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User Interfaces in Free Software
Havoc Pennington wrote a piece on creating good user interfaces, with special attention toward GNOME 2. See also the advogato thread.
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Interesting article, or set of opinions.
The major stumbling block I see in free desktop software is it's inability to innovate much further than win32 or MacOs, but there's a reason for that.
It's called familiarity - to innovate too far, would be to alienate users, so it has to be a gradual process.
KDE and Gnome have improved enormously, but they are still lacking the cohesive feel that win32 and MacOS desktops have. IOW, things like keyboard shortcuts, copy and pasting text between applications etc. are virtually universal between all different applications.
The question should be asked, are features like transparent window borders, animated icons, slide-out-menus really neccessary for a productive desktop ?
Shouldn't more development time be put into creating an efficient, robust and stable work-horse desktop and less time on the fancy bits ?
There's another aspect to this - the UI 'hobbyist' or 'tinkerer' - the very people who support and participate in the development of free UI's sometimes seem to loose the most important idea behind a good UI - the end user. Much time is spent on the idea that 'total customisation' should be the end goal - is this flawed thinking ?
How many people really want to customise thier UI to the 9th degree ? - surely the majority of people simply want a plain and effective UI that helps there productivity ?
More customisation = more code = more bugs = slower UI
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
The guys at work had a chuckle at the iarchitect.com User Interface Hall of Shame. If companies like Microsoft weren't featured it wouldn't be half the fun!
Everyone enjoys a scape goat; I noticed that a lot of university professors also reference this site in their online GUI course notes!
Anyone know of any other good "chambers of GUI horrors".
Torturé par la fenêtre.
consider coffee a lubricant that helps one penetrate the coding zone
Why? Because I use Windows NT all day long at work, so that's what I'm used to. Like the qwerty keyboard, 'doze UI may not be the best, but is what most people are most familiar with. This is not a silly attempt to generate flames. I think there is some merit to just conceding the "look and feel" battle to M$ and concentrating on areas where there is a competitive advantage, like security, or just developing quality free software, with no privacy-transgressing EULAs.
Of course, tinkering with window managers and desktop setups is still a fun pastime. :)
Didn't the Gnome Usability study done by Sun cover a lot of the shortcomings of the current GUI? It showed that the GUI was indeed created by geeks for geeks.
The report can be found here.
Okay, I was thinking about this offline and I wanted to add that there's a perfect opportunity here for an OSS startup:
Give it a cool name like "SimpleFace" or something non-frightening like that (i.e. real words).
Then this company would do three things (complying to KISS):
1) Create a set of rules and guidelines for GUI applications along the lines of Apple's Human Interface guidelines. Include all of the most recent theories and practice. Publish this online. Use versions so that people can tell what's the latest draft, etc.
2) Certify apps that comply to the SimpleFace rules. Open Source Software gets certified for free. Certify non-free software for a fee. They get to put a SimpleFace smile icon on their web pages or boxes.
3) Create a set of classes - both online and corporate training - based on the guidelines. Some for free, others for a fee.
Once momentum started building on something like this, corporations would be more willing to switch to OSS software if they knew that training was going to be minimized because the apps that use the SimpleFace guidelines would be easy to use for those already familiar with other SimpleFace apps.
SimpleFace could also actively participate in the other projects as a GUI testing center. Whereas the rest of the OSS crowd might not pay attention to usability and design issues, SimpleFace would be there to help out. Providing feedback, suggestions, or even app dev for those interested.
Why am I thinking "startup" and not just "movement" or "organization?" because I think that something like this is needed now before the OSS movement loses any more momentum in the UI race from companies like M$ and Apple. (Under the theory that a startup could move faster than a committee.) How many Unix heads do YOU know that are switching to Mac OSX because their GUI is awesome? Lots.
-Russ
Me
The real problem is age and how "applications" are taught in schools, the enterprise and classes.
Schools teach children to use applications specifically. No one sits down and explains to them the concept of a file and actions that apply to a file (open, save, save as, print...) or editing (copy, cut, paste, etc.. )
If the process of educating people in the realm of computer use included a more abstract view of computers and how they work, the average joe schmo wouldn't need to "relearn" every time a new UI design came out, they'd be able to reason through it.
We moved our 8 year old daughter and 14 year old son from Windows to SuSE and Gnome, respectively. With the exception of not knowing the names of applications that do what she wants, she can get around just fine because we've taught her the basics, without being specific to an OS. She knows how to manipulate files and open applications, she understands that web browsers and can use IE, Netscape, opera or Galeon with equal ease.
This ease of adaptation is partially due to commonlality of UI implementation across applications and platforms, and partially due to their education @ home, which focuses on exploration and understanding the computer rather than a specific application.
Of course, if schools/enterprises did that, M$ would lose its edge because users would no longer be frightened to death when presented with a word processing app other than Word, or a browser other than IE.
I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
IMO the UI of KDE is getting too complex (I know it better than Gnome). So the task is to clean it up, give useable defaults and simplify it. Especially the KDE-menu and the KontrolCenter should be cleaned up.
But what should be removed? What is a good default? Let's ask the user. KDE could collect information on what is used and how the prefs are set, and send it back to the developers.
I think noone would have a problem with that as long as: The info is anonymous, only sent with explicit consent, and it is stated clearly what information is sent.