a whole lot of file parsing and "understanding".
The room desktop was the same as our current desktop, just 3d! Where's the innovation?
Also, a desktop that doesn't work on a heirarchy of files is going to do an awful lot of file hiding. Where the hell would you find that file for some video game that you want to modify.
No, 2d desktop is here to stay, at least until the computer is smart enough to find my documents and games for me.
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
The desktop metaphor is decades old, arising from early-1970s work at Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center...
Hey all, I've never been to California.... has anybody out there ever seen this mystical land they call Palo Alto? It sounds like a dream.... I hear Rand McNally accidentally released a version of a map that had detailed instructions for reaching this fabled place. I searched eBay, but couldn't find a copy.
I will pay top dollar for photos or other *proof* of the existence of the fabled Palo Alto Research Centre!!
>> Call 1-888-BAG-GINS
thats why single-use appliances will take off instead of the current model of "its a computer, it can do ANYTHING you want".
... hi bingo
Is it too late to have this introduced as testimony in a Microsoft anti-trust case?
But seriously, isn't a conversation with another human being (like the computer on Star Trek) the easiest way for any of us to access information? Humans developed language for a reason - because it was the most efficient way to get information from one person to another.
When we have a difficult problem, or a strange search we need to perform, it's always easier to go and talk to an expert than it is to go on Google. Try answering a question like, "What's that word that means . . ." by searching on Google. It's almost impossible. But go up to any other human and they'll probably be able to give you a quick, easy, no-nonsense answer in about 3 seconds.
Eventually, I think, we'll be able to communicate with our machines on the level we communicate with other humans. But that interface will be (IMHO) a combination of aural, visual, and tactile communication with the machine. It will also be two-way. Yes, computers will talk back to us, asking us questions to refine their searches and pointing us in a conversational manner to tangents we probably hadn't even thought of.
These interfaces are not right around the corner, of course. But something like talking to another person is the ultimate interface to vast quantities of information, and I challenge anyone to come up with a better one.
oh, i thought it said the NeXT interface. nevermind.
honestly, though, it would be really nice when some of the mainstream OSes adopt the option to use alternative file browsers, whether for the cutting edge geeks to see their files as quake maps, or for more specialized users to see things as they are more properly arranged, or, and this is where i think the research ought to be going, handicapped users being able to "see" their data in ways that are more appropriate for those without certain assumed abilities.
the real "next interface" will be here when there is an interface that a blind user can use to browse his hard drive as fast or faster than a sighted person can use the current stock of file browsers - instead of using some kludgy add-on or adaptive technology working with a file browser built for a sighted person.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Isn't it possible that computer companies are trying to make even the mundane stuff 3 dimensional (demanding) in order to force the user to buy a newer computer?
I am one of the relatively few (it sometimes seems) humanities graduates who see the benefits of working in Unix/Linux rather than windows. The reason for this is simple: I have found that Linux gives me an environment where I can work more quickly.
I don't need my computer to look "fun" to use, I don't need it to treat me as a child. None of the other tools I use in my work do. My computer is not "fun" when my icons jump up and down. My computer is useful when it just does what I want it to do, and no more and no less.
My actual working environment looks spartan, but is actually far more powerful than the environment offered by Mr Gates. This is not because I am using the latest version of KDE2 or nautilus, although like most people here I have gone and played with them from time to time.
In my view, "traditional" unix apps, by which I mean those which assume that, yes, there is a keyboard attached to the computer and that, yes, it does make a good input device, get two things right:
First, they have the power to let you specify exactly what you mean. For example, I find it more intuitive to type:
2,4s/this/that
than I do to find the mouse and go through a menu and a dialogue box in word (and I don't know how I would limit the search to only a few lines of the text --- not off-hand, anyway).
Once one learns a very few unix paradigms (and I'll admit there is a learning curve), one rapidly learns that applications where one can actually type in exactly what is required of the computer have far more power.
Mutt is another classic example; I can tag all messages matching certain criteria and delete them, move them or print them, without having to go through (as I would in OE) and select them manually.
I know I'm preaching to the converted on some of these points, but I think that too many of us sometimes like things that are cool (and nautilus IS cool), and forget that the price often paid is power. And sometimes it seems that CS types think that they are they only people who realise this.
2. The second thing that Linux gives me is access to the exact information I am interested in, and no more. For example, I do not always need a WYSIWYG world. Sometimes, yes. I wouldn't want to edit a jpeg in vim. But often (for a paper) I only need a subset of all the information about the final document. It is helpful to concentrate on just the text -- I find I write better.
Or to take another example. If I want to open a set of files, the Windows paradigm means that I would open each one, edit it and close it, then select the next, or else clutter my screen with windows. Either way, I am often not sure I have 'got' them all. Vim on the other hand, can take a list of files, let me edit each one (but only show me the one I'm actually working on) and then let me move on to the next. I know I won't miss one out, but nor is my screen cluttered with all those waiting their turn.
As for loosing files, grep and find have never let me down, and are far more powerful than any GUI tools I can find.
I think that this article, and most gui projects at the moment, have the wrong idea. The problem computers present is that they give us too much information. But I do not want it hidden from me, I want to only see that subset which is important to me at any given time (and there is a big difference). In the same way, I don't need menu-bars and paperclips to tell me what I CAN do; I don't want a dialog box to limit me. I want to tell an application EXACTLY what I want it to do, and I want it to do it, and I want 'EXACTLY' to be as general or specific as I want. I don't want some GUI to say
"here is where you were yesterday, and here is where you are going today; would you like to see your work as a swimming pool or a starship?"
I want to say, "give me the file I was working on just before lunch yesterday" or "show me any documents I've written about computers in during 1999-2000".
Don't give me visual clutter, give me more flexibility. And if you want to make me work faster, give me quick keyboard shortcuts, the most use of screenspace possible, everything set up how *I* want it.
Give me applications that are small, fast, do the specific task I am interested in, and do it well. Then make it REALLY QUICK AND EASY for me to find the documentation; and no, I don't want to know about which C function you used, thank you very much.
Don't reinvent the wheel for me either. I have a text editor; I like it. It works for me. I want to use it every time I edit a body of text; let me.
And PLease: most of the time I want my computer to Just Do the Right Thing(TM), but for goodness sake, let me tell it what that is, and please believe me when I do.
And to those designing the UI for a new application: show me the MINIMUM information I need for any task, then give me the OPTION to see more. I'll probably use your app more if it stays out of my goddam way.
Maybe the fact that we call files 'files' limits our thought process. Files imply a business with hanging folders. In some ways, it's just aesthetic, but the fact that our filesystems are built around this notion can make abstracting into a different interface difficult. Maybe we should reorganize from the bottom up...
I'm waiting for the Quake OS or does it exist already? Die zombie processes die!!!
This is exactly what the 'extended attributes' in the OS/2 file system were intended for [file metadata]. These were easily extendable, and the OS provided entries for keywords, file type[s] [and the user's preferred application mapping], revision log history, thumbnail image, and icon.
Probably the 'resource fork' in the Mac file system could hold the same sort of metadata as well]
Any *nix file system examples?
1) What difference does it make how you represent a heirarchical filesystem and its contents? Zippo. Infact, organizing them by document and folder is probably the most condusive way to go, since most people arent like us. The rest of the world thinks in real world terms. Only programmers are accustomed to thinking about such things in highly abstract terms. Grandma shouldn't need to develop a mental picture of a binary search tree in order to find her cookie recipe. The desktop metaphor is boring in most implementations, yes, but its certainly not dead
2) 3D interfaces are rediculous. Take the screenshot that accompanies the article -- Three desktops are presented to the user in the form of a room, with a screen on each wall. What the hell difference does it make if they're on the walls? Youre STILL USING a flat, two dimensional surface to interact with! And so long as you're still using a flat, two dimensional space to interact with, representing them in 3D is pointless. Workspaces need to follow a design similar to channels on a television. You'll notice that your living room has one TV in it, capable of displaying hundreds of different workspaces. You don't have hundreds of TVs mounted all over your walls, each tuned to a different channel. 3D workspaces may have a future, but as a modus to display was essentially amounts to a 2D workspace floating in a 3D scene, they are beyond pointless. They're ridiculous. As in, its ridiculous to improve the design of UIs by "pulling a CueCat." You're inventing a tool to solve a problem that doesn't exist by pushing "2D in 3D" interfaces.
3) The 2D GUI isnt dead. It just needs refinement and rationality in its design. Speaking of irrational and unrefined ideas, take your common everyday scrollbar. You have a device (a mouse) capable of smoothly vectoring along a curved path, and communicating that movement to the computer. However, your damn UI still wants to alter your view of a workspace or document according to explicit X or Y axes. You can scroll up and down, OR, you can scroll left and right.. But never both, an act which would be far more intuitive to the common user. It takes fine adjustment of two separate widgets (a vertical and horizontal scrollbar) to accomplish a task that could be easilly encompassed within one...while wasting a disproportionately large amount of screen real estate in the process. So, rather than whine about it, I decided to do something about it a few years back.
Scrollbars are dead, and we killed them. Been working with someone for the past week or so on (finally) delivering a proof of concept model for the infamous "scrollball" whitepaper I released 3 years ago after InSight collapsed. The model looks fantastic so far (hi Dibos!) and will probably be dumped on Savannah or Freshmeat in a week or so once we fumigate the code to drive the last of the bugs out.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I have been using a curious environment called 'Spag' for some time.
It just takes text, pictures and graphics and doesn't use the concept of files - only information.
It's early in it's development but I think this direction is interesting...
check it out...at Freshmeat
http://freshmeat.net/projects/spag/
..Another interface model.
Most programmers can't program GUI worth a damn to begin with, now we want to make it more complicated? please.
I can think of sverel model that are technically superiour, but they would fail in the real world when other programmer started writting apps for them, because they would not adhere to standards.
which they woiuld claim wasn't there fault because they didn't know there where standards.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can sympathize with users who are overwhelmed with the abundance of information that they are fed each day. I have four interfaces that I use on a daily basis, each of which was declared 'dead' by a new technology. I read the newspaper while I eat my breakfast, I listen to the radio on my way to work, I use my computer when I get to work, I do research at home by browsing the web, and I watch my television for infotainment.
No one has proposed eliminating my car radio in any meaningful way. In fact, during the dot com rush, the radio was supposed to be replaced by a satellite fed computer that would do essentially the same thing - stream content. Why change what something that already worked fine *without* a satellite?
I was also supposed to tank my televison for a computer that would play mp3s, surf the web, stream video, and cook my dinner. Why change that interface when all I want to do is watch "6 Feet Under" or "The Sopranos"?
I like the systems the way they operate now. If the researchers were to study how people conduct their daily lives, they might learn that humans use a variety of interfaces to gather information. To use the metaphor of Gelernter, these people seem to be armed with a hammer and view every information problem as a nail.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Um, people have been working in "desktop environments" for centuries. People like desks and filing cabinets, get over it. The "virtual desktop" is a manifestation of what people over many centuries have found to be a comfortable working environment. That's not to say it won't change, of course it will, but blaming the interface for the fact that some people are hopelessly disorganized is absurd!
I like my soft desktop, I feel like it's an extension of my hard desktop. I work in an open concept office and when I look around and compare my co-workers soft desktops to their hard desktops I find the similarities uncanny.
Take a second look at the screenshot of the Microsoft desktop -- even they get bitten by their own stupid extensions to the Latin-1 character set ("can?t", "they?re", "don?t").
"Smart quotes". Not.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
I don't have a desktop on my workstation (I use blackbox). I keep my personal files in my home directory, in a set of subdirs. If I lose a file, I search for it. I don't want to be loading some hog of a program to visually browse through catalogues of files. I don't see that as at all efficient.
Just gimme a search box and an alphabetical result list.
- Hugh Buchanan
- Userfriendly.com
After reading the entire article, I have to agree with what they say in the end: That while metaphors may be a little helpful in learning how to use a computer, they really just get in the way after the first fifteen minutes.
I don't really like the idea of storing documents in rooms or galleries or whatever, like they discussed. If you want to solve the problem of wrangling with thousands of files, build a relational database into the file system and have the computer observe and record which files you access, in conjunction with which other files, how long you work on them, etc. But have that system stay the hell out of your way. Now, users can view files in a hierarchy, as they always have, or they can instantly view files based on their type, how recently they were accessed, their relationships to other files, etc. If such a system is properly built directly into the file system, files could be moved around in the hierarchy without corrupting the relational information. (Of course, some "soft link" method would be required for information located on other hosts.)
Oh well.
When I start a project, I create a directory for it to live in. Project directories live in the directory I created to contain all of my project directories. Email is in another set of directories, but if a mailgram is related to something specific (like a project) then it gets filed with related mailgrams in a suitably named folder.
So when I want something that's part of the Foo project, I know it's in Projects/Foo. If I don't remember that it's part of the Foo project, I think for a moment about what makes it distinctive and then ask the machine to find files that look like that. After all, that's why we *have* machines.
I think the real problem is the vast number of people who do work first and save organizing it for later. To overcome that mechanically requires not only a machine that understands the stuff we do with it, but understands it in the way that we do. And if you really know how we understand anything, there are a lot of cognitive scientists who would like to talk to you.
I'm afraid there is a whole lotta science to be done before we'll have a really useful interface revolution.
Really, what you're talking about is straight FS support for file attributes. AFS (The AtheOS FS) is one current example of a filesystem that supports file attributes.
Really though, the ideas above is more of a way to make better use of file meta data. Of course if the meta data implementation in the FS was particularly efficient, you may be able to combine the database & filesystem "layers" by using the file attributes as the database.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
The problem isn't the desktop metaphor at all--it's that we're trying to use our personal computers for tasks they weren't meant to perform. Peel those tasks away to specialized devices--music to MP3 players, films to movie players, news and information to specialized readers--and you've solved the desktop metaphor problem. Each device will evolve its own best interface, depending on its specialized use.
I can't really see how this person is supposed to be seen as 'forward-thinking'. I mean, just how many various failed 'appliances' have we seen offered at discount/clearout, with X number of Linux hacks in recent months? For the current time, appliances have been tried and have been found wanting.
Another snippit: ;)
You could verbally ask your Web browser to go to CNN Online. While you're there, the browser might observe where you look on the page and offer pages with related content for viewing--in theory making it virtually effortless to get what you want from your computer at all times without having to stop at the desktop.And at the same time, make it virtually effortless to get what we don't want. You think pop-ups are bad now, imagine it they did things if you just look at the buggers ("the user is looking at the icon, therefor he/she has an interest in the product!"). Only one good thing I could see from it: the replacement for click-through banner ads. Advertising is for getting the attention of the consumer, in getting the company's/product's name/image/whatever out there for people to look at (think billboards, magazine/newspaper spreads, television spots, they don't require any action comparable to a banner ad 'click-through'). Just imagine what would happen to all those companies if they had to pay site owners 'per eye view' of their ads, for the site owner renting out part of their space for the ad.
My Big Brother can beat up your Big Brother any day!
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
After reading all this stuff, I am struck by a couple things:
;-).
1. Pie menus, or radial menus, or some sort of way to do more than a simple line of choices, are a good thing, because they are not that great an extension over what is being done now. In other words, don't take big steps, take little ones.
2. Full 3D interfaces and voice interaction just have too many problems to be taken seriously, at least for the near future.
3. Everyone still takes either a visual or an audio-visual approach. Generally, all these interfaces are just different mappings of multi-dimensional thinking into flatland (Tufte -- Visual Explanations)
4. What ever happened to simple mechanics? We have all these devices for extending what we do in the gaming world; why not take THAT concept into the productivity world, instead of just the 3D interface? What about a document manager you can hold in your hand? Or a little "side screen" that lets you put your overall management stuff you don't want to obscure with your windows? (I know these might be silly examples, but who knows??)
5. Our hands are the most expressive devices we own, and are VERY limited by the keyboard and mouse. For example, 3D concepts can have some use, but they need to be mapped into the real world, with devices that we can manipulate with our hands.
6. Why does no one have the guts to try to take the keyboard out of the 19th century? At some point we should ask the question "How can we retrain ourselves to better make use of the computer?". All these sci-fi researchers want to treat the user as an idiotic drone. We spend 20+ years educating a human to do all the other stuff, but expect them to use computers after seeing a Windows 95 video with Jennifer Anniston and Matthew Perry.
7. And in the end, why would I want a full 3D interface that tries to emulate the real world? I lose more stuff in the real world than I ever lose from my computer
I'm not arguing that VI is without issues, what technology isn't ? However there are protocol and technological solutions to this type of security issue.
A Protocol based solution, might require you to complete a challenge, i.e.
Computer say 'Blue' You say 'Sky'
Computer says 'Red' You say 'October'
It could require you to name the content.
It is also possible to distigush natural voice from even high quality recordings, in the same way you can tell the difference between a CD and a live performance/gig.
so what do you mean with next ? Next or next ?
perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'
Whatever happened to that 3D dancing/browser environment? Where's that when you need it?
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
At a place I used to work, we were developing a new operating environment, and the lead designer had incorporated a time based file system into the UI. It would list all the files in chronological by their creation times.
The theory was that you might not remember what you called a file (like my wife), but you usually could remember when you created it (Tuesday right after I had my morning coffee, but before the copier broke).
Unfortunately, financial difficulties resulted in us abandoning the project.
-> Capt Cosmic <-
Are you forced to use Windows (95/98/ME/NT/Whatever) and your Start menu is cluttered and hard to find in? Look here and you will never have trouble opening your favourite programs/folders
s mc .html
:) back in 1999 and I have yet to find another way to navigate around in Windoze.
again:
http://mathias.dahl.net/dat/doc/html/hemsida/gq
I've used this technique since I thought it up (yes, I'm proud...
Interesting that you bring up this phrase, as it refers to their philosophy about how to keep the kingdom stable and the people happy: give them bread/food and circuses/distractions so they never think about what's actually being done by the government and in the big picture.
I don't think that making the desktop into a game will make the kingdom stable, though it may entertain certain people to - and nauseate others - to have to go through a FPS to try dealing with their files. And it would certainly distract everyone from what *really* matters (all depending on what that means to you)...
Yeah.
Huh? Problems remembering where files are at?
::shrugs:: Easier that way.
I cannot spell worth a shit but I can easily remember where I have placed my files. Hell, I am the one who put them there! Sure I cannot remember where I left my keys, but files, heck.
For instance, until the last format I had my video files in my music folder and my music files in my video folder and my picture files in my text documents folder and my text documents where in along with my video files inside of my music folder.
Whats so hard to remember about that? No, seriously, it is easy as hell for me to remember that sort of crud. Damnit, I cannot even remember my own name some times but hell, file locations are easier then anything.
I have even at times been known to label files 00001 00002 00003 and so on and have no trouble at all remembering what they are. Sometimes I will just add an extra random charecter to a files name thus allowing for me to know the files version number based soly upon the file names length.
Then again, I am also the type of person who assigns version numbers to my burned music CDRs rather then names.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
What's wrong with the traditional heirarchical file system (nested files and folders)? What's wrong with a desktop metaphor?
/almost/ a database. The user could assign attributes to individual files, or system-wide for that particlar file type. I could assign an attribute to, say, MP3s, that has the genre or artist or "suck factor" value. Then I could perform a search in the BFS for all MP3s that were by Ayumi Hamasaki with a suck factor less than 2. This way I didn't have to search for a specific file, but a file that matched the general "feel" I was looking for. Kinda like rummaging through a junk drawer.
"It's old, blah, blah, blah".
Just because something is old, you don't have to throw it away.
People all over this globe understand the concept of a "conatiner" for storing a "thing", whether it be a box for papers, a book shelf for books, or plastic sleeves for shitajiki. Why force people to learn a new method for storage/navigation?
That being said, there is one thing I would like to improve with current interfaces/navigation schemes. Documents now sometimes have a hard time being categorized as one type or another. One file can be put in to several different categories, unless your directory structure is very general.
The BeOS (may it rest in peace) had an interesting idea with it's file system, which could be used to combat the above problem. The BFS was
With this attribute system, the user could describe the different contents of the file, or what it could be used for, and store that in the file attributes, to be searched upon later. Then, the user wouldn't have to decide "Does it go in 'research' or 'interests' or the 'junk pile' folder"?
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
I don't understand slashdotters sometimes.
Have you ever been in a callcentre? Okay, they're generally not exactly open plan, but they don't give the drones huge walls, and there's way more than 30 of them in there.
What they do give the drones are headset mics.
This isn't rocket science, folks. Kate Bush, not exactly a hardcore techie, came up with wireless mics in the '70s (well okay she forced her engineer boyfriend to come up with them, but you know how it goes :)
Wireless headsets. That's how you do voice recognition in an office.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Yeah, Duhbya and Asscroft are pretty fucking left-wing. Are you stupid or something, boy?
The game had its own "internet". The interface was very much like the branching one for about.com. Basically every sub-category has its own little icon, and more branch out from the central hub. Pretty neat idea, first time I've seen something from a game turned into a real life app.
Clippy wouldn't be nearly so annoying if it didn't pop up when it wasn't wanted, and if Microsoft hadn't jettisoned creating real documentation when they implemented it. A decent manmade TOC and index is always going to be more useful than an automated wildass guess as to what you want.
Instead of using up valuable screen real estate, though, I'd make it an ever-present part of the right-click menu.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
- You can open or close the door
- You can adjust how cold it gets and what temp to maintain
- You can adjust how cold the freezer gets and what temp to maintain
- You might be able to adjust the maintenanace temperature of other regions of the fridge
- You can open or close the cheese and butter cabinets
- You can open or close the fruit/vegetable bin(s)
- You can maybe do stuff to manage the icecube maker or water dispenser depending on the fridge
You can't do much more than that! Food goes in warm. Food comes out cold. Duh!Now think about how many functions your computer has, and can potentially have because it is almost infinitely flexible.
The problem is that people expect computers to be easy. Well, here's the news: if you never add functionality to the computer, it will eventually become easy through familiarity (just like witha fridge). If you keep adding functions, then you keep having to learn new things, even if those new functions follow a design pattern which makes them communicate their purpose in simple terms, you still have to understand what the purpose of the function is and why and when you'd use it.
People want everything easy because people are lazy. Computers, by their very nature, are not designed for lazy people. People who want to use computers must change to accept continuous learning, just as much as computers must change to make learning easier. However, complete knowledge transparency is impossible (even with a fridge).
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
The only attempt to get beyond the current 1984 Xerox/Apple/Microsoft interface that I know of was MS Bob. I don't think it was quite as bad as people say, but it had 2 fatal flaws.
1. It needed a huge amount of hardware: that killed it for the casual user.
2. It had no flexibility, and could only handle what MS built into it: that killed it for the power user.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The Windows Icons Menus and Programs metaphor has been so successful for the past thirty years because it has such a resonance with the actual internal workings of any multitasking computer.
Each thread has a different window, each file has a seperate icon, etc. There is really not much one can do to improve the metaphor without changing the operating system.
Object oriented filesystems would make content-based retrieval and end-user programming a little easier. You could build a "class" of presentations for various data, and "instances" would be special folder structures with "buttons" or menus on the "browser" to initiate various actions, for example.
Escaping from a windowed interface would actually be a step backwards, as it stands now. Escaping from the Windows User's "No, really, Microsoft invented computing" mindset might help, but that is a slow progression at best.
The best solution using existing technology would be something like X11. Imagine Xwindows, only where your Windowmaker GUI has only Windowmaker widgets, look and feel, and your GNOME GUI has only GNOME widgets, look and feel, even if you're using applications from different GUI interfaces.
While it is nice to say the WIMP metaphor is dead, it is a LOT safer to say there are a lot of well-established implementations of the WIMP GUI that are on their way out, because of pressures from the unwashed masses.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
OK, maybe it's my inner German getting out, but really in situations like this what you need is to set some basic ground rules in place at the beginning and make people stick by them.
So you decide on a few basic rules and STICK TO THEM. Ex: doc directories organized by workgroup, project, release version, type of document, and containing the date in the file name. Otherwise, you quickly get chaos, which people try to fix with search engines, and you wind up with Microsoft.com.
For a search engine approach to ever work, you have to have the system of organization in place first BEFORE the documents are created, so that people can tag the docs with the right search terms so that people can find them later on.
This is why you can find things in libraries or, to a lesser extent, on USENET. There is a system in place that makes at least some sense, and forces people to categorize docs as they are created (or as they enter the system from outside).
You can't throw the docs in an unorganized pile and have your computer magically make sense of it, since your computer CANNOT READ FOR CONTENT. Word searches don't work if the keywords appear in every document (see microsoft.com). You can have people go in afterwards and read for content and tag for organization, but that's a losing battle, because the doc specialists are always outnumbered 10 to 1 or worse, and the docs are constantly changing and being replaced.
Putting everything into a database without figuring out a working system of organization only makes things worse, because not only are the docs still unorganized, they're also hidden away from the user and "owned" by whoever is maintaining the database, and that person is probably a DBA, not a librarian. Even if they are a librarian, you still have the problem that they're outnumbered 100 to 1 and didn't create the docs. Plus, this approach tends to give you lots of smaller databases that can't be searched globally. And, it's much more expensive and more prone to breakage than the original document directories were.
The same document should NEVER be stored in more than one place, or else how do you know which copy is the most up to date? I would accept having more than one way to find a document as being a good thing, though, as long as the underlying organizational structure is put in place first, and both ways to find the document actually WORK. Two broken search engines are not the equivalent of one good hierarchy, IMHO.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
You could reply that fridges are on the whole time, but if you leave the PC on the whole time, who pays the electricity bill?
If the fridge is on all the time, who pays the electricity bill? You'll find that the excess cost of having a computer on 24 hours a day comes to no more than a few pounds a year.
Tell that to that employee in Sneakers: My ... voice .. is .. my .. password .. verify .. me...
I like the scene though when that girl is trying to get him to say "password" in a restaurant in the middle of the night...:)
> Written in Perl and runs under Linux. Check it out.
Actually there also is a project called GZigZag that is remaking the zigzag engine. It's written in Java and runs... well, everywhere, I guess. :)
I think this handles what we need, and can be implemented on current OSs.
In iTunes you don't manage the files. You manage metadata about the files. You can group songs arbitrarily (playlists), and each song can be in many groups. There's one pane where you see all the songs, so you can sort and find them without having to remember where you put them.
Now imagine it isn't just files, but each email message you get can have associated metadata and be placed into groups along with regular data files.
Then all you need is better search than iTunes, and maybe a more scalable way of dealing with the groups.
This is far better than Gelernter's approach because it gives you the ability to sort everything by time, but also to group in meaningful ways that aren't exclusive.
The other thing you need is that when you select a file, all the options for applications to open it should be easy. 80s tech associated a file with one application, but we're a bit more advanced and primitive than that. I might want to open an html file in one of several editors or word processors, and one of several browsers. I could want to open a Perl script in several editors, view the text in a browser, or execute the script.
Interestingly, you could make this compatible with current operating systems by creating directories for the groupings and putting links to the actual files in the directories. The way to hack namespaces is to put each actual file in a directory named for the id of the file. That way, for example, when you create or open a file in Photoshop, you get to name it something meaningful, but the gui replaces the file with a link, and puts the original in a uniquely-named directory somewhere behind the scenes.
What about DOS? DOS was pretty simple... it sure as hell wasn't pretty, it sure as hell wasn't gimmicky. And who wants to "double click on Explorer" when all they had to do was type in "dir"? That's simple shorthand... give me my immersive 3D computing environment, thank you very much!
Now look here, the thing is that a well structured hierarchy, with well-organised use of symbolic links for objects that fall into multiple catgories, is a great way to organise things.
Of course, full metadata would be nicer, but that's not gonna happen, because people are lazy.
What's really needed is a desktop tool for managing one's workspace hierarchically, with transparent management of symbolic links.
Konqueror comes close to what I'm thinking about here, the way when you drag a file to a different folder, it will politely ask you whether you want to Copy, Move or Link To the original file. THIS KICKS ASS.
However, what is really needed is something that will assist the user in maintaining referential integrity in the links. Anyone know of anything like that?
NO TOUCH MONKEY!
Now what's wrong with the good old 8 digit hexadecimal display with the collowing keypad?
So you say you want a fancy VT220 terminal now.
And then you complains when you have altered the speed on the terminal to 19200 baud, when it is clear that we only support up to 9600 baud on the serial lines to your offices.
Now put it back to 9600 or I'll give you a chair in front of the computer in the computerroom looking at the hexadecimal display, with the AC blowing cold air down your back.
It's certainly not command lines most people want.
It's buttons and switches like in the real world. I don't think I use the 'Start Menu' in Windows more then 5 % of the time. Like most people, I got my most used programs sitting up front on the desktop as icons as buttons.
I think most people prefer the stereo or appliance analogy with their PC and are happiest with clearly understandable icons.
And now in Windows XP they want us to go back to folders all the way by removing everything from the desktop. I bet most people will still do it the best way. Give me my buttons.
The office metaphor is outdated for the PC. Forget folders and filing cabinets.
My best gadget for my PC was a remote control for the mouse pointer. (No, not a wireless mouse.) This looked like a remote control and was loaded with buttons. Fun to play with.
I love that idea of working topics, whether
automatically generated or user-defined. A
"working topic" would be seriously useful
especially if it came with a TAB-complete
(or some other key) Wow. That would be a VERY
worthwhile project
Look, I realize that these interfaces are great for people who are willing to use their brains for something other than fodder for an onslaught of alcohol, but you all must realize that the average user had enough, and has enough, trouble finding things in Windows XP. An OS so slightly different that most of us would find such a problem unfathomable, but is nonetheless exists. If changing a Start Menu causes this much confusion, what do you think changes to everything would cause?
Really, all this mucking about with physical gizmos and doodahs is a beside the point. The ultimate user interface will be a device which one wears on one's head, like a hat. It will then insert probes (which are very small, possibly nanosized) into the user's brain. This will be done gently and painlessly. The device will be able to determine what the user wants and execute the wishes directly. Furthermore, the device will also work the other way, sending information INTO the brain, and determining what the user sees, hears and wishes. It will be very kewl B)))
salene Academy with a friend of mine. She was just an average person, with no stories. Sorry.
It's certainly not command lines most people want.
It's buttons and switches like in the real world. I don't think I use the 'Start Menu' in Windows more then 5 % of the time. Like most people, I got my most used programs sitting up front on the desktop as icons.
I think most people prefer the stereo or appliance analogy with their PC and are happiest with clearly understandable icons as buttons.
And now in Windows XP they want us to go back to folders all the way by removing everything from the desktop. I bet most people will still do it the best way. Give me my buttons.
The office metaphor is outdated for the PC. Forget folders and filing cabinets.
My best gadget for my PC was a remote control for the mouse pointer. (No, not a wireless mouse.) This looked like a remote control and was loaded with buttons. Fun to play with.
It's about damn time we get rid of this desktop thing and move on with our lives and design a 3d based desktop that works efficiently.