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GUIs for Everyone
An anonymous submitter writes: "A former Microsoft and Creative Labs interface designer has an interesting diatribe on the approach of Linux GUIs on the desktop. Thomas Krul has three Microsoft patents for human factors research into digital interfaces and graphic software functionality. Probably most known for the interface work he had done on Softimage DS and its web site. Though not a technical read, it does provide an interesting note on the approach for Linux on the desktop." And headless_ringmaster notes that Jef Raskin, the guy who designed the first Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface, has a SourceForge project putting his ideas into action.
It seems to me that the GUI's available (including KDE) favor substance over style. To make significant inroads to the desktop market, that needs to change. People love flashy things!
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
So far, Linux-based OS's have advantages over Windows in terms of performance, and some run cute little tab and dock apps that help launch your favorite apps (ho hum) but none of these products (OSX included) have revolutionized or even attempted to improve upon the Windows GUI. ... It's dumb and arrogant.
But what did Windows revolutionize from the Mac or Xerox in the first place? Although I personally believe that Windows _has_ innovated in the GUI, it's still a good question to ponder. Another quote that I found funny when talking about the Windows interface, Windows
Here's a great quote on the problem of Linux on the desktop:
Microsoft will continue to make a better Windows while Linux desktops will continue to emulate them, be perceived as a step behind, and ultimately be a bargin bin item.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
When I was in grad school, I did a paper on the Windows interface from an end-user design perspective, and it sucks. Surely there are other ways to handle a GUI that might make sense.
Other people who've weighed in on this subject include prominent researchers like Jpseph Goguen, Terry Winograd, and Eben Moglen.
Right now I'm not proposing a solution, either, but I am working on understanding the problem.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
How are we supposed to take this guy seriously? We can hardly read his article, due to the low-contrast type.
Green on grey? Ugh. And two columns? Puh-leeze.
I don't buy into it 100% but I am intrigued.
I wish there were some more concrete ideas on what this 'new' interface might look like.
I would think it would need to be very maleable. An active interface that is heavenly to one user may drive another nuts. I wouldn't mind 'interacting' with my computer but only at a level and in a fashion that was comfortable to me. I'm willing to bet that what makes me comfortable would be distinctly horrific to many others.
Good broad ideas - I would love to see some implementation.
Also- I don't buy that it such a new thing would so easily knock off windows. He underrates how many have grown very locked in to that way of doing things. It is what they 'know' and it is not real easy to move folks from that.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
How to reduce the life of you new computer?
Develop and run the Office Assistant GUI Desktop, and after 5 minutes of being 'guided' by a paperclip, the user 'guides' their computer out of the nearest window.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I was almost crying by the time I got to the end of the article (not because it was so well-written, but because my poor eyes felt like they had been raped).
I got a 1600 on the SATs.
Everyone knows that the GUIs on Linux systems aren't impressive, and that the Desktop Metaphor is getting stale. The problem is, no one has come up with an alternative that works. And I don't see any mention of alternatives here, either.
It's a difficult problem. That's way noone has an alternative available (yet).
I don't put a lot of stock into articles like these because the way I use my computer is so vastly different from others that most people couldn't even sit down and use my computer if they wanted to.
No, that's not "bragging" or me feeling "31337". It's just a fact that over the period of eight years of using UNIX, I've gotten things reduced to the minimum amount of stuff I need with the exact customizations I want.
My desktop has nothing but an xclock (yes, the real xclock in digital mode). My Emacs has no toolbars or scrollbars. All fvwm does for me is decorate my windows and give me a root menu. zsh is finely tuned for my daily tasks with all kinds of aliases.
And that's the thing... UNIX has always given me the capabilities to make my user interface work exactly like I want. This is something most other OSes just haven't given me. If you use Windows, you get a one-size-fits-all interface that assumes you do a particular set of common tasks. For many people, that's exactly what they want, because they do very similar tasks. But for me, I spend my days using a large number of xterms, Emacs, and Mozilla. I need nothing else, I want nothing else. Just give me screen real estate, UNIX, and I'll customize it to my precise needs.
I'd be great if Windows would give you those kinds of capabilities. I find myself frustrated every time I use it. Mostly because it's not what I'm used to, but partially because I can't change the way it works when I disagree with what the human-computer interaction, GUI-gurus have dictated everyone needs.
To make significant inroads into the desktop market, we need to learn how to make it so substance and style don't conflict, so we can have *both* at the same time.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
A former Microsoft and Creative Labs interface designer
Creative Labs has some of the worst applications I've ever been forced to use in my life. If you have ever owned a Creative MP3 player you've run into the horror that is PlayCenter, which is a painfully slow, horribly skinned, buggy, POS very likely written in Visual Basic.
Then there is their Live!Ware software which is just as bad and comes with all sorts of "fun" things that load at startup as well as several more unusable skinned apps.
---
I write code.
Oh my god, Creative Labs produce software with some of the worst interfaces i've ever seen!
no sig.
It's like he read my mind
"I strongly urge both the faint of heart and the faint of butt to leave the room at this time."
- Strong Bad
The guy worked for creative, the live software has a crappy interface, their video card drivers have absolutely horrid interface and dont even talk to me about the infra drive software. So take what he says with a grain of salt.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Now of course the climate is different, Linux is hardly in the same position Microsoft was when they released Win95, but it just goes to show that some people DON'T mind copies.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
great article. it points out one of the interesting things i witness over the past few years with linux guis. namely, the obscurity of the linux o/s, or any o/s for that matter, is difficult to hide with a gui. yes, it may look more appealing and candy like, but as the author says, when the system finishes booting, you're faced with thousands of options.
simply having a solid o/s and a vast open-source community does not make your gui any more successful. it feels that the general consensus about linux guis is: hm, now why didn't that work as well as we expected?
a previous poster asked if there were any aesthetes with input?
here are mine:
1. limit all fonts to a 24 point minimum
2. design the gui for a 3 year old -- make the boot screen look more like palm o/s
3. screw power users -- you want power-user mode, boot to an ANSI console (root doesn't get a gui)
tv manufacturers used to understand this: they even merged on/off with volume, and there was the channel changer. the power user could pop open a a panel to adjust contrast, brightness and hue, though i doubt anyone ever did.
then sony went bananas and added all this digital shit, audio stuff, PIP, sleep timers, gah...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
A: I can't stand it when someone writes about "how bad" current interfaces are, about how they need to change, without suggesting an improvement. Okay genius, the desktop GUI paradigm sucks, what do you recommend replace it? Until I hear a valuable answer, I'm not listening.
B: His arguments are also specious at best: he tries to compare the current event-driven interface that we know today to the elegance of a waiting cursor on an Apple II? Pragmatically speaking, it's the same thing! Both scenarios are event-driven. This one doesn't hold any water.
Now, if only Jef Raskin would actually produce some content in his SourceForge project, we might actually see something INTERESTING here.
You can have my one-button mouse when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
...because if his GUI is gonna have graduated gray backgrounds and teal text, I don't wanna know...
I am somewhat confused as to what this dude is getting at. He sit's there bitching about Linux GUI's, then talks about how great command line is, and proceeds to offer no suggestions at all as to what he thinks is needed. It just seem's kind of pointless to me. I think the biggest problem with GUI's in Linux is the X windows system, and that people should start putting some thought into that...
or he is overpaid, theres no need that softimage software looks like a nike-shoe. at least, if you like your precious screen real-estate. but the portfolio of this guy is some of the worst shit i have ever seen. and i have seen a lot of mist in my life. this must be the worst.
Consumers weigh the cost savings of Linux on the desktop versus the hassle of learning a new system and the availability of desireable apps such as Medal of Honor, Photoshop and others they can purchase at any retailer and/or copy from friends and family.
I'm sorry, but I don't think consumers even get this far. When they want to buy a PC, they go to Circuit City, Best Buy, Gateway Country, et al. And these guys aren't pushing Linux at all. The consumer doesn't even get to the point of considering it. It's just not in their field of vision, for the most part.
That's part of the problem.
If you could walk into a Best Buy and walk up to a display of three computers running Mac OSX, WinXP Pro, and Mandrake (or other), ask knowledgeable people questions, and PLAY with all of the computers, THEN Linux would have a better chance.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
The 'diatribe' is unreadable for those with poor eyesight. A mixture of tiny fonts and a very poor contrast between foreground and background is exceedingly unhelpful.
It may look soulfull and moody but is useless for transferring information, or assisting those interact with the medium (which I thought was the aim of GUI's).
(And yes I know that all these things can be changed in the browser - just as all these things can be changed in theLinux GUIs!)
Slashdot Beta should die a painful death.
He didn't say anything other than, "I miss my old systems, but give me something really fancy and new." He wants a new fancy GUI but doesn't even attempt to make any suggestions about what a revolutionary GUI would do. A very boring read.
"It's all about Pleasure."
"I used to derive pleasure when using my Apple, Amiga and sgi because they had a unique personality through various touches and tools that made the interface more cognicent of my existence. Windows completely lacks that interface. It's dumb and arrogant. It's heartless and ultimately disposable."
I don't know about other Linux users, but I do get pleasure in having a desktop with several windows that can all be doing something. I find typing enjoyable and flexible. I can write small scripts to automate some tasks or make some jobs more efficient. I like grep. Compare this to the mouse. The mouse is boring, and very one-dimensional. Without the OS, or a software package, the mouse is pretty useless. That is why there are so many menus (right-click) associated with the mouse. Typing can be melodic, but that click-click-click of the mouse about drives me nuts.
I think what the author is missing is that he thinks the user interface needs to be a GUI. No, that is what Windows offered, and they have pretty much taken it as far as it can go. I am not a Mac person, but I am guessing that the GUI there has gone about as far as it can go too. It's about going back to the basics, back to the keyboard.
Unless of course, someone can figure out a 3D UI like they have in the movies. But that always seems REALLY annoying.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
With the right theme, or a little gimp magic, Enlightenment can and will look better than anything else out there.
Are we talking features? You can pretty much set up Enlightenment however you want to. Go go themability taken to the extreme.
Are we talking productivity? Heh. Command line wins. Typing out a command will always be faster than dicking about with nested menus.
Jef Raskin, the guy who designed the first Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface, has a SourceForge project putting his ideas into action.
I'm absolutely blown away!
I am a little sick of articles and comments that bash current GUIs for being derivative, without coming out with new ideas. It all fine and good to say that we need something new and exciting, like the GUI was to the commandline, but it hardly does any good to complain about there not being something new if you don't present your ideas on what the new paradigm should be.
The most creative thing I have seen are 3D desktops, but those don't seem to be a major improvement over virtual desktops. I guess the next big thing should be computers that you can converse with(not neccessarily with spoken speech) and just tell to do a job, which would be great if we could do it.
I guess I am just tired of people complaining about WIMP derivatives. If there were better viable ideas out there, we could do them, but I haven't heard any.
If anyone would like to enlighten me as to what the next paradigm should be, I would be happy to encourage and help it's developement, otherwise stop complaining until you have an epiphany.
Spencer Ogden
I think the biggest failing behind Windows (and by implication the Mac that it so blatently stole from) was that it hid the Command Line Interface (or shell if you prefer)
GUIs are well-suited for simple tasks, and are good for the important-task-infrequently-used items, but for items of moderate complexity, nothing beats dropping into a shell.
But by hiding the shell (and making it clunky, as per Windows and DOS) or by removing it entirely (Mac) there is now a huge class of computer users who expect *everything* on the computer to be availible via GUI widgets. The concept of communicating with the computer via a type of language is completely and utterly foreign to them, and is viewed with fear and distrust.
But to ignore the shell is to ignore the greater part of the power of the machine!
It's like all the books in the world were suddenly converted into comic books, and all literature was abandoned. Not that there's anything wrong with a comic book, but they don't deal well with Shakespere or Gibbon.
Celebrate the shell! Bring back the CLI!
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
That said, let me address his points: The mistake I see this guy making in his logic is assuming that OSS makes large-scale innovations. In reality, I've noticed that OSS projects tend to borrow a basic framework and when innovate in smaller steps. Linux looks like Unix, KDE and Gnome look like Windows, etc. The difference, of course, is the small changes and nifty add-ons that make any given system more configurable, useful or whatever.
The real strength of OSS is the rate of evolution, not in the ground-up creation. I'm convinced that it takes a small group of well-led, motivated people with an original idea and good planning to make truly structural leap -- think Be. I haven't seen an open source project do this *yet* (not saying it's impossible, however).
So, instead of just doing is shallow-understanding critique of open source development, he should have been discussing a way to allow open source development to make these sorts of large-scale fundemental leaps. That would have been useful.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I think the main isssue here is not the GUI but if your hardware has drivers for Linux and if all of the software that you want to run will run on Linux.
For instance, Photoshop is not available on Linux. Some CAD and 3D software is also not available. Some of the popular games are not available. When you see those things for Linux, you will have popularity on the desktop.
Notice, I didn't mention M$ Office. There are alternatives for that on Linux. When you see Adobe, Autodesk, and others develop for Linux, business will switch due to cost. Then the consumer will switch too.
"That something is an Open Source GUI development community who's role is to concentrate on creating a new interface standard for Linux@home users instead of continuing the cycle of emulating the Windows story. Windows is not succesful because it's any better, it's success is derived from the fact that the alternatives do not provide incentive for the common consumer to convert. "
Windows was succesful because it is the only thing the consumer has been exposed too. And the reason is because Microsoft used back room deals and other tricks to keep competitors out of the market place. Until this behavior is complete stopped and people loose money on microsoft stock then not much will change.
Someone should take one of the great window managers out there (Enlightenment? Gnome?) and create a multi-tiered system. Basically, new linux users wouldn't have to deal with seeing all those "advanced" tasks like desktop changers, "attract icons" menu items, and many administative tools on the menus. Just give them the basics. Then, allow the user to customize their interface as their experience grows. Perhaps even make this automatic... as the user discovers more advanced features in the GUI (middle-clicking/shift-clicking), give them some new choices to play with.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
So the author's idea of an "active" interface is a flashing cursor? Linux has any number of these from the *shes to the various xterms.
I'm not sure I want my computer to be doing anything when I turn it on. Unless I have multiple power-on buttons like "Form of a Wordprocessor" and "Form of a Web Browser", how is this general purpose device to know what I want it to do? Instant-on would help a lot, but you still have to tell the box what you want it to do.
Perhaps a pseudo-command line is the way to go. Start typing first, and then have the box try to guess if this is a URL, an email, a shopping list or the Great American Novel. It would kind of suck to end up at ItWasADarkAndStormyNight.com, though.
--
E_NOSIG
I think this guy is wrong on several accounts, though it was an interesting read. For example:
After 20 years of speed and capacity improvements, the computer just doesn't seem any brighter or smarter than it used to. And that needs to change.
What? So the computer doesn't seem any smarter than it was in 1982? Uhh.. not sure how to respond to this, other than to state the obivous. In 1982, GUIs were pretty much non-existant, the OSes WERE dumb (no auto-detect, no learning), etc. This statement is purely incorrect. On to the next:
Linux desktop interfaces provides little that is new, and are dismissed as copies of Windows by the undeducated consumer who does not realize the value of the Linux underpinnings hidden behind the scenes. Nobody wants a copy, they want something original, and that means a radical departure from the desktop analogy.
I disagree. I think businesses and those who want productivity DO want a copy. All GUIs are copies of each other in some way or another. There is an unpublished standard of GUIs that is adheared to somewhat, and copies mean less learning of new things. I would like something revolutionary and new, but I just don't see it happening any time soon.
The apple, on the other hand, had simplicity on it's side: one keyboard (maybe even a mouse) and a single flashing cursor on the command line. The concept that impresses people is that with this one continuously flashing entrypoint into the computer (awaiting input) is that even if you left it on for 2,000 years you had the idea that the machine was waiting patiently for your input - the concept that you were communicating with a machinentity that was trying to understand you.
I never found the flashing cursor of a prompt that fascinating. If it was a better way to do things, it would have stayed around and people would have preferred it. How can one advocate a completely new GUI yet cherrish the CLI? Computers are meant to sit there and wait for you, but a prompt hardly menas the machine is "trying to understand you" - if anything it is dull and more machine like than any GUI.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Usability isn't just for the framework, it is also for the individual applications. Windows has standards that are recommended for applications.
First, are there application or user experience standards for KDE, Gnome, X, or command line apps? I know that there are a few de-facto standards on the command line, but is anything codified (especially for gui)?
Second, how many open source projects have done a usability study to see if your aunt, cousin, grandmother, or neighbor can easily use your cool new application or tool without significant assistance?
Formal usability studies are expensive and time consuming, but they do work.
Then again, if you are building a car in your garage, do you just care about yourself, or do you spend the extra week to make an adjustable seat so that it is comfortable for other drivers?
If you want me to move back to using linux as my main desktop machine, you need to make it much easier to install and configure the OS, the desktop, and all of the applications. Linux may be powerful, but I don't necessarily want the power to cut my leg off if I don't spend an hour reading the docs before I attempt to compile and install a new program.
This is not a troll, but can we take seriously a person who extolls the virtues of good user interface design -- but puts his entire essay in two columns on a webpage?
So, I scroll to the bottom, just to have to scroll back to the top to read the second half of the article?
Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad...
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
The lesson? The surest way to enforce adoption of a new technology is to disallow other technologies...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The article is nice but he only point out the obvious. Where are the new ideas he is talking about? He didn't suggest any.
-"The early bird catches the worm, but the late bird sleeps the most"
In the Movie Lawnmower man the OS was three dimensional. That movie is 10 years old why hasn't something like that gone mainstream yet?
Here I am reading the article scrolling with my mouse wheel. I get to the bottom of the first column, instead of being required to move the mouse, grab and drag the scroll bar, or repeatedly scroll the wheel back up, he provides a quick link to jump to the top.
Very simple, yet elegant. You don't see things like that often. Small little things like that can greatly improve the end user experience.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
So where is his code? Or is he just another troll whining about what's wrong but not willing to do anything about it???
Unix has been around for 30 years or so now. a lot of the command line utilities people use today are ports of programs written in the 70s.
There's MORE to choose from in a Unix environment because people have been writing software for it longer. The good software sticks around. Do you know what people used to find files by content before grep? I don't, and I don't care, because grep kicks ass. Would it be better than Start->Find->containing text for my dad, a hater of computers? Absolutely not.
As long as developers just try to make a "better Windows than Windows", there will be no major upswing in the adoption of Linux on the "client" (whether you are talking about the traditional desktop, or other environments controlled directly by the user, such as handhelds). Until now, most efforts to develop Linux interfaces and applications have been focused on simply recreating equivalents of existing software products. As a result, mainstream desktop users have found few compelling reasons to switch to Linux because it does not currently offer an experience that is fundamentally any different from that of Windows or MacOS (notwithstanding its lower price and superior reliability). But as truly next-generation user interfaces for Linux emerge, they will enable the development of new kinds of applications that will be difficult or impossible to match on the existing platforms. Such "killer" applications (which are defined as applications that are so valuable that they justify adoption of a new platform simply to gain access to them) will start the virtuous cycle of platform-application interdependency that will allow Linux to break out of the server ghetto and take off with the masses.
Nooface
In Search of the Post-PC Interface
Linux has traditionally been designed, developed, and maintained by engineers. Engineers tend to be more concerned with function than form, and thus we are all sitting here using a highly functional, amorphous operating system. The introduction of a "standards body" will require people to actually follow the standards. If the standards are widely adopted, we will have a highly functional kernel with a very well formed interface. The current desktop model has been innovated upon long enough. We need desktop pioneers to come forth and INVENT rather than follow the lead of a product we consider inferior. A major paradigm shift on the desktop could be exactly what Linux needs to take it from the point of being "fragmented on the desktop" to being "seemless from the bottom up". I sincerely hope that people get off their asses and make it happen.
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but I think what the author said deserves some consideration. All I'm seeing here is people attacking the man, and not his message. But that seems to be the case any time someone posts something critical about Linux. Criticism is almost always more constructive than mindless ego boosting.
Err....
Cheers,
Ian
The point is a good one, but I think the Linux desktop community is far more experimental than either Apple or MS.
Some times I think that 90% of the effort put into the Linux platform is in the form of GUI work.
Linux has multiple windowing systems, of which XFree is the most popular. Within the X realm, there are two major toolkits, QT and Gnome, maybe a hundred window managers, countless themes.
All of this experimentation has got to produce some good ideas sooner or later, at least different ideas.
Gnome uses a Corba orb for communication between desktop apps, that's pretty different, isn't it? Works pretty well too. I installed a spell checker and my mail client knew about it without me having to restart it.
I don't think that the writer of this article looked very deep before he labeled the Linux GUI projects, enmasse, as "emulating the Windows story". He probably uses a Mac and only played around a bit with Linux to research this story.
And as for the mobile revolution, who is naieve enough to think that meaningful work can be done on the beach with a IPaq? Isn't this is just some sort of fantasy perpetuated by handheld manufacturers?
In fact, Creative's own PlayCenter GUI for its MP3 players (don't know if this fellow working on it or not, though), is so disliked by users that it has spawned third-party alternatives like Notmad Explorer.
The key issue here isn't really the X GUI options' emulation of the Windows environment, but rather the larger fact that all open source projects are structurally based on existing products. The innovation is always on a smaller scale -- OSS doesn't seem to able to effect ground-up changes the way a small group of motivated, creative people are (Be, etc).
Overall, however, I think he also misses the boat in gauging what users of Windows are looking for. In the long run, I believe that the standard-complience, ease of customization and reliability of OSS products will give it an edge over their closed-source counterparts.
In other words, this article seems both off-track and behind the times.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I've always considered this the most interesting dichotomy IRT Linux evangelists/developers:
spend all their time slagging MS, and what's the first thing they do? Copy the GUI pixel-for-pixel.
sheesh, get a clue (XFDE rocks)
-- command line is on it's way OUT (yes it is nerds, get over it, it just is), it's early 20th century, and GUI is late 20th century. It's time to move on from GUI to AUI (aww-ooo-ee), which means audio user interface. COMPUTER! "working". See?
People need to be able to talk and interact with their boxen. I had a mac prog that did this several years ago, it was rudimentary but actually worked. It would turn apps off and on, etc. Humans use "speech" for high speed broadband day to day work and play, visual is an aspect of speech, but the words are more important than the gestures. Point and click GUI and the 1337 command line archaic and arcane typists are neanderthal, we need to step up to at least a cro-magnon level of speech with computers. We are still arguing over gesturing and trying to communicate with your hands and fingers. Which is cooler? NEITHER ONE, THEY BOTH SUCK ANYMORE. Model T typing and model A GUI. Time to head on down the innovation road a little, ya they work, but really..... It's lame, totally lamer.
Whomever brings speech to computing *effectively* - notice I said effectively- to RUN AND OPERATE the computer will rule the 21st century. And make a few bucks at it, too, BTW.
What I'd like to see is a plain language command line interface combined with a gui of some form. OSX is close, but not quite there. I'd like to be able to call up a command prompt and type "copy all MP3's in *this directory* (the directory chosen by a menu akin to a save dialogue) to *this disk*. I love OSX, but I'm finding more and more that the whole concept of a window manager is grating on me. I'd love a text parser like the old infocom / Sierra games. *Look Around* gives you a directory listing of where you're at, etc. Terminal's close - it guesses what you wanted to do if you mistype. I'd just like it to be...well, smarter.
:)
I don't know how possible this is, I don't even know if it exists. I'm a writer, not a coder. I guess I'm looking for a more...interactive experience. Plain language voice control is a good step, but I feel silly enough yelling at my computer let alone pleading with it. (It's fun to use to play chess tho)
Triv
Oh sure, everybody bitches about how bad this or that interface is but it seems that the louder they bitch the less they have to offer in the way of a solution -- let alone a solution that will please every other loudmouthed interface snob out there.
So why don't we see more proof-of-concept projects to go along with these rants about how poor every interface ever created is? You can do all kinds of wacky things to the Windows desktop using LiteStep and you don't even need to be a coder! X is even more configurable!
Could it be that most of these whiners are all talk and no walk? Where were they when GNOME and KDE were soliciting ideas for interface designs anyway? The heart of the matter is of course that most of these interface complaints are from people who are supposedly "experts" but at the same time all of their claims as to how inferior this or that interface is are backed by little more than opinion.
I'm sure somewhere there exists the "technically perfect" interface design that is endorsed by all the research and all the statistics. I'm also sure that this interface is worthless in just as many respects as the existing interfaces are.
I'm still waiting for the GUI where I have to navigate vis the NES powerglove.
There have been a number of articles complaining about the poor interfaces that exist on modern computers and I keep wondering what exactly these critics expect. What feature is it that they want to see in KDE4 that would somehow create this innovative GUI that would just blow everybody away? 3D? Interactive agents? What? Stop complaining and start solving. Sit down, write code, or tell harass somebody who writes code and solve the problem. Isn't this what open source is supposed to be all about. Contributing ideas to the collective and IMPLEMENTING them.
Furthermore, many articles like this seem to suggest that the next big revolution is right around the corner. The theory seems to be that since the desktop paradigm is 20 years old, it must be replaced with something better. I'm not convinced that this is true. Over the past 20 years, we've been honing the desktop paradigm and frankly I find that it is a really great way to interact with the computer. Of course I'm so old fashioned that I still find the command line to be a great way to interfact with the computer. It seems to me that the next step in computer interaction has to bring the computer to a level that allows for it to seem more human. That level of interaction is, to say the least, non-trivial and I'm not convinced that this is going to be happening anytime soon.
As a side note, talking about the graphical environments on Linux as being Linux is, once again, misleading. Predominantly people run XWindows with Gnome or KDE. But this is, by no means, the only options out there. Now, I'm unaware of any desktop efforts that are really creating something totally new and innovative, but at least Linux allows for the flexibility to do this.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I can kind of see where he's going with this. Instead of relying on established metaphors, he's wanting the Open Source community to create something entirly new. I can dig it.
I don't buy into it at all. In fact, I can't believe what a load of crap Mr. Krul is attempting to foist off on the Linux community. The Windows desktop is the way it is because nobody, save Microsoft themselves, sees any reason to "improve" it. The OS just sits there and stares at you because that is exactly what it is supposed to do -- create an environment where the user can get some real work done. The applications are where that happens, and the user interface, if too radically different than what users are familiar with, just gets in the way.
The beauty of Linux (and NT, for that matter) is that it is possible to do things like create a new desktop environment (called a "shell" on NT). If Mr. Krul wants to gather together some people and prove me wrong, more power to him and his team.
Of course, there's probably a reason nobody other than MS has ever bothered to create a new shell for NT. And there's probably a reason OSs don't go off doing their own thing but are designed to patiently sit there waiting for the user to tell them what to do. And there's probably a reason one doesn't use all the CPU cycles on the machine just to make the machine look pretty and active when it isn't doing productive work for the user. And there's probably a reason Linux, Apple and Windows (to name a few of the big players) are all trying to look and feel like each other.
Welcome to the net of 1000 lies. Upgrades are scheduled soon that should bring us to the 10,000 lies mark.
C'mon; even a short essay describing the goals of the project might be nice.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
What UI do they want?
Voice: Too slow, annoying, and disruptive.
Gestures: Too much effort, too easy to make mistakes. If you're using the mouse already anyway then just click something.
Touchscreen: Too imprecise and messy.
The simple fact is that the Windows concept is an excellent one. What we need is better teaching, such as "minimizing is not closing" and "right-click for more options" and telling people how the file system works - "your laptop still has a 'desktop', even though it's a laptop."
Travis
basically, one thing i loved about linux is that i could pull my boot drive and stick it in another computer and the kernel smartly boots up no sweat, something i could definitely not do in windows without a lot of pain. but that versatility and ease of configuration is still missing as far as the desktop is concerned.
the goal of getting everyone to switch to a linux desktop will not be accomplished by a "paradigm shift" to a completely alien desktop environment just because it is "different" and thus "adds Pleasure". in fact, these goals are quite opposite -- it is very expensive in terms of time and money to learn a new operating environment and thus they would only attract a small niche community at best.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
The overall ideas mentioned in this article are quite right : there IS a need for a major step forward for user interfaces.
Do you guys know any way of getting involved ?
Any real open source project going on on this subject ??
(besides designing some crappy bells and whistles skins for whatever window-like OS or software)
Any ideas welcome.
Pol
Click on more at the bottom of the page http://www.protocopy.com/osgui.html and what do you get? The same page. And the guy who writes this is telling me about what's a good UI? Try again.
Need help finding the flow? http://www.myspace.com/naturalismandbalance
Oh wait a second, this metaphor is already in use.
who cares about the desktop market
the whole thing is wrong you stare at a HD display
now interfaces to worry about are
Playstation 3
my phone/PDA/lifemachine
regards
John Jones
The last UI "aha" moment I had was a taskbar for Win 3.1, and then Unix pipes. And I doubt either of these was thanks to an HCI "expert." What's the best way to regard such an nonproductive discipline? Ignore it.
If you want an example of a 'good' interface, take a look at ColorForth. It's not flashy at all, but it's an example of what you can get when some thought is put into a user interface.
No, it's not what I'd call a general user interface, but it encapsulates a lot of good ideas about comptuer interaction which could easily be generalised and carried over to more traditional GUIs.
The Linux and Mac GUIs have never been up to snuff when compared to the windows GUI. With XP and skinability/themes/styles as well as modes (and several new modes OTW), the gap is even larger. YOu can have the nicest backend in the world, the best, but if the user finds it hard to use and unintuitive, it won't fly.
There is only one useful part of this article: "If the product is better, it does not matter how different it is. That's why many of us threw out hundreds of dollars of records and diamond needles the day CD's came out."
Other than that, this guy is just a blabermouth. How can you trust this guy when he has a link at the bottom of the first column of the article that takes you up to the top of the same page so that you can read the second column.
If you approach this from a design and development perspective, the first thing you need are valid requirements. This guy challenges the open source community to build a better GUI but does not, IMHO, provide any solid problems to solve. OK, Windows is 'dumb and arrogant' and 'heartless' and his Apple 'had a unique personality through various touches and tools' (get a room) but is this a result of problems with the GUI or just user preferences? I do not find my SGI any easier to use than my KDE desktop and most of time find searches much easier at the command line than through some dialog box. I am sure that there are new and better ways to open files and launch applications (VR gloves?) but before there is some great new radically different interface introduced for Linux, just remember - someone thought 'New Coke' was a good idea.
"Linux desktop interfaces provides little that is new, and are dismissed as copies of Windows by the undeducated consumer who does not realize the value of the Linux underpinnings hidden behind the scenes. "
Really? I always dismissed the Windows desktop interfaces as copies of Apple's. Or maybe he meant "the uneducated consumer who does not realize that Windows is a rip-off too."
Y'know one thing that bugs me is that the Linux GUIs seem to just concentrate on the look. Who cares how good your desktop looks (sure it's nice to have something aesthetically pleasing) if it's a beast to actually use? One place where the Unix GUIs really seem to fall down seems to be keyboard accessibility. Maybe this why so many of the commandline people have such a disdain for GUIs. Ironically enough Windows for all its faults is actually still usable if you unplug the mouse. You can always hit <alt> to get to the menu of your app. You can always hit <ctrl>-<esc> to pull up the start menu. You can rely on <alt>-<tab> to switch between your running apps etc. These little details all matter and they need to be consistent!
I don't want to stare at my GUI all day. I want to use it.
What the guy's really saying is valid:
We're never going to kill Windows@homeby being "as good". We need to be BETTER.
At the moment, we aren't. Not for the home user, at any rate.
I don't have the knowledge to fix this - I'm not a GUI expert. But maybe someone out there in the community is.
And I'm pretty sure that if somebody tells us what to code - how to improve on the GUI, we will be able to do it quicker & better than Micro$oft.
Hey, the paper didn't suck...the design of the UI sucks. Learn to parse a sentence. English doesn't come with software to do that for you...which is probably why so many code jockeys are so bad at it.
I'd put the paper up somewhere and share it with everyone, but the original's sadly gone to Data Heaven, and the disk copy is probably in the same pocket universe as half the rest of my stuff...
Related case in (original) point, the button on Netscape that used to say "Guide" in English said "Guide" in German, because the direct translation is der Fuehrer.
Sloppy thinking. I mock in their general direction.
Not only that, but the metaphorics are equally cringe-worthy.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Yes, go ahead and mod this as troll.
It appears that so many people here are completely missing the point of the article, and instead do the standard slashdot pessimistic "oh, well give us an example if you're so smart," or attacking the guy personally. Grow up.
The article's purpose is simply to provolk some thoughts: it's a big pointer to the situation, not a solution. The solution, my friends, is in YOU, the READER'S, hands. No one's going to hand you a vison of a better alternative on a silver platter.
I believe that despite the attacks on his credibility, he's right on mark. There's not much effort creativity-wise required in emulating Xerox/Mac/MS Windows, and "no one got fired for following the crowd." He is right, though: the current computing paradigm is inefficient and stagnant. The Linux/*BSD movement is a sign that there are many who believe the desktop paradigm isn't working, hence the inclination to use things like linux/*BSD which possess the previous paradigm, the command line (which is a much more powerful interface to the machine, but requires much more from the user).
Instead of spouting off like spoiled children about all the negative aspects about the article, what about actually getting up out of that lazy-boy, and doing something yourself. Use that mass of brains cells you've got crammed in that head and _think_up_ a better paradigm! Insults aside, I'd reckon that the vast majority of people here are actually very intelligent people (there's plenty of immaturity, but that's par for the course). You've got a good head on your shoulders, so why not use it.
If you want to make progress in this area, the way to do it is to set up a proper human interface evaluation. You need a quiet room, a camcorder or two, a Wal-Mart Linux box in its carton, and a half dozen or so people representative of the customer population. You put them in the room, start the camcorders, and give them a list of tasks, like "Unpack and set up the machine, connect to the Internet, compose an E-mail, and mail it to this address".
When you play back the tapes, you log everything that slowed the users down or, worse, stopped them. Then you make your developers fix all those problems. Repeat until the initial user experience is comparable to that of a new game console user.
Food for thought. I really like the point he makes about the Apple gave the user a sense that there was life inside. Perhaps we should start a thread analysing general user interaction with a PC. One could argue that any real work that happens on a PC - whether you're an executive secretary, a CEO or a developer - happens when you're typing stuff on the keyboard. The mouse is just a tool to launch stuff.
I think people underestimate the time it takes to remove one hand from they keyboard, scoot the mouse across the screen, click on one or two things, move your hand back to the keyboard, realign your fingers and continue doing actual work. And it pisses me off that I have to remove my eyes from the screen to align my hand on the mouse - who's position changes on the desk (so you have to find it each time).
Emacs, VI, Mutt, Pine, pico, screen, and all the other tons of command line tools are still hugely popular because they do not require a distracting mouse. Yes I run Gnome, but once I've launched a few Xterms - one for each host I'm connecting to (each with screen running so I can flick between multiple sessions) - I just use Alt tab to switch between them.
Perhaps the unix world should find a way to ween the Windows world off their mice. Windows is designed for maximum mouse use. So is OSX. Jobs's GUI that is 'good enough to lick' is attempting to turn everyone into a graphic design artist - one of the few proffesions that doesn't use the keyboard extensivelly for real work. M$ is following Apple with WinXP.
Perhaps we could have a standardised system of hotkeys in Linux/Gnome/KDE. One that is somehow advertised on the desktop, so that Windows users dont immediatelly go for the footprint/Start button in the bottom left of the screen. Somehow take the user back to where the work happens. Maybe just an awareness campaign of some sort will do it.
~mark.
Sounds like someone doesn't know his 80's and early 90's history very well, specifically who copied who's gui.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
...for some of Creative Labs's crappy interfaces. I hope he chokes on a "Flash For Dummies" manual. I can see sooooo many errors in usability on his web page it makes me laugh. For the newbee not versed in UI usability, here's one for ya... do you really want a slider that has values 10,20,30,40,50, where the diffeence between the values is a few pixels? how the hell does the user easily adjust to 38? And any reposne of "But they don't need to" is wrong, and although I love vi too, you need to read up on User Interface ***USABILITY*** best practices. Start a book club maybe, and make this guy a member.
...and get a lot more done if we don't have to chace a mouse around on a screen. I can only read a few letters at a time. Which "user interface" makes my work easiest, among these stylish GUI's?
Well, actually, Windows.
Gnome and KDE are getting there, but not quite there yet. Close.
When you discuss GUI's, please don't forget about those of us who can't use a mouse very well.
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
I can see your point, but embedded applications don't need the same type of function/appearance as the desktop. But I don't see the desktop/laptop going completely away, because the 'general purpose machine' is just too compelling as a working model. It may well shrink, but I predict that the desktop/laptop will not shrink below 25%-50% of where it is, today.
What's a "deltic"?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
...how do I get a set of large mouse cursors on Linux so I can find the mouse, or what keyboard combination will put the mouse in the center of my screen so I can find it?
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
I think linux should model itself to look like OSX
XP is ugly as hell
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
He designed the Lava or Oozic real time 3d video renderer for Creative. That product was amazing. They needed this guy to redesign everything.
I'm supposed to take design advice from someone putting up a scrolling two column web page??? Sheesh!
What's a sig?
Dyslexic but since he spell...
If X is one of the problems, let's go killing it first, then we should probably start it a new GUI, maybe some 3-D stuff
I must ask why everyone feels that they must succumb to market-speak, boardroom-speak and whatever kind of business speak that they can think of when they are talking about a user interface for a computer.
Why are computer user interfaces so difficult to figure out? Why do people always ask these questions? Why do they say we need something "new" when all they can come up with are highly convoluted, very complicated, yet pretty looking interfaces?
A computer interface needs to be as simple or as complex as the needs of the individual user or the needs of the tasks that they must complete with that computer system.
That is the only "Paradigm-Shift" that is needed. We don't need flashy, round, biological looking flame-covered interfaces. There is no need for soft candy-coated fluffy cloud amorphous mass interfaces.
All that is needed is a specially configurable interface... Oh wait, we already have that... Here is where I name a few examples...
On Microsoft Windows:
As an Administrator, you can create special desktop configurations, using registry editing tools, access policies and a number of other simple tools. Sure, there will still be a few minor issues for some users, but the following types of desktops can be created:
Office Worker Desktop:
Features a clock in the bottom right corner of the screen, or top right corner since the bar can be moved by the user. On the desktop are the following icons; My Documents, Word Processor, Spreadsheet Application, Database Application, E-Mail Application. Other than the possibility of a few other Job specific applications, nothing else is needed. Sure, there will be a "Start" button, but that can be made to only display the few icons that are on the desktop. No confusing configuration settings are available to the user, just the applications he or she needs to perform their task.
Home-Gaming Machine:
This can be a seperate Desktop that can be logged into from the login prompt. The principle of the above desktop will remain, only with the following changes; CD-ROM Icon on Desktop, Media-Application Icon, Games Location.
I am positive that similar features exist on Linux, as I have set those up before, but I am unsure about that existing on MacOSX.
All that is needed is consistency between applications. Ie.; A right-click pulls up the same menu, that might have a special application specific sub-menu attached to it. At the top, right, left-side or bottom of each application, there should be the SAME types of menu options. It should always follow a consistent format. Each of those menu choices must also have the same options listed beneath them.
Ie.; A Menu-heading that has "Help" on it, should look identical regardless of the application, it should always have the same options underneath it.
If an application must have special app-specific menu options, then those need to be kept away from the "Standard" menu options. They should NEVER mix. If the "Standard" menu resides on the top of the application windows, then the App-specific menus should be mapped to the right, left or bottom of an application window. Consistently across all applications.
The User Interface also needs to grow or shrink with the user. What does this mean? It simply means that if the user is or becomes a power-user, then those power-user options should become available. These of course, can be turned on at any time by a SIMPLE process.
To help the greatest amount of people, a consistent GUI must be created and conformed to. Something that is the same across all platforms. Of course, there should also be the ability for complex users of computers to modify and tweak whatever they wish within THEIR own computer. If they want to have their own, or use someone else's highly complicated and convoluted organic interface, then they should be able to do so.
Forcing that upon everyone else is the same as forcing everyone to use bad GUIs without consistency.
To recap, the only "Paradigm-shift" needed in Graphical User Interfaces is a Flexible-Consistency. Anything else will just give us the same garbage result, even if it "looks" prettier.
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
How can it be good to put an article on the screen with column width designed to accomodate newspaper business of centuries ago? That's an innovation? If the text was as wide as the screen, it would be easier to read and you wouldn't need the navigation links or get confused.
I have 2 problems with this article:
1. He keeps talking about how Linux has faster GUIs than Windows. I dual boot and it seems that Win2k is faster and snappier than KDE or GNOME. Even simple things like putting icons on the desktop are faster and easier on the win2k partition. This isn't a criticism - I like Gnome. PC hardware is made to run Windows and PC manufacturers compete by running Windows faster. So its not a big surporise that Windows runs nice and fast. But an inaccuracy about something as basic as this makes most of what he says suspect.
2. He seems to think that existing GUIs don't work. They do - that's why people choose them. That's why the KDE and Gnome teams develop that way. They know what kind of UI they like and are rolling their own. And if they are wrong, where are the unhappy users suggesting some alternative? Where are the developers abandoning KDE/Gnome to work on something that's a whole generation better? Nowhere because the existing GUI works. You see - you point - you click. How are you gonna make that simpler?
Pointless article if you ask me.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
1) User can attach any attribute to any file, and query on those attributes. This includes joins, etc.
2) The desktop can do queries too. Want something like Lifestreams? Sort by date, across your entire filesystem.
3) Apps can do it too. Suppose the office suite stored everything this way...emails have attributes like date, to, from, subject...but this way your emails aren't in their own little island, you can search them from your desktop, or from other apps. You can assign them to projects, and pull up a project with all associated emails. Or assign people ot projects, and pull up all emails to people associated with the project. Etc.
Microsoft is working on something like this, and if they pull it off, they'll eat everyone's lunch. But they have to deal with a huge installed base, IT people tired of paying upgrades, etc. I don't know how far along Hans Reiser is with his vision, but if he can pull it off, that'd be a perfect foundation...build a special version of KDE or Gnome on top of it, change the file formats of an open-source office suite to use it, and we can beat MS to the punch, with a drastically better user interface...not better because it's prettier, or feels better, but because it does more.
What Thomas did not point out is that such a community needs leaders. I vote for him!!! His experience is a boon, his logic sound and damn he can write.
Thomas Krul for President of Linux Gui Community 2002
So maybe GM should innovate in the car by using a stick instead of a steering wheel? Some things could certainly be done better. But yet they don't. Why? (A rehetorical question obviously)
Because people are used to a certain paradigm and when you change that it feels awkward. That's why you see windows in linux and almost every other OS, because people are used to it. I'm all for making the GUIs in more appealing and easy to use but I'm not so sure a radical departure from the current desktop standard will lead to a supposed GUI nirvana.
It's build on a pretty old BSD kernel and that kernel barely pairs the NT5 kernel and severly lags on several accounts. The OSX gui in fact lags even OS9 on several accounts. The "Mac" OS itself is still missing several features that OS9 had and that windows had and still has like actual colormathcing! Amazing, the one thing that macs were good at, removed from OSX and now barely being hacked back in...
In about 3 years, OSX (or whatever it is called then) might actually be something. But right now it's a gawd awful mess of a cludged gui on top of a crusty BSD core. Nothing advanced or revolutionary there at all. "Lightyears behind Windows" would have been a far more accurate thing for Jobs to have said.
especially if you pronounce it pear-uh-Dig-um.
"I used to derive pleasure when using my Apple, Amiga [ER-- UH OH!! Amiga Alert! Forget it folks, he's been RUINED ALL OTHER MACHINES ]
What annoys users more than bad spelling errors littered throughout something they're trying to read with an open mind?
So much for patents and working for Creative and Microsoft.
I think the limiting factors for improved GUIs are hardware related, not lack of imagination or creativity on the part of developers. Simply, the mouse/keyboard/monitor combination for Human Interface (HI) imposes limitations as to what you can do. Frankly, I don't think it's possible to get much more than what we have with these hardware limitations; it's as good as it's going to get, discounting further eye candy (I love eye candy, yum!)
So, I'm suggesting we need new hardware with which to build Human Interfaces (of which the GUI is just a subset) and until we have such hardware, we're not going to see much improvement in the GUIs -- they're as good as they're going to be with current technology.
You want to see the future, do some searching on Human Interfaces for computers and you'll find some interesting stuff being researched and developed.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
This,coming from a guy who's webpage only looks right on a 21" monitor or larger.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
How about a GUI that acts like a person. You fire up the computer and it starts shooting out information at you, if it's just idling. Perhaps have a little face with a bubble with stuff in it, and maybe use text-to-speech to spit out the words.
"The time is sdfjsdf. This just happened in the news. The following holidays are near. Your hard disk is running low on space. You haven't run this application for a while"
Just random crap... and when you're using an app, the apps can give that person stuff to say... there could be difference classes of information. If you're browsing the web, the computer could be more friendly and informative to you. If you're coding it could just sit there and shut up. If you're writing a paper it could perhaps search the internet in the background for related information and pop up ideas or something.
I'm not sure how to elaborate any further, cause it's just an idea floating around my head, but it could be neat.
SuPz.orG
There are some good Open Source projects out and about, but without money to support and with a behemoth like Microsoft to contend with its more than difficult taking on a project as large as an OS.
Eazel, for instance, had one of the most elegant window managers that'd I'd ever seen - on *any* desktop. It was a real shame that project went away.
One of the problems that i find with GUIs is that they make an assumption about 'the user'. There is no 'the user', there is a community of users. All have differing desires, requirements, style etc. and the GUI designers pick one, or a small set of them and make a GUI. This is sure to be wrong for the majority of the community of user. And particularly for anyone that resembles a power user, as, as another poster mentioned, they alway include the clueless in 'the user' they design for. The GUI give pleasure in different ways for different members of the user community. As such some people fit the available GUIs better than others. My sister (non-tech artist) finds Win and Mac pleaurable as both empower her, and allow here to get on with the things that she does. For me a different approach works better. The problem is one of makeing one-size-fit-all or taking customizablity to the next level. GUIs should stop making users adapt to them, but rather adapt to the users. Not just in look and feel, but in behavor and action too.
>...Where you put ... the GUI ...communicates
>the buttons for the windows and what color the window borders
>are isn't what's important - it's how
>... in a way that doesn't provoke anxiety, is unambiguous, and
>fun.
Yeah. In particular, if you follow the directions and it doesn't work, that provokes anxiety. The typical Unix/Linux user instead sees a fun challenge. In other words, a non-GUI solution that works, first time - every time, is better than a GUI solution that doesn't.
> the people who have a complete blank slate about
> computers.... There are no such things.
Yes there are. You obviously don't run into many, but if you visited a rural area of a third world country, you'd meet a few. Maybe they call you "Michael Jackson" because that's the only American they've ever heard of. Maybe they don't know the names of the countries that border their country - why would they need to know? Granted, by the time any of these people actually get their hands on a computer, there will have been some learning.
BUT, to give you an idea of real live computer users who are clueless, my Mom couldn't cope when I changed my email address. I got no emails for months, and I still don't even after my sister fixed it. She didn't know how to go to this window or that to change the nickname, she understands three different windows: an incoming mail, an outgoing mail, and a mailbox list of emails. She doesn't know how to type in a raw email to a random person, she can only do what she's been told to do.
My dad drags the installer, from the CD, onto the disk, and he thinks the software has been "installed". He reboots and his current problem is fixed, that confirms it. It took years for him to understand the difference between Ram and Disk - he calls it "memories". I set up a web page for him, and he forgot he had it, and didn't know how to get to it.
so what - these people will check the brand of their video card and Ethernet chipset for a Linux install? don't make me laugh.
Marketing-driven companies end up over-marketing their products. Engineering-driven companies end up over-engineering
Seriously...
I use Emacs, which is not a gui editor, and I am more productive coding than with any GUI editor. Some things do not need a gui to be powerful.
Granted, the problem is the learning curve, but it's well worth not having the (time and visual) overhead that GUI's give you, and you can just dive right in with the keystrokes.
Now, not to say that all GUI's are bad, but my point is that a GUI does not mean you'll get the best product. Linux proves that generally, but the Emacs - vs - Visual Stupido is a good example.
M.
A working mouse is two dimensional. If mine lossed a dimension, I'd be annoyed with it too. ;-)
The web page talks about the next generation GUI. Why should the next generation of user interfaces be still graphical? Shouldn't there be some new paradigm, like the GUI was the next generation from the command line?
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
This is a pretty good indictment of the GUI producing developers in general. It's a decent commentary of how computers can become a lot better tools, but it's no diatribe.
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
If I were a billionaire I would buy Trolltech and CUPS and eliminate the last of the objections to their licensing and pay people to stop developing GNOME and to develop KDE or cool new apps on top of Qt and KDE.
What Linux does need is more high quality applications, open source or not.Having to test and integrate an application with two pointlessly competeting desktops is just an annoyance to application development. Adding a 3rd cutting edge GUI isn't going to help. Having an app that integrates with KDE but not GNOME or vice versa is equally annoying.
What is it about desktops and window managers that invoke such passion in geeks anyway, compelling them to continually develop new ones, most of which land in the bit bucket, Enlightenment .vs. Sawfish for example
I really need very little from my desktop or some wizzy next gen replacement. I just want something that launches the applications I use and I want more cool applications to use, not a new GUI paradigm.
Seeing that interview with Rasterman recently made me realize just how far Evolution has fallen aside as a project. Windowmaker too, is less and less used, although it is still wonderful. Remember when fvwm was the standard?
Now it's all KDE and Gnome, KDE and Gnome. That's evolution. The more fit come in and take over. Within Gnome, remember gnome-mc? That fell to Nautilus. How about evolution falling to sawfish, now falling to metacity? Things are happening. It might not be overnight but it is noticable. I challenge anyone who thinks Gnome 1.0's release can match its state now.
And how about the browsers? Netscape fell to Konqueror and Opera and now Mozilla has come up from behind to compete again. Suddenly, Konqueror has to add those tabs to stay competitive. We all win, because we have the stronger products as a result.
Linux on the desktop is going to take a long time. But it'll get there. Open software degrades fairly gracefully, and the necessarily modular nature of the thing makes it easy to replace something like sawfish with metacity. People just need to be patient. With everyone screaming "Now! Now! Now!" it's easy to forget that things will get there eventually. Remember the early releases of Mozilla? How about that abysmal Gnome 1.0? Have patience, contribute a little bit (even bug reports or documentation helps) and one day the best desktop in the world will be running on *NIX.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Wouldn't Slashdot be nice if people actually knew what they were talking about before they shot off their mouths?
Of course, that's not the American way. It's far preferable for most to shoot off their mouths endlessly, and then cry "Free speech!" when anyone complains.
I have to agree with this "diatribe". Emulating Windows has made Gnome and KDE (more so KDE) worthless in my opinion. If I wanted something that worked like Windows, why wouldn't I just use Windows.
Frankly, the best interface I've ever used was IBM's Workplace Shell for OS/2. It was well designed, had a great feature set, consistent application interfaces (including GUI methods), etc. Applications that were Workplace Shell aware were a joy to work with.
As part of IBM's open source strategy, it would be nice if they gave us the Workplace Shell (which would most likely require SOM/DSOM as well). While they're at it, how about OS/2-style extended attributes for the filesystem? This is somethiing that is sorely lacking in Linux (as well as Windows, and, going forward, OS X since Apple wants to drop resource forks).
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Frankly, I'd rather have a set of specialized appliances. I have a PS2. If the game is made for it, it works - no annoying hardware requirements.
If I had a nice appliance for Office-type applications, and a communicator appliance that would do teleconferencing and email, I'd toss the computer away. Ugly, bloated. Not pleasurable, like a bag of chips and some friends fighting on the TV screen while yelling insults, or an appliance that would let you bring your office with you if you were so inclined.
Oh - and Linux just happens to be a good platform for building this technology!
Stop the brainwash
- No more overlapping windows. I found that a lot of my time is wasted resizing,moving,shading, opening,closing window. There shall be a better way. I know the experiments with non-conventional window management techniques, like ion or PWM or that other tabbed window manager
... they are not there yet.I'd like to see something which implements emacs window management. In one-buffer mode, every windows take the full screen. For special needs like drag and drop or multi-windows apps like Gimp or Glade, you can split the screen orizzontally or vertically and have one windows on each half, allowing users to resize the two halfs moving the separation bar.Maybe window belonging to the same class may share the same screen area and auto-arranged to look a feel like a MDI. All windows are resized to take all the space they can, unless they are marked non-resizable (like toolbars) or the user sets its own preferences.Dialogs always-on-top and centered wrt their application. - An active desktop background, which actually works as a full-screen, always-on-back file-manager window. It always show your current working directory..Able to split in a multiple-direcory view. With the capability to specialize background (and other user preferences) on a per-directory basis.I know, it looks a little like StarOffice 5.x desktop. But it wasn't a bad idea, it was only half-cooked: too simple and rigid for a desktop, too overwelming for an app main window.
- On the bottom quarter (or less) a shrinkable command line or mini-terminal, which is kept in sync and can interact with the graphical part, the way the mini-buffer of ROX Filer works (or the embedded Terminal in Konqueror).
As you see, no brand new ideas. But I'd love to see them put all togheter, even oly to discover that it was a giant mistake. Maybe one day I'll try it.Ciao
----
FB
I think that you've brought some assumptions to the table that I didn't see in the article.
use all the CPU cycles on the machine just to make the machine look pretty and active
Who would think this? I don't think anyone would.
Linux, Apple and Windows (to name a few of the big players) are all trying to look and feel like each other.
I'd hazard that the idea put forth here is the reason it hasn't happened is a lack of innovation as opposed to a lack of need.
I think there is always a danger of saying "this is good enough and noone does it differently so don't try". I'm not satisfied w/the way Linux works as a desktop box. Why look to MS to remove that dissatisfaction? Why not look to new ideas that may surpass anything that currently exists. The beauty of open source is you don't need to buy into his ideas. Some people will and they will go out and try. If they succeed you still benefit. If they fail they've done nothing but waste some of their own time.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I mostly agree with the article. I'm using KDE right now, but it's getting too Windows-like. The Windows interface isn't neccessarily bad, but when I went to Linux, I wanted something different. And the ever-increasing complexity of the GUI is destroying two of the cardinal virtues of Linux; speed and efficiency. It used to be that you could run a good Linux distro on older hardware, and it would perform better than Windows on comparible hardware. No more. In the race to become "as good as Windows", hardware requirements are roughly the same now. I'm of the mind that, if my hardware lasts, I should be able to use it, and not buy newer and faster hardware just to be able to run "common" software. Mozilla is a good example here. The foremost browser of the Linux communtiy requires a 266, or at least recommends it as the minumum hardware. I'm getting ready to install and try FVWM, as it's supposedly more lightweight. And it looks simple, clean, and well, different from anything MS or Apple makes. I hope enough of you developers out there are listening. How about focused, lighweight apps that do one job, and do it well? As opposed to apps that try to pack Mucho features in at the cost of size, complexity, and performance?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Wow. I didn't realize that someone would post this on Slashdot. Seriously, I love the comments I see so far (both negative and positive) - I hope that it sets some minds thinking about the potential of an Open Source GUI Project - if such a project were to happen, I would love to get involved somehow (I'm hopeful that such a project may already exist). I have developed several ideas and concepts revolving around the issue of "Joy of Use" and the lack of true interaction in the man-machine interface. I'll post them on my site when I get a chance - again, you would have seen some proposals if this was a week or so from now. Apologies about the color choice, grammar, or anything else that might have tainted the message to the picky ;-)
I can't tell you how many times I've seen users who primarily use other platforms just close the window(s) on a Mac app when they are done. Under OS 9, that would cause you to run out of memory pretty quick with a few apps and a casual user might not know that the other apps are still open if they don't know about how to switch apps without clicking on windows.
I think Apple is being very clever here with OS X. Now with systems that have healthy memory (most that run OS X) and a 'proper' VM system, such users don't bog down their experience at all as unused apps will just get swapped out if needed. In fact, many 'power' OS X tips suggest working exactly this way. A click on the task bar, the same action as the launch, brings back the app in a flash. A casual or new user used to working another way will probably have a much better experience with this setup. It even adds the perception of a faster overall system response.
The only potential confusion in this case is the lack of a new window popping up. However, it's minor compared to getting an annoying dialog that you're out of memory and having to find out how to solve that problem. And such behavior could in theory be built into apps as a default option (pop new window if no windows when brought to front).
mh
I love these trolls - they complain about the author's lack of any solutions and then don't offer any alternatives themselves.
The author is trying to spur discussion for new interface ideas.
So - I'll try suggesting something.
How about a search-engine based UI?
Here's a use case:
You are presented with a prompt - it says "What do you want to do today?" (ala MS) I enter in "email Bob Johnson about the party on Wednesday". The computer then responds with an email form - it has already entered Bob Johnson's email into the "To" field and has put "Re: the party on Wednesday" into the "Subject" field. The cursor is in the contents of the email with my signature already entered at the bottom and a greeting at the top.
Once I am done - I click on the gigantic "Send" button.
I never even see an email application - just the form to create a single email.
Programs would be installed into a database along with keywords and use cases - this is where the search engine gets all of the info.
Each use case has an associated wizard or application or form for the user to fill out. If the search comes back with more than one entry - it presents the user with the entries so that they can choose.
The web (and various web search engines) could meld with your machine. If the search through the local database turns up nothing, it will go to the web and give you some results.
Other use cases:
-- Burn MP3s
-- Create a picture (opens the GIMP)
-- What's for dinner? (search for a good recipe)
-- What's the weather like? (web search)
-- Troll on Slashdot
-- Buy movie tickets (web search)
-- Write a resume (loads a word processor)
-- Balance the checkbook
The computer will create convenient shortcuts
to the use cases that the user frequents to
further customization.
Applications would be defined by their use cases. That way, when someone talks about a
piece of software, people can discuss the use cases it adds to their system.
Oh well. I just thought I'd offer something instead of whining about the author's lack of solutions. What do you think? Offer constructive criticism - don't just troll.
with voice interaction. Not voice recognition, but voice interaction. You boot up your computer and it asks you what you want to do.
It will have a supersuite of applications installed (or integrated) that can perform any computing function.
Hello Jackass, what would you like to do today?
"I'd like to make a 3-D model of a fire truck."
Alright - Ladder or Pumper?
or
"What's the atomic weight of Strontium?"
Please hold on while I check...The atomic weight of Strontium is 87.62. Is that all?
"Actually, i'm working on a bugger of an equation here...can you help?"
Of Course.
I see the internet and P2P playing a big part in making this happen.
Naturally, all of this requires computing power on the scale of hundreds of times the power of todays fastest CPU's, but there won't be a Paradigm Shift in the GUI until we kill the Interface part.
Forget about skinning - the next rage will be creating personalities for your machine.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Microsoft Bob.
...it's with the input devices. As long as we are still using mice as the primary input devices for our GUIs, we're going to be stuck with the usual descriptive buttons.
Not that buttons are a bad thing, does anyone here want to dial a phone number using a rotary dialer?
How about inputting your account # by lining up numbers a'la a bicycle lock mechanism?
There are only so many ways you can create a GUI as long as the user has to point at the screen and click on something.
new ideas for input devices:
How about gloves that allow you to manipulate the desktop? Want a file? Open up the drawer and get the file. Want to read it? Hold it up as if you were reading it. Yeah, yeah I know..old 80's movie cliche about how computers will work in the future.
Maybe the future of the GUI is that it isn't tied to a central information store. I can already enter my address book into my Palm Pilot and interact with that. If I want to watch a movie I have a TV. If I want to listen to music I have a stereo.
Maybe the role of the computer desktop should change from "tool" to "information storage and coordination". If I want to watch a movie, rather than opening up Windows media player or Quicktime, I turn on my TV, it connects to my computer and the computer plays the movie through my TV. Same with music.
Maybe the future of the desktop is extinction?
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
He wants action, eye candy etc... Thats not the point of a good UI from my perspective. The best UI is the one where a user doesnt get the feeling to sit in front of a complicated machine. Take the palm interface for instance, this is this thought to the extreme. And thats the problem current UIs miss totally. The desktop metaphore is a good place to start on, but they fail to divide the whole desktop on application leven (even Apple does).
The user wants to write, give him a virtual sheet of paper not 50 different text programs. The user wants to browse the web, just add a web button. The user wants to write e-mail just give him a button to launch another sheet of virtual paper. But dont clutter the desktop with menus and myriads of tools. The user shouldnt have the feeling to sit in front of a machine. And after achieving that maybe, eye candy should be added. Unfortunately I have yet to see a desktop except the palm one, who really achieves the goal. Apple tried that but lost its track over time. Gem might have succeeded and failed utterly thanks to Apple. IBM had good ideas with their workplace shell but drowned it in complexity. And Microsoft never got a clue on how to do stuff to make it comfortable for the user, they drown in their featuritis to sell their stuff. Only Palm and some games with action adjustable UIs come close.
- I used to derive pleasure when using my Apple, Amiga and sgi because they had a unique personality through various touches and tools that made the interface more cognicent of my existence.
- Windows completely lacks that interface. It's dumb and arrogant. It's heartless and ultimately disposable
Emphasis mine.I have to disagree here, the Windows interface DOES have style, and it is continuously evolving. Windows 98 was a large leap ahead in terms of interface design over Windows 95, and Windows 2000 was at least an equally large leap over Windows 98.
It is the little things that count. Unfortunately most of them are not enabled by default.
Being able to open a DOS box to any directory by simply right clicking on it and selecting "Open Prompt Here."
Being able to open any file with any application, and have a list of commonly used applications used to open that particular type of file listed automatically for the user. Sweet.
Almost everybody knows of Alt-Tab to shift through running applications, but did you know of Shift-Alt-Tab to reverse shift through the list of running applications?
Backspace goes back a page in IE, but guess what shift-backspace does? Yup, it goes forward a page. Amused the heck out of me when I realized that somebody at Microsoft had taken the time to make the user interface that consistent. Shift is the universal reverse modifier key in Windows (or at least it is in those applications that follow the UI specs, which unfortunately a good deal of the parts of Office do not. *sighs* Makes MS look bad that, ick. )
Control-Z is undo. Shift-Control-Z is redo. (before shift was made The Big Reverse Key many programs had Control-Y as the redo key. Unfortunately some applications are still hardwired to only support hotkeys consisting of only two keystrokes.)
Control-Tab cycles through the list of view panes in the currently running program, Shift-Control-Tab reverse cycles through the list of view panes in the currently running program.
See, consistency.
In Windows 2000, the Location Bar in the upper portion of Explorer View panes is actually semi-intelligent. It has a REALLLLY nice auto-complete setup that actually first selects the most commonly gone to files and directories, and then if you do not select one of those, it narrows down the list using frequency of access sorting based upon how many times you have entered that item in the Location Bar. Reaaaaly handy and saves me a lot of time, on a properly setup Windows 2000 system is is capable to access any of literally thousands upon thousands of files with just a few keystrokes! Sweet.
You can select which hotkey you want to use for Auto-Complete in DOS boxs, and can even choose at which level the Auto-Complete works at. Files, Directories, Files and Directories, there are even more options but I do not have the complete list of them sitting in front of me right now.
Of course if a person wishes they can completely
ditch explorer.exe for their UI and plug in whatever shell that they want too. In fact there is a very healthy and active software market out there for alternative shells for Windows. Heck back in Windows 9x for awhile I even ditched the GUI thing all together and just used command.com. Sweet. I think 4DOS released a 32bit version of their shell, so if you wanted a CLI for Windows that was darn nearly infinitely customizable, there you go.
Microsoft is successful in the UI biz because their UI is consistent all around, easy to use, and does not do unexpected things. Exactly the opposite of the reasons that people hate the Office UI so much, ick.
Of course all this is a rather moot point with XP, which tries way to hard to do shit for the user, even if it can be disabled, I don't even want an OS on my machine that has that sort of crud compiled into it.
(which is of course where the advantages of Open Source Software come into play.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
you assert that developers "often run into is the myth of the pure non-user" but you do not back up this statement. It is an interesting point but i wished you had backed it up.
One of the follow up replies suggests you go to rural africa (rural anywhere for that matter), but i would also suggest you look to your family (particulary your grandparents if you are fortunate enough to still have them) look to the very young and the very old in any society.
Granted there are lots of Electronic Devices such as mobile phones, telephones, toasters, kettles, fridges, video recorders (even TiVo) that may contain microchips and could be considered computers but the users dont see it that way and they are designed to be used differently (i am loathe to use the word paradigm) they are generally focussed on a single task rather than multipurpose machines like PCs so i dont think it is fair to say that because some one is familiar with other modern technology they are not a blank slate when it comes to computers.
It usually makes sense to base your interface on real word interfaces that users can relate to but take a look at the criticisms of Quicktime 5 in the Interface Hall of Shame (google for it) and you will see a few examples when not to.
How about a GUI that acts like a person.
Yeah, or better yet, a paper clip.
Sorry to chime in like some flame bait. But I've been using KDE, Gnome, and Windows for a while (5+ years on each?).
WindowMaker has a pleasant appearance, lightweight, and not like Windows. I can't say this for the others listed. It's much better on the eyes than fvwm, twm, or the other strict WM's
I think that the answer is more something like WindowMaker than KDE. KDE reminds me too much of windows, not only in their desktop, but in their binding KDE-based applications into the KDE menu bar at the bottom. I don't use Kwrite or Kmail - but there they are. I don't like that. It doesn't allow me to stick to a reduced interface with only what I want visible to be visible.
WindowMaker is based on NEXT and that's a darn nice and different interface. Personally, it's either that or something similar that will supercede Windows. Not the Windows-Like interface that we keep pathetically copying.
The only thing I would add to the likes of Windowmaker is the ability to use the background as some kind of application window. Maybe like a ActiveDesktop - but limited to the current system, not web-centric.
That site, with its two column scroll down back up back down, is perhaps the WORST web page I have ever seen. Black type on a gray background is hard for old eyes to read, and the newspaper-like columns are incredibly STUPID in the context of a web page.
You are giving anyone who would make a page like that credence as an interface designer?
No wonder I hate windows, its interface was designed by a moron!
-steve (aka "kettle")
springfield fragfest
Sorry, I don't mean to be mean or anything, but you are the exact reason why this approach should not be taken for the mass market. But I agree with you, for my own preferences.
But here is the deal - the mass market needs to be the same, or very similar. Think about TVs, VCRs, etc. They all have the same basic functions. On, off, channel up, channel down, vol up, vol down, play, pause, stop, fwd, rwd, etc. Everyone needs to have similar interfaces. Can you imagine being on the support line of a company that allowed you to configure the interface however you wanted it? Nightmare. It is a nightmare now, when all the interfaces are the same, but at least there is a common starting point. (Go to Start->Settings->...)
Most people don't want to configure that stuff, they just want something that works. I am stepping out of my techie shoes here, because MOST computer users don't care about all that crap. They don't mind that Microsoft makes all the decisions about this or that - as long as it works. I like Linux because it gives me the choice of what I want to use. I like trying out Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, etc. My family doesn't understand why they would want to use anything other than what they are used to using. I recently got them off of Netscape 4.72 and put them on Opera. I still field phone calls and emails about various things, and get the inevitable "It didn't used to do that".
Microsoft knows what the average shmoe wants, they want things handed to them. They want to be spoon fed because they don't understand these scary computer thingys.
But I think that time could be changing. I have been playing with computers since high school back in the early 80's. I like computers. Kids growing up with computers are taking to them. The time is going to pass where people are scared of them, just like the fear of electricity, telephone, and automobiles passed. The new generation of computer users are going to be the ones who are not aware that computers didn't even exist at some point in time. (just like it is hard for me to imagine a time when telephones or cars didn't exist). They are going to be the ones who decide what direction the personal computer goes. They are the ones who are going to be saying "I remember my first computer, a Pentium 4 with 512MB of memory" instead of "back when I was growing up, we didn't have computers".
But until that time, whatever appeals to the unwashed masses will rule the desktop.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The problem with this, and it wasn't just a problem with OpenDoc, but it continues to be a problem to day with component models, is that the interface does change right out from under you.
I really like the idea of having a document-centric model. It just makes sense. But in the practice of using OpenDoc, it brought back the concept of modes. Unlike the command vs edit modes of vi, one of the greatest achievments of the Mac was to eliminate modes. You just opened up MacWord and typed your letter. Wanted to adjust formatting? No "format" mode, just edit it from the menu. The menu didn't change ever.
OpenDoc was confusing because it brought back those modes. You've got your word processor mode. You've got your vector drawing mode. You have your web browser mode. Etc, etc. This is bad, because the interface becomes a constantly changing thing. With separate apps, there are clear divisions between things, but not so with a document-centric model, because it's all data in the document. What if you just want to view the picture rather than edit it? What if you want to use the text in a page layout fashion rather than plain ASCII editing? Data is mutable and it makes the UI mutable too.
Honestly, I can't think of anything worse for the end user than a constantly shifting UI. You can set it up so that the UI components are your choice, but they are, by necessity, still shifting within a multi-type document. This difficulty on the user was particularly apparent in OpenDoc when you looked at the menubar to see what you were running and it didn't tell you. Strange problems abound in that UI (although it's been so long I don't remember a lot of my gripes). It was great tech, and great theory, but OpenDoc still had major problems that were never solved, mainly due to being killed in its infancy.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
This would have maximized competition, as well as making computers much more sensible, in my opinion. It got killed, and I'm not sure why, but I'd sure like to see it get revived.
I did a lot of research on OpenDoc around the time it was taking off, and worked closely with one of the companies that was doing tons of development for it. They bet the farm on OpenDoc and lost big when it tanked.
For those who don't remember it, the whole affair was based on a couple of core concepts:
(1) Big, monolithic applications suck. They never provide the perfect set of features for a given user, they're overkill for everyone, and they tilt the market in favor of huge companies with massive feature lists, punishing smaller companies that make focused products.
(2) Users don't care about applications: they care about documents and tasks. As long as the user's "favorite" tool works and lets them manipulate the same data as any other tool, the user will be happy.
(3) Creating solutions out of many tiny components instead of monolithic applications will result in a larger, richer software market.
Although it all looks good on paper, it didn't play out. In my opinion, it failed for the following reasons:
(1) may be true, but tracking down two or three dozen text manipulation components to build your 'pefect word processor' isn't much better than biting the bullet and buying MS Word. In fact, most Opendoc demos were really monolithic apps with a few custom components 'plugged in' to provide simple image editing, or graphing. It was the only way to provide a workable UI for users in the soup of 'universal data.' At that point, the 'revolutionary paradigm' is nothing more than a meta plug-in format.
(2) Users may care about tasks and documents more than applications. This point is actually the best one, but Opendoc's soup of "container apps," "editor components" and "read-only components" for distribution made building that 'perfect mix of features' more difficult for a user than just buying a monolithic app. Want to send a document to a friend? Unless they have the very same mix of components, you'll need to imbed them in the document. Watch that letter to grandma swell to a meg or so...
(3) Building software out of discrete parts was supposed to make everything cheaper for uesrs, and provide more opportunities for developers. Someone has to pay, though. Even if a user only has to pay $15 or $20 for each component of his perfect word processing solution, the aggregate cost is likely to be higher than a monolithic solution. Apple talked about companies selling 'pre-packaged' collections of OpenDoc parts as readymade solutions and making a profit on the integration work, but this is no better, in the long run, than monolithic apps with hooks for other programs to integrate with.
In addition, it would require complete re-writes of existing monolithic applications with no benefit to the companies save additional competition. Since it was a Mac-only technology, it would have made porting software nigh impossible as well.
Mind you, I never actually DEVELOPED OpenDoc software. I used OpenDoc software o nmy own maching for almost six months, and I spent quite a bit of time talking to developers who were willing to bet the farm on the idea. I'm still sad that Apple didn't succeed -- the problems they wanted to solve wree real ones, but the solution died under its own weight. There was no real value proposition for end users or software companies.
Apple eventually realized this, and axed it.
--the verb
None of the components may be innovative or unique in their own way, but combined in the right way it could really change the way we think about and use computers.
I would love to se things like:
- New GOOD security model based on projects/workgroups.
- Function based application selection
- Component based applications
- Automagic collaboration and sharing between users (zeroconf++?)
- Integrated status management
I probably left out the most important ones, but I have a severe headake at the moment. Hopfully you at least understand in which direction I'm going. You can argue that some of these things allready exist, but ask yourself: Is it good enogh? Is it optimal? Can Joe User benefit?The changes needed to realize this go way beyond mere GUI pardigram remodelling and new, fancy buttons and animated paperclips. This is about Interaction design and basic usability.
This would be a huge undertaking, but what could the OpenSource community gain? Uniqness? USP? Respect? Users? Inroad to the desktop corporate world? I have no idea.
When in doubt, act determined. Business 101
I started to read the article, and quickly began to wonder: Doesn't Linux have a spell-checker?
First of all:
We he say's is exactly why I think KWin (KDE Window Manager) sucks. It's a silly 'odze rippoff throwing all advance in Workspace management that OSS gained overboard. Or sort off. Take that pointless KDE Pager as an example.
THe other side to the coin is that he really isn't the GUI crack he considers himself. Creative Labs GUIs are far from inovative and an improvement in the 2D-stare-on Interface we have only will happen in small (but effective) changes in detail and not in a big bang revolution. Maybe he should check out a well configured Enlightenment, he'd be suprised about the difference it makes.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Gee, let's just rant on a bit without saying a damn thing! There is absolutely no substance in this article. He bitches that we need an Open Source GUI (even though we have several already) but offers absolutely no suggestions on how to get there.
He even said that Mac OSX is a Windows clone. Duh! If neither KDE, GNOME, GNUstep, XFCE, Blackbox or even OSX are improvements over the Windows GUI, then I guess the situation is hopeless. What does he want us to do? Throw away the monitor?
As near as I can tell, he wants something that is stunningly new and amazingly original. He wants the GUI to be a "killer app". Well that's just not going to happen anytime soon.
Examples: you want to launch an application. Your choices include typing a command at a prompt, clicking on an icon, or selecting it from a menu, or annoying your coworkers by using a voice command. Or maybe the computer should be document-centric. Fine. You want to write a memo. You either select "new document" from a menu, type it at a prompt, speak it into a mike, or drag a template off of an icon. Given the currently available hardware, I can't think of any other interface that will do the job. Does he want the GUI to read our minds or something?
A general purpose computer with multiple applications available for any given task will NEVER be as easy to use as a single-purpose appliance like a toaster or refrigerator. It simply will not happen. His only hope for a "pleasurable" GUI is for specific purpose computers to make a comeback. Like PDAs that only do address books, or game consoles that will only play one game.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Am I the only one who noticed that these guys are trying to reproduce the look of a cheap flatpanel display looked at from 30 degrees off center?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
After reading the article, I'm not sure what he finds so bad about the GUI. His first point is that the GUI "sits there" while a command prompt would flash. C'mon, a GUI gives you all kinds of stuff to click on. And the GUI at least gives you a hint. With a plain command prompt I don't know what to type! Windows even prompts you to click on the Start button. The second point made revolves around the interface being pleasant. While this is a subjective measure, I would agree that "pleasant" would not be the word I use to describe working with Windows. I would also not describe any Linux desktops as pleasant either, though I have only tried KDE and Gnome. Frankly I find Mac OSX to be quite pleasant, though I'm probably biased. Thirdly, the author proposes that computers have not gotten much smarter or brighter in the past 20 years. I may not understand his meaning, as the extent to which computers and the computing experience has improved seems vast and obvious to me. All of this is not to say that there is not room for improvement in computer interfaces, but I don't see the need for anything revolutionary.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
OsamabinLadenOS:
Allah-tcsh> ls /lib/*
Error - you may not view naked filelist
Allah-tcsh> rm -r
Error - Mohammed is the final prophet, you may not interfere with the Koran in this way
Allah-tcsh> mail bustyblonde@aol.com
Error - Operating System will not perform illegal or indecent operation, your punishment:
removing all inodes... done, writing rand() array to MBR and partition table... done
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
I can't speak for you, but I've always wanted an easier way to control the top applet's selection and location. Alt-tab is ok for switching windows, and tab is ok for moving within them, but I would love to see someone design a joystick type device that did the same. x-axis for top windows selection, y-axis for selection within the window, and maybe a button or two to let you select links, or relocate windows. I do like to cange settings by hand, but if you're going to use a gui, why go back and forth between keyboard and mouse? Rather than having to precisely point, this device can let you fly through multiple apps, and if its attached o the keyboard, you can get the prettyiness of a window manager, with the speed and accuracy keyboard commands.
It involves a keyboard and a piece of paper.
I'm being serious.
Want to write something? Pull out a Bluetooth keyboard, and an 8.5 x 11 touch-screen OLED, what I like to call "Bluetooth paper". Start typing on the Bluetooth keyboard, and watch your text appear right on the paper, with quality as good as a laser printer. Or you can dictate it. Or you can handwrite it. It's completely up to you.
Want to check your email? Press a key sequence, or say "email", or write "email", and your email is shown right on the paper. Flip the paper over to see the second page, flip it over again in the same direction to see the next page, flip it in the other direction to go back.
Want to print something? Put the paper near a printer, press a button on the printer, and whatever's on the Bluetooth paper will be printed out on the real paper; a permanent copy.
Want to surf the web? Type in, or handwrite, the URL; the page will load up, viewable on the paper. If you've got another sheet, it can split itself, showing content on one page, and navigation on the other. Touch a link, and it opens up.
Now, tell me you wouldn't want to use an interface like that. The OLEDs and keyboards (of course) are in production today, even if the paper's a bit expensive. All you'd need is a device that would intermediate, that would accept input from whatever source and broadcast the raw pixel data back to the paper. It could be in a hub-like box, in a cellphone, even in a wristband. Anything.
To make it work optimally, you'd need the Bluetooth paper to be a touchscreen. That's not possible yet, but it will be soon; until then, you could use a wireless Bluetooth "remote control", or trackball. Also, you'd need to embed a Bluetooth chip in the OLED; again, if it's not possible today, it will be by this time in 2003.
Revolutionary? Not quite. It's simply making computers more natural. And until what I describe is widely available, we need to make existing computers work more like that. One wonders, why aren't all current desktops running WinCE or Symbian? Both of those OSes are powerful enough to run productivity and email apps, and WinCE is powerful enough to run games, too (if the Dreamcast could use it, so can desktops). Imagine if someone could press the power button on their PC, and have a list of applications come up *instantly*, because the OS is installed in ROM! It might mean multitasking isn't as powerful as it is now, but no users use multitasking anyway; just us geeks, and our boxen are not desktops, but workstations.
So, in the short term, what should we do? Extend the LinuxBIOS project to be a full-featured OS with a Palm-style interface, that can load applications off a hard drive, but caches the most frequently used apps (browser, email, word processor) on flash for fast access. Obviously, X is completely out of the picture; really, gtkfb should be appropriate. Start shipping 64MB flash cards, in USB2, FireWire, and IDE versions, with LinuxBIOS, some GTK launcher applet, Galeon, Balsa, and AbiWord preinstalled; you could charge, say, $150 for the initial device, $20 for future upgrades on CD-ROM (or free download). And make very liberal use of AutoPlay for the CD-ROMs; for example, if someone wanted to play Alpha Centauri, all they need to do is pop in the game, click Install, and *everything* happens for them; in the future, all they need to do is pop in the CD-ROM and it loads. For system upgrades, you pop in the CD, wait for a dialog that says "OK" and ejects the CD, take the disc out, and watch it restart itself.
And better still, we could ship a computer, with a custom mobo (or at least, a mobo with a custom BIOS), that has the whole thing built-in to the computer; so it's even faster than IDE, in fact instantaneous. And that computer could be quite small and cheap. Why? Base it on VIA's VPSD Mini-ITX mobo. Smaller than FlexATX, it clocks in at 17 square centimeters - quite possibly, the world's smallest x86 mobo. It has an embedded processor, and sells for $125 from PriceWatch (including shipping). About the only thing it doesn't have onboard is RAM. You could sell one of these things for cheaper than a Dell, and that's including a 15" flat-panel monitor! As long as it had game support, I imagine lots of people would buy it.
The problem with all the other devices that were like this was that they didn't run standard apps. This box, being a real PC, would run standard apps; it could run most any console or GTK program, even if it required a recompile. The killer app, though, would be games. Sell the box in two editions; regular, and gamer's edition. The game one comes with a GeForce 4 Ti (or the latest card at the time), VGA-to-RCA converter cable, and no monitor.
Sounds like a console? So it is; essentially the Linux version of Xbox. But it can also be used as a regular computer; considering that, it wouldn't cost very much at all, and importantly, neither would the games. No subsidised loss-leaders here.
So, enough of my rambling. Between all these ideas, we should be able to do *something*. So why aren't we?
What I see here is pretty much everybody is still working on some clever new way of combining a keyboard, a mouse, and a screen, so as to attract the Great Unwashed.
Bleah.
The reason the bulk of the public aren't that into computers is that the interface is still locked up in that one box, behind that one keyboard. Sort of like those universal all-in-one wonder tools, which take forever to reconfigure from saw mode to drill press mode. Those tools can be nice, but most people would rather just get a few discrete tools which do a better job in their limited functions.
Further, most people work in the world of physical objects, not in the virtual world of computers.
What I'd like to see is some extra hardware (especially input hardware) which can be mounted and used anywhere. So instead of a "kitchen PC" with a space-saving screen and a somewhat spill-proof keyboard, maybe a button-board mounted on the cabinet doors tied to content which could be displayed on a TV (which can be seamlessly used to watch the morning infotainment as well). Same deal in other parts of the house. I'm probably not going to sit down to write a letter to my Senator on the workshop display, so instead I want more durability coupled with simpler access and controls. In other words, most of the time I want to just whack a switch with my elbow because my hands are dirty.
If I had to use a mouse to turn the bathroom light on I'd probably end up killing myself. Or just making a mess late every night, and having somebody else kill me.
Medium grey text on slightly lighter grey stripey background??!?!?!*!???
Nothing this guy could have to say on GUIs could possibly be worth reading.
Ok, so I want a desktop that takes advantage of my 3d card to do cool effects, specifically this:
Imagine a desktop which is twice as wide as your screen, it is bent inward and anchored to either edge of your monitor. Apps that you are not working in are plastered against the curve, but when you make a window active, it brings it forward and sticks it to the inside of your screen. Sort of a virtual desktop like feature, but you can see the whole thing at once rather than having to go into each one.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I have karma to burn, so here goes. How does it feel to be so wrong? It is this very customization that has given life to the Linux GUI. Don't like a Windowsesque desktop? Try Enlightenment. Like a tighter look? Go fetch KDE. These choices empower Linux users.
Because Linux users have these choices and are often adept at skinning, no company needs to waste its time reinventing. Just leave that to the end-users. The Linux users at least. Most folks enslaved by Windows don't know their mouse from their modem.
YES! I WIN!
The article didn't go into much detail about how the Linux GUI should be different. Mostly the author just repeated his theme that it should somehow be different.
Personally, I think that the best interface would be no GUI at all. We say that we are in the computer age but I think maybe only the beginning of it. We will know we are really in the computer age when computers are all around us and we are unaware of their presents.
When we can interact with computers in a natural way that allows us to just be people doing what we do and not having to interact with computers in awkward, unnatural ways.
Really, when you think about it, sitting at a computer screen and clicking a "mouse cursor" over hot-points on a screen isn't very natural. We are forced to observer the computer and input into it to get what we want.
Someday, far in the future, I believe that computers will observe us and anticipate what we want. Rarely will we ever have to interface with the computer but when we do it will be in a far more natural way than with a keyboard, mouse and video screen.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If the user is typing something really important in an IE text field, and then all of a sudden the text field loses focus and they hit the backspace button (thinking they're doing a backspace in a text field) guess what happens? They go back to a previous page and in many cases the text field they have been typing in get's completely blanked out when this happens. We UI designers would typically call this an "unexpected action". The user expected hitting backspace by itself would do a backspace in the text, and instead it brought them to a previous page. And wiped out all the valuable work they had done in the process.
Other examples of microsoft incompetance include window-in-window MDI, multi-row tabs, and their latest shennanigan, the adaptive menus that constantly change position on a user (which screws up the users motor muscle memory for where the menu selections are). All these "features" have been harshly criticized by many in the HCI community.
For further reading, check out the Interface Hall of Shame, of which Microsoft is the most frequent inductee.
To see Microsoft usability get slammed by one of the most prominent members of the UI design community, check out AskTog.com
Microsoft is so successful in the UI biz despite their poor usability for precisely the same reason they are so successful in the server biz despite their poor security: they've got a monopoly, a proprietary file format, and the ears, hearts and minds of every pointy-haired boss and every clueless IT manager in America.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
First, the links:
1) www.asktog.com - Tog was one of the big Mac GUI guys originally. Browse his site, you'll find all sorts of stuff, like Fitt's law (which NWN actually takes heed of!), good vs. bad design, etc. A genius.
2) www.nooface.org - "In Search of the Post-PC interface". Basically, where do we go from here, in terms of interface. Great reading- like Slashdot for Interfaces.
And the question -
What is the Raskin project actually attempting to do? I honestly couldn't figure out what they were offering, what it looked like, what it did, or how to get a copy to find out. I could make a joke about the GUI site having bad design, but I won't. I just find it frustrating that I can't see what they're doing.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
There's nothing better than having 4 desktops...
:-) (just kidding...)
One for chatting and mp3's
One for Mozilla
One for Games
And one for pr0n
Yeah X+Gnome+Enlightenment
** Curb Your Enthusiam **
This just seems like another rambling bitch about something that doesn't need fixing from someone who doesn't understand what the average person does with their computer.
You don't need to reinvent the GUI or take it to some higher level. Well maybe "you" do but they don't and they won't follow you there. They want an appliance that does what a computer does.
It can't be limited like the cheesy little internet appliances and it can't be flaky like a computer is either. They want it to work like their friggin TV and do everything that their computer can do and they don't care what OS is on it or who feeds them their news and advertising.
They don't want the free thinking and open internet they want AOL. They don't want better they want the same thing that other guy has so they can play games with him and trade songs with him and download porn from him. It has to be the same as his because if they can't figure out how to do something they are going to ask him for help.
This is like a battle to win the hearts and minds of a bunch of people who don't feel passionate about the subject and don't want to put any thought into the questions.
To become what they want Linux will have to either change into something you don't want or split into two almost completely different forms to accomodate you both.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I am appalled by the responses of a lot of Slashdot readers. Non-Windows OS's need better GUIs. Instead, a lot of readers say, "I didn't like the colors on the website, he must not know what he's talking about", or "I like Linux the way it is -- with a command line", or "Microsoft didn't invent the GUI", or "He doesn't give us any suggestions for a better interface". Just keep on bitching instead of dealing with this guy's INTELLIGENT critique of the world, and you'll never change anything. All you'll ever get is the shallow satisfaction of compaining about Microsoft, and the illusion that "everything is okay in the world of linux". And while you're off in your own little fantasy worlds, Microsoft will be crushing even more of the competition.
Get out of your tiny little worlds, and create a better interface on your own. Don't wait for someone else to tell you how to do it. Maybe you can do something constructive and join the Sourceforge project.
You mean like in IE, the favorites list appearing in the sideline or such?
multi-row tabs,
Which damn nearly everybody uses, unfortunatly. They ARE good for some uses, but they have to be used
and their latest shennanigan, the adaptive menus that constantly change position on a user
You mean like when I right click some wheres the right click menu appears ALL THE WAY on my screen as opposed to appearing half OFF OF my screen? I always considered that a boon myself.
Or do you mean the frequency of use menus that display items depending on how often (or if at all) they are used?
Quite handy actualy, once they have adapted themselves to the user they rarely change at all, and you can set the time out limit for how long you want something to stick around before it is put into the invisible bin. I find them to be very useful, especialy since I tend to have a few hundred tools for a LARGE variety of purposes installed at any one time, and I may need any one of them at any one time, but the overall chance of me going to any particular tool at some instance is actualy veeeery small. So I do not
It is customizable, or can be turned off compleatly, but even in its default mode it is quite handy and useful, and I am VEEERY picky about my UI elements, the fact that I have let it stay around at all on my machine is a minor miracle.
Oh, and another example of consistency.
The start menu is itself just a directory full of links and other directories. If you give one of those directories the hidden attribute, it will also disappear from the start menu. Very nice. Rather useless, but still very nice.
Oh, and the Interface Hall of Shame is, err, run by somebody who does not realize that the ability to do anything from anywheres is VERY powerful.
- An application uses the common Open File dialog simply to allow you to specify the file to be worked on. Why is it then, that the Open File dialog allows you to rename files, delete files, create new folders, send files to the printer, send a fax, save a file to a floppy disk, try to convert a bitmap file to an Excel spreadsheet, edit a file with a different application, create an e-mail message. and so on, all while the calling application is waiting for the name of the file you want it to work on? This is bizarre!
I use that feature ALL the time, if I made a typo when saving a file (the common save file dialog box has the exact same properties) I can just go to the save as menu again, right click on the file and rename it.Which is a TON more convienent that having to open an explorer window, navigate to the directory, find the file, and THEN rename it, and then close the explorer window and return to my application. w00t. Especialy since the save as dialog automaticaly goes to the directory that a file was last saved to from that program. Yaah.
- One particularly bad design feature of the common file dialogs is that they require the use of a pointing device to access certain functions.
Now that I will agree with, they are HORRID for screen reader users and users are only using the keyboard, ick.Word's open and save boxs are worse though.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
You're not being mean, you're agreeing with me. I fully understand that I don't use my computer in a typical way, I even said that in my original post in my first sentence: ...because the way I use my computer is so vastly different from others... The reason I bothered to post (I don't do it often) was because I think my view probably reflects that of a lot of others that would read something like Slashdot.
Yep, I agree. But one of the things which I've grown to really like about UNIX over time is that it stays the same. Tools I used eight years ago are still available, if I want to use them. Papers I wrote early in college can still be compiled with LaTeX and presented exactly as they were then. I adjust everything exactly like I want it, and when I sit down, it's perfect. It's like a comfy chair.
In that same time, we've gone from Windows 3.1, Windows 95/98/NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. On the Mac side, we've moved to OS X. There are differences between each of these, but amongst all of that change, I've continued (primarily) to use what I've always used. Sure, I've tried KDE, Gnome, and I use Windows for games, but I always go back to what's comfortable.
In short, we agree. I'm not the user most software vendors care about. But that's okay, it doesn't bother me. :-)
Skinned apps are the bane of my desktop. The problem is that they change only the look of an interface, and not the underlying function. The interface for XmmS is cramped and akward, and there is no skin that can fix that. Skins can make the buttons any color you like, but they can't make them big enough to be individually recognizable on a high-res display. Furthermore, skinned apps actually make your desktop uglier, because they never quite match the look of whatever windowmanager and GUI toolkit you use. The solution to an ugly UI is not making every app individually skinnable, it is to build customizability into the core GUI toolkit (as GTK+, QT, and Windows XP do).
0 1 - just my two bits
I think all of us should copy Microsoft all the time. That way we can eat their table scraps. Those (of couse) would be the people who are too poor to pay for software and, instead, DL linux installs from their school connections. That's our market.
/. Nobody ever feels that it's crappy products like KDE that copy Windows and then expects to beat them in the market with little to offer anybody but technobrats, the scientific community and computer nerds.
I can't believe how everybody writes about Open-Source will save the World and how Microsoft beats up competitors on
Please tell me why I should keep running Linux over Windows? $140 for XP OS and I can get any software I want to run on XP. So why Linux? Because I'm making Bill too rich? Who cares? It's better for my time, and my options for software and so it is a better value. -> and this is what the market is saying.
This guy makes valid points that should be concentrated on. Only a few actually had a good thread going. Go ahead and keep searching for mp3s and let the rest of us continue to advance our arts. Without proper questions we fall into complacency, and there will be no good anwsers.
Good for you Tom.
I tend to agree with this article. The first time I ran X on Red Hat 5.2 I saw this very lame attempt to make Linux look like Windows 95. I was very disappointed. Soon I discovered AfterStep, then WindowMaker, and finally GNUstep, which gave me something really different from Windows but which was obviously well thought out. Scrollbars are on the LEFT of the thing being scrolled, instead of the right (where they get pushed off the edge of the screen). The scrollbar arrows are next to each other, instead of at opposite ends of the scrollbar. Menus are in their own windows, and can be moved around and torn off. Dockapps and the dock are neat too.
The new Apple OS is almost as nice, but they put the scrollbars on the wrong side.
I was frustrated that Java Swing's pluggable look and feels make everything look like Windows 95, so I started my own project to make Java applications with the look and feel of GNUstep possible.
If you are looking for something really different but still well thought out in user interfaces you should really check out WindowMaker and GNUstep.
What's funny about this is that awhile back my favorite niece was working on my computer (running WindowMaker) and asked me why I bothered with Linux since it seemed to her that it was just like Windows.
Of course that's the point of the article. Linux should be different from Windows and superior to it so that Windows users wonder what they might be missing by not running it. A more stable version of what they already have is not all that compelling.
I'm curious. I hear that all the time here, but no one bothers saying exactly WHAT is the problem. Really, X has NOTHING to do with the way the GUI looks or operates. All X does is draw to the screen. Period. Nothing more. The various widget libs handle the way what is one the screen looks and acts. X gets commands like, draw a line of this color from here to here. If the mouse is clicked, tell me where and what button is clicked. Thats IT.
C Pungent
Yes, but what I am missing is some combination of the two. I want to be able to type
cat picture.jpg
and i want my shell to display that picture for me (in the shell window, just scrolling down).
This idea could be expanded vastly!
"...who's role..." Great, a GUI guy with no grammar skills. I had to stop after 2 seconds. An idiot.
"Nobody wants a copy, they want something original, and that means a radical departure from the desktop analogy."
I've read this many times, also from other people ("I don't want a Windows clone!").
However, this directly contradicts with all the claims that Linux is too hard to use because it does not look enough like Windows.
50% want something original, and 50% want to emulate Windows because that's what they're used to.
So what to do in such a situation? Can anybody enlighten me?
Well, the author certainly chose a fairly questionable interface for his article. Two column , side-by-side text, while it pleasurably evokes that old newpaper feeling, is a bad idea in a browser window. At 1280x1024, I had to scroll up and down. The little link was a cute touch, but I only tried it out after finishing the article. All-in-all, very awkward. I hope we can do better for linux.
It's not just an interesting read, although well known to anyone who has done 'something' with GUIs, the article also has a great new one for the fortune database:
Windows completely lacks that interface. It's dumb and arrogant. It's heartless and ultimately disposable.
I'll drink one to that.
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
Okay, fess up. How do you do the subject line only posts? I thought they fixed that hole.
Ceci n'est pas un post
You know, you inadvertatly gave me a good example of why programmers should not listen to users... or however that programmers should take users wishes with a (big) grain of salt.
Users designing software are like kids in a store for sweeties: They know what want, but they dont know what is good for them.
'Nuf said.
This is one area that M$ has undoubtedly spent millions of dollars to research.The first obvious answer is to make everything as flexible as possible and go from there, building things up. And yet, one look at the interface for Word, for example, shows a tool so powerful (and thus, complicated) that one who has no experience using it can be quickly overwhelmed by it. Microsoft had elected to keep all the functionality available and in front of the user, and throw in that happy "clippy" there, as a resource to suggest to the user how to use something properly. But since Joe Average User isn't going to use all the cool tools in such a big product as Word, why keep it all in front of the user? Why not just hide it and make the functions automatic (autocorrect) or simply hide the more advanced stuff, with an option to make it quickly visible?
The Mirabilis people had a great idea with ICQ, having multiple interfaces, and starting out with a "basic" interface that was able to get the job done but hide the extras. This made things simple and more palatable to the user.
Flashiness is obviously not the answer sought out by the "diatribe" mentioned in the article synopsis; a look at the SourceForge page suggests that the soon-to-begin project will be "Console (Text Based)", not something graphical at all.
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) was a glorious concept, but it seemed a horrible failing of M$ to hide it under the "Print Preview" option and tie it directly to a printer.
A more ideal word processor, for example, might only have the bold, italic, and underline tools available for easy use, and hide other things away initially, opting to show the user a WYSIWYG (a la the print preview screen) that showed the document as it would appear as a finished product constantly.
Data-centric interfaces are a good idea too, but it seems a technical challenge to get the right application in front of the user without their intervention to put it there. The connection of a file type to an application is a good step here, but it should be taken a step further somehow.
Hiding the programs under loads of menus is also a bad idea; starting things off under a small menu with the most recently used applications would be preferable (much like many applications keep a list of the last 4 files used, and put them there for easy access under the File menu--no "open" dialog box hassles.)
We need a new paradigm. Sure, that seems fair. So how is one going to get his/her files in front of a user without the concept of dialog boxes? Can we find some higher-level method of completely abstracting away the concept of files? We can keep files in the filesystem, but it should be hidden completely from the user.
We should throw out the use of menus as well. This seems to be an easy kludge, but it isn't natural for the user.
The desktop is a metaphor that's been done to death. But it seems to be altogether too static; the physical shape and limitations of a monitor give rise to a number of problems with designing a new layout. Perhaps it would be better to simply move into the world of 3D objects and manipulate them accordingly. The concept of depth is tossed out the window by the very nature of the monitor. It may be more useful to switch everyone over to 3D goggles so there's more of a natural "flow" to the way things interact.
The concepts pointed out in the AskTog article suggest something else--center the content region, and put the tools in large buttons around the outside of the screen. When working with fewer items, one to three in each corner might be better.
Full-screen mode is good; keeping the user focused on one thing at a time keeps their performance times up, and his/her mind will wander less.
Keep things consistent! I can't tell you how many times I've right-clicked to get a menu that didn't have the copy/paste functionality I was looking for--or the "edit" function that I have on many things.
Hierarchical menus are even worse than simple menus. I'd say it'd be wise to just ditch that, in favor of some better metaphor.
And what's up with all the animations and nonsense in the M$ products? I turn that all off immediately on my systems, because it simply takes too long to wait for things to happen. With my short attention span, I forget what I was going to do while I'm waiting for those menus to "squirt out" and I wade through them in search of something I'd already decided I was about to do.
It would be nice if other programs added app-specific command lines. Eg in Photoshop type the name of the filter you want to run rather than going thru zillions of menus.
The NethackWM
I would use that.
"Hachi eats a Dwarf corpse"
The middle mind speaks!
(and yes, we realize that most of our materials are in MS Office formats or in PDF, but--with the exception of Visio--we tried to make documents that can be opened by Open Office or Ghostscript)
--Mike Kuniavsky
His explination at the end ("Note to slashdotters: I really did not intend for this "diatribe" to be posted on slashdot.") excuses him somewhat, but even so this essay is a poor piece of writing.
"Open source is new and freeish, BUT..."
"We need a UI team."
"People will keep running Windows for the apps."
I'm sorry, I thought this essay was going to be about User Interfaces, not Binary Application Interfaces.
"The Apple II is better than a modern PC because it has a blinking cursor."
"I enjoyed Apple, Amiga and SGI interfaces' because I thought the machine knew I was there."
He wants HAL.
"We keep copying Microsoft, but we're not adding anything beyond what they provide, so we'll always be playing catch-up."
"We need a GUI team to be Like Microsoft But Better."
Didn't he say earlier that it was the ability to run apps that kept people using Windows? Didn't he say that the cost of Windows is a drop in the bucket when people are paying much more for the apps it runs?
This is a weak essay, but it has an interesting point if we strip aside the nonsense: OpenSource user interfaces don't provide anything that isn't already available elsewhere in a "good enough" package. This is true. I hope some interesting projects of this nature do spring forth.
Err, I'm not certain I need to add anything. I suppose it could have been white on blue, that would have been even worse.
On that AskTog link...(honestly I forgot to read it before, but I think it proves my point about "overall usability is not measured by a stopwatch" in spades) I'd say he starts with a wrong principle, and then makes about 8/10 wrong conclusions from that:
Fitts's Law: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
This completely ignores several other important factors involving the mental process of locating the correct button you're looking for. Reducing scanning and searching goes a longer way to improving speed than these two factors...
Point by point:
1. I don't disagree but he missed "C. because sometimes I can read faster than I can think about icons". Hell, I always use Save or Load from the File menu rather than the standard buttonbar, because I can't be bothered to think about what the damn icon means. I'm sure this isn't the case for everyone.
2. I don't disagree but he missed "C. make sure the tools are logically grouped by function"
3. A one pixel target? What is he smoking anyway? In any case, despite the mechanics of arm movement, a *logical* placement is more important than thinking in terms of the whole damn screen!
4. I personally like the taskbar as a glance-able reminder of what tasks I got going. I think his point "A" is obsolete now that Windows taskbars have that QuickLaunch section. And has always mised the useful clock that was there...the taskbar isn't really "one object" And as for stuffing it in the corners...well, I don't know about "accidental triggers" (not that I think people are randomly mousing around anyway) but if the taskbar is constrained to take an edge so it has enough room to be useful, then the entire edge should LOGICALLY activate it, rather than some "magic hot corners"
5. I'm biased because I grew up on Win3.1 and not Mac OSwhatever, but I think having menubars on windows, with its mapping of what the hell the program wants to do close to the task at hand, is more sensible than a bar that's always changing around. But I think people are gonna want whatever they grew up with.
6. Actually, I agree with him here. I find Windows menus to be excessively futzy.
7. Oh Sweet Jimminy Crickets. My logitech mouse has an option to bring up a circular menu...how are you supposed to read that thing, twist your head in a circle?
8. While I guess I've found some "mouse acceleration" algorithms to be unobtrusive and useful, I don't think context sensitive mouse movement is a good thing.
9. I'll grant him this, not knowing much about it.
10. Overall, I agree with some of his conclusions. Bigger buttons are probably a good idea. But to think that it all comes down to some kind of "mousing olympics", that it's all sprints and hurdles instead of a mental process, is plain dumb.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
ummm... just hit backspace on mozilla and it did the same thing... d'oh!
Everyone keeps saying that there's nothing X can't do, which means that it's not following "the UNIX way", and that it's bloated.
It has a clipboard (that sucks in my humble opinion) so "everyone" uses that one (except those who use one of a gazillion other clipboards), but don't let people configure it. Why MUST I be FORCED to copy EVERYTHING I mark to the clipboard? Why cant _I_ decide when to put something into the clipboard??? What happened to configurability and user choice?
X can handle keyboard shortcuts, so everyone uses that handler. Except those who use one of a gazillion other keyboard handlers. But no one can seem to let me make an application disappear/reappear with a single shortcut.
X can handle [insert ability], so everyone uses that handler. Except those who use one of a gazillion other [insert ability] handlers.
And so the circle goes.
Also - why can't I use X without using the mouse? Oh that's right - who would want to use the keyboard of all things to control the GUI? In Windows I can (well, could) change my desktop resolution on the fly without turning the monitor on. I can do that in Unix as well, but I have to pull up a command line first, which is nice and all, but why the hell do I have to leave my GUI for it? And how do you do it, when the screen is busted? Can you *remember* what line of your x-conf file those settings are? And why should you be fucked, just because your mouse broke?
I'm sure X can do lots of things, but comming from just about any other GUI I can think of, it doesn't do it "the right way", but hey - what the hell do I know? I'm just a l00s3r n00b who doesn't want to conform!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
And get yourself a pet dog named Commodore. Tip: provide input at least once a day.
I actually found that 2 columns of text interesting from a different viewpoint.
Getting to the bottom of the first column, you have 4 options (who wants to volunteer with the 5th option?)
1) Click the 'more' link that takes you to the anchor at the top of the same page (he can get page-read stats with this link, to know how many visitors to that page read through to the end, compare page-views of osgui.html vs osgui.html#top)
2) move the scroll bar to the top with the mouse (or use the scroll wheel) to get to the top, because you noticed the column continues there.
3) hit ctrl-home or whatever keyboard shortcut you have that moves you to the top of a page.
4) leave in disgust because you couldn't stand that color text on that color background.
Who wants a poll to see which of these was the most popular navigation method? (And yes, saying option 5 == cowboyneal is too obvious, try again.)
Yes, this is mostly a joke.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
I totally agree with you about keyboard shortcuts.
On the Dock - why do you think for most users there is so much a difference between a new action and going to a task already started? A new window is just another sort of task within an app, in a way you could say it was simply "returning" to a fresh page... Also, why do I want a button wasting space whose sole purpose is to bring up a new window when other icons representing the same app are also on the screen?
I've used Windows for a while now, also Linux/UNIX systems for a long time before that, and for the past several months a Powerbook. OS X has the most helpful interface I've ever used, and I far prefer the Dock to the Taskbar.
Most of the time when you're using an app, you are primarily working in one window - so the OS X Dock is helpful in those cases, in that you don't have a lot of similar looking icons to choose from to find the right window for your task. You just click on the app and the one you were working on appears.
In the case where you are working on a number of tasks in the same app, neither the dock nor the taskbar are nearly as handy as carefully stacking windows with overlapping edges so that I can access a number of windows easily using spatial memory instead of, again, decrpyting icons on the taskbar or hunting through a window menu. Indeed I find that in practice the layout of windows on my OS X desktop and Windows are just about identical, and that layout is not so different from what I used on my UNIX desktops years ago.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Win 3.1 and 95wer flashy for their time"
Sorry, I very much disagree.. At the point they were at, the Mac OS had looked like for over 10 years.. it's pretty sad when there's no recognition for where the whole gui that we all use (whether it be some form of Win, KDE, whatever..) came from..
I don't even want to see my computer.
I want it tucked away in a server/comms room.
I want to say "Holly, record the rugby tonite",
"Holly, read me my emails", "Holly, random play all my ogg files".
I'd be working on it now if I didn't have to turn up to my real job.
Someone wanna sponsor me?
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
It's almost unreadable.
Well, I guess that's a sacrifice you have to make if you want to do UI his way - poor legibility from gray-green text on a grey background. Looks like brain damaged shit to me, but He Knows What's Good For Us. Like he knows that a two-column layout Looks Smart, even though it's the stupidest possible choice for the web.
(sigh) Yet Another non-contributing critic heard from. Poor sod doesn't even own a spell checker - or maybe he's just not cognizant of his need for it. A grammar checker wouldn't really help; what he needs is an intelligent editor, who would force him to think about what he's saying.
All it needs is a little tag at the bottom: this page looks best in view source.
Geeks who talk about standards this and standards that, don't know shite about UI. Keyboard shortcuts are personal pref, not forward-looking invention. Windows is one of the lamest UI I've ever had the displeasure to experience, but guess what - linux/unix UI's are worse. Mere imitators several steps behind the curve. All of you saying oh wimp sucks blah blah blah.. I don't see any of you making an effort towards advancement and it's a damn good thing considering it'd most likely turn out to be shite. OSX IS an advancement, no it is not a windows-clone you dumb bastards. I am not saying it is 5 generations ahead, duh. I am saying it is a step forward. In so many ways - more than can be explained here, nay should I even have to for it would be lost upon you mindless masses with no taste whatsoever. That article is for the most part correct, however one big error - apples still do have a personality and still feel more like 'home' than windows ever will, you vt lamers stay on your servers. Think about that next time you power-on your machine and see that fagaroo bios screen, waiting for your machine to beep at you. Listen to it.. it is giving you the virtual finger every time you use it. Blow me. Atari rules :p Hypercard owns powerpoint ;p Linux already had it's chance on the desktop and failed. Not due to any lack of trying, but due to mundane luser folk such as yourself. Refusing to pay for superior software, instead relegating everyone to half-baked crapwarez that don't work most of the time. Shotty devices drivers aside, goodbye poor linux soft-corps...
Unless you're doing work that's inherently two- or three-dimensional (or higher?), the mouse is just a way to get a 'hands on' feel at the expense of actually getting things done. Keystrokes give instant gratification, mouse gestures are tedious.
Those little underscores in the menu items are your friend, as is tab, alt-tab, and all those other magical hotkeys... lots of them are shown in the menus, pay attention to them and you'll be getting stuff done just by thinking about it. :-)
For CAD, web browsing, graphics, modelling, etc, mice are great. For text-centric tasks like writing (code or natural language) or even navigating dialog boxes, why take a hand off the keyboard, find the mouse, drag it, click it, and find how row again, when you can just press a key or two?
Mice are highly overrated and highly overused.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
See http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/native/ and elsewhere for information. It appears to satisfy may of the requirements mentioned, and has been developed since 1988!
I quote:
Native Oberon is written in the original Oberon language designed by Niklaus Wirth. The system is an evolution of the operating system co-developed by Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht and published in the book Project Oberon: The Design of an Operating System and Compiler, Addison- Wesley, 1992. The system is completely modular and all parts of it are dynamically loaded on-demand. Persistent object and rich text support is built into the kernel. Clickable commands embedded in "tool" texts are used as a transparent, modeless, highly customizable and low-overhead user interface, which minimizes non-visible state information. Mouse "interclicks" enable fast text editing. An efficient multitasking model is supported in a single-process by using short-running commands and cooperative background task handlers. The basic system is small - it fits on one 1.44MB installation diskette, including the compiler and TCP/IP networking. It is freely downloadable (with source code).
An optional GUI component framework called Gadgets is available, with integrated WWW support (FTP, Telnet and HTTP on Ethernet, SLIP or PPP). Many useful applications are available, and the system has been used to build embedded systems. Portable applications can be developed that run on Native Oberon and the other versions of ETH Oberon hosted on other platforms, e.g., Windows, Linux (Intel x86 and PowerPC), Solaris, etc. The LNO version of Native Oberon runs on Linux, but is binary compatible with PC Native Oberon. It was created by replacing a few low-level modules of the system with Linux implementations. For more information on Native Oberon and related systems, contact Pieter Muller.
All I can say is "Thats Dr. Faggot to you."
There were a couple of points in the article and in some other posts that I feel a need to address.
Customization v. Standardization
One poster mentioned that he completely customized his Linux box so that "no one else could use it". And someone else replied, "You won't be able to use anyone else's computer". There's an interesting point to be noticed in this exchange: UI efficiency is the driving force behind both of these viewpoints. For the first poster, s/he probably only works on one computer, or one of a small set of similarly-configure computers. As a result, the poster can massively customize the UI to make it as efficient as possible. The second poster, on the other hand, probably works with multiple computers that can either have different UI configurations, or all must be configured for the "standard" interface in order to support as many "average" users as possible.
Personal Productivity
There are a couple of entirely different problems inherent in these two scenarios, and I don't begin to know how to solve them. For the first poster, s/he has found enormous gains in productivity through customization, but might well see a re-training learning curve when moving to someone else's computer. This problem might be solved by putting together a means of carrying around one's personal UI environment configuration -- something like a microdrive with all of one's preferences and customizations stored in it. The problem with this solution is that we cannot guarantee enough underlying environment similarity (choice of OS, apps, hardware) to make this scenario practical in the world-at-large. Within a standardized business environment ("Everyone shall have a Dell!"), this might be possible and even desirable, from the user's perspective.
Corporate Standardization
But then comes the perspective of the second poster: in a business environment, there are a couple of competing forces, the need to standardize platforms as much as possible in order to reduce support costs, and thus TCO, and the equally important need to maximize productivity of, ideally, each individual employee. Standard platforms allow the company to hire support personnel who can specialize in the standard platform, and do not need to have knowledge of many different platforms -- depth over breadth. These support personnel are more efficient, and thus the company can hire fewer of them. Hardware standards allow for greater reusability of spare parts, and OS and software standards guarantee compatibility of data throughout the institution and beyond. OS and application standards also mean the ability to consolidate training, and increase the likelihood of finding personnel who are already familiar with the use of the computer platform. In addition, if the institution chooses to standardize on a platform that has a low learning curve, and is thus quick to pick up for newcomers, training time can be reduced and costs lowered. If the hardware is ubiquitous and more-or-less commoditized, and thus interchangeable, and the OS and apps interoperate smoothly with each other, then an easy-to-learn and generally productive work environment is available to any employee who sits down in front of any computer.
Competing Imperatives
These are the typical arguments for standardization of platform within an organization, and one of the main factors that contributes to Microsoft's monopoly. These arguments point out some important things for us all to think about. We need to maximize a few different, competing areas: the OS and apps bundle needs to interoperate well, both internally and with the rest of the world; the whole package needs to be easy to learn for newbies; ideally there should be a well-established user-base to provide a pool of "community knowledge" to allow users to help each other ("Hey, Jane, how do I go about sending an email on the company's systems?" "Simple, George, just run this...") and to provide a reasonably large pool of pre-trained support personnel; the platform needs to provide a reasonable level of productivity throughout the company.
I'd like to elaborate that last point a bit. As much extra efficiency as the first poster may gain from a completely customized UI environment, s/he will find it hard to use all the rest of the computers in the company, and no one else will be able to use the customized computer, and no one will be able to support it. Now, if the company is small, or is built around the genius of a few individuals, then a comfortable work environment that caters to these individuals may well be cost-effective in order to maintain their productiviy. On the other hand, if that poster works for a company with a lot of employees, then customization isn't cost-effective at all. The individual's productivity gains are completely washed away by the extra expense of handling and supporting those customizations.
Article Points
The article makes a few basic points: Linux on the desktop isn't easy enough; Linux doesn't have the same software available; Linux desktops basically copy existing Windows and/or Mac desktops -- and don't do it well; uneducated Linux adopters don't want a copy of Windows, they want something radically new; and the standard WIMP interface is boring and no fun.
Ease of Use
Okay, this one's easy: yes, Linux isn't easy enough. We need to keep working on this one. No points for originality here. One poster mentioned that the reason things aren't easier is because it is hard. Well, that makes sense.
Available Software
I think we all realize that the brand name on a software package is less important than its functionality. In areas like word processing, as long as the document format is completely interchangeable (no small feat with closed and ever-changing formats), and the feature-set is complete, then we can easily substitute one word processor for another.
But this assumes that the skills necessary to use a given type of software are extremely common. By this I mean that, in the case of word processing, the necessary skill (language use) is external to the program. Efficiency of use comes from the skill of typing -- and this skill, again, is not inherently related to the software. In other words, typing is useful for WAY more stuff than just word processing. In contrast, good graphics designers (for example -- though I am not a designer, and my ignorance may well show) specialize in a particular package within a few related software types. That is to say, the ability of a particular application to specialize in one area of competency leads to greater fitness for a particular type of task. Thus you have Adobe Illustrator competing against Macromedia Freehand, or Photoshop competing against, um, well, nothing I know. Illustrator and Freehand are, very specifically, vector-based drawing and illustration tools. Photoshop is very specifically designed for manipulating raster images. They do different things, and don't compete directly. Now, slightly less specialized programs do exist, such as Canvas or CorelDraw. They are designed as "all-in-one" programs that handle both vector graphics and raster images. But the designers I know generally display a certain amount of contempt for these packages, as they don't measure up. It takes a great deal of skill (and thus training time) to become especially good at using Photoshop to its fullest extent. That time spent acquiring that skill is valuable. As a result, it will be very hard for Linux to do anything other than copy Photoshop, if we desire to take that market. And I don't think that anyone in their right mind would even suggest that such a thing is possible -- people who invest time in acquiring a given skill are justly wroth with those who suggest they acquire a new, different skill, thus implying that the original skill isn't worth much. The conclusion being that the Linux world would have to demonstrate conclusively that our software is greatly better than existing commercial alternatives, in very concrete ways. Shaking the carrot of intellectual freedom won't help -- most people have a hard time understanding the concept. In short, it isn't better because it's free-as-in-speech, and it is only *slightly* better because it is free-as-in-beer.
Copying Existing UIs
Okay, Krul's point that Linux desktops don't do a good job of copying the functionality of existing UIs is valid, but again isn't new. However, I think that there isn't much that can be done about it until someone comes up with a radically different means of interacting with computers. I hate to break it to the poster who mentioned voice recognition, but it really isn't going to be terribly efficient even AFTER the technology is perfected. From a business perspective, voice recognition is unusable. Can you imagine a cubicle farm full of people yakking at their PCs all day? Utter insanity! And virtual reality in its current incarnation is equally futile. Imagine someone wearing a headset and a glove or two. Now imagine how hard it will be for that person to switch back and forth between interacting with the computer and interacting with the rest of the world -- how do you talk to a coworker? How do you pick up a business card, or a report? And for those of you who reply that the office can be paperless, and all communication can be done using email/telephony, I laugh at you. Loudly. I see some definitely useful applications of VR technology, and I'd be very surprised if VR weren't in use in several different areas already, but it will not take over as the standard means of human-computer interaction until the interface is drastically improved.
Frankly, I see the most added utility in terms of VR (and, really, computers as a whole) as a means of adding information in the context of the real world. That is, VR only becomes useful to the masses when it doesn't interfere with day-to-day reality, and adds something useful in the bargain. Basically, we're talking science fiction: brain implants that interact wirelessly with the completely ubiquitous world-wide computer network, and provide an informative and appropriately (contextually) filtered overlay or addition to the physical world, as well as extending human interaction, communication, and control. Cool stuff, and we're already seeing the beginnings of this sort of technology in the research into computer control through central nervous system activity, as well as the ongoing efforts at repairing blindness with an artifical imaging device connected directly to patients' optic nerves. Again, neat but not near-term.
Boring Old WIMP v. "Pleasure"
Um, yeah, I suppose I agree that WIMP isn't much fun. Frankly, I'd make the assertion that CLI isn't much fun either (ducks the flames). Instead, I'd assert that what makes the command line more fun than windows and a mouse is the control, the efficiency, the efficacy of typing in a command. When you type in a command, don't you get a thrill from seeing your precisely-formulated desires responded to by the computer? In fact, I quickly lose interest in CLI when whatever process doesn't provide immediate feedback, e.g., formatting a hard drive. BOOOORRRING... And I become very quickly frustrated, whether in GUI or CLI, when my desires are thwarted. However, the precision, control, and more tangible feeling of accomplishment I receive from CLI makes it more fun. And yes, WIMP takes that away. But I don't know what else we could use that would give us as much control. Anyone have any ideas?
Mr. Raskin should be ashamed of himself. I urge you all to browse through the examples presented on his website of interfaces that he has designed.
It is crap like this man produces that has ruined many a useful application, and many an otherwise informative website. What he produces are things that please marketing and clueless management; whether he knows no better or is merely a sell-out makes little difference as for my reaction to his work.
His interfaces are oozing with blobs of metallic fill and neon buttons; obscure "stylish" symbols, and counter-intuitive visual ques indicating WHAT I do not know as you attempt to navigate the interface with the hope that somehow you can coerce it into GIVING YOU THE CONTENT, or PERFORMING A UTILITY UNCTION.
His work is utter rubbish. I am simply dumbfounded as to the gall of this man, to think that people use applications for the interfaces; PEOPLE USE APPLICATIONS TO ACCESS OR MODIFY CONTENT.
CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT.
When I am presented with software having interfaces of the sort that Mr. Raskin produces, regardless of how effectively they may perform a particular utility function or display content, I give no second thought to the piece of rubbish.
I refuse to use such things and actively discourage others from doing so as well.
That's why we need a way to access our profiles from any thin-client. "Your" desktop should be available wherever you are.
you skinheads and themewhores make me sick
Oh yeah, like we're supposed to be moved by an interface engineer who makes a page that is two columns wide (and you have to scroll several pages worth to get to the bottom of the first column) and that has a "more" link on the bottom that takes you to the top of the same page.
This is one of the worst interface designs ever created. In fact, I have *never* seen such a poor interface for plain text done on purpose.
Jef Raskin, for those who don't know, is the chap who told Steve Jobs about all the interesting stuff going on in PARC.
-----
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
The message pad was pleasureable, shortly after beginning to use it, the interface disappeared and allowed you to at least partially forget the notion of applications. There was information, links and a few ways to reorganize it's appearance.
Granted it never transitioned to the wireless internet but both the user interface and the ability of the hardware to communicate with other hardware was as big an advance as the MacIntosh and X11 were in their day. I don't know how the interface would scale to a large screen but it does prove there ARE funadmentally different ideas. The question is who will be the first to conceive of them and whether or not those ideas will be captured within a proprietary intellectual property framework. Justin
His article's web page has gray background and light green font face.... almost impossible to read!
Have a look at the KDE User Interface Guidelines.
As forgotten as TWM and it's siblings are (largely because of the bundling of KDE and/or GNOME/Sawtooth with Linux, IMHO), TWM and it's siblings are quite configurable, and simply so, once you read the man page.
You're really not describing a "smart" GUI, but rather, just a configurable one.
I think there is a natural rift between CLI users and GUI users.
The GUI user tends to be an end-user who is looking for simplicity. This is typically someone who has a workstation and wants to run a few programs, like a wordprocessor and an email client, and doesn't want to be hassled with learning the commands needed to make these run. The CLI user, on the other hand, tends to want to glue various commands together to perform operations that would normally be tedious in a GUI.
These modes of operation do not compliment each other. It's like the difference between riding a motorcycle and riding a sports car, while they both accomplish the same thing you won't ever be able to have a sports car that's also a motorcycle.
I think the original author was trying to say something more significant than CLI -vs- GUI. Perhaps there is a more natural interface paradigm for the personal computer, using voice or maybe even thought to manage tasks on your PC. Imagine not typing at all, but strapping on a helmet and thinking your way through all of your tasks.
Ironically, computer programmers would be least-likely to enjoy any of these newfangled interfaces.
At any rate, once any product reaches a commodity status it is very difficult (read: nearly impossible) to provide consumers with any improvements on that design. There's a lot more we can do with the automobile, for example, but most consumers don't really care because they have a car that works exactly the way they have become accustom to it working.
Computers are the same way. As another poster pointed out, his grandmother switched WinXP back to the old Windows95 look. Why? Because she has become accustom to that interface.
For better or for worse, most people have seen Windows and expect a graphical computer to look that way. Breaking that with something as significant as a paradigm shift will be almost impossible. Complimenting that with a very simliar UI (aka: KDE) is much more plausible.
I think the open source community is right on target with mimicing existing windowing environments. Everybody copies from everybody else anyway, while we are in need of some UI guidelines to help maintain consistancy between applications on Linux it is at least some solace that Microsoft doesn't abide by its own UI standards anyway.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
Unfortunately the Interface Hall of Shame hasn't been updated in over two years, so they managed to miss major releases from virtually everyone in the game (OSX, KDE, Gnome, Windows 2000/XP), not to mention the fact that a lot of the things they praise (password reminders, image previews) are more or less standard issue now-a-days. I'd like to see more recent critiques. Any updated site links?
The Alto?
I didn't notice you mention it.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
And actually, the same concepts used to develop OpenDoc were at the core of the Xerox Star GUI from the 1980s. However, the concept worked more naturally in the Star GUI because it had no pull down menu system like the Mac. Everything, I mean all the functionality, was in contextual menus.
The modal interface didn't work on the Mac because users had been trained for years to rely on a pull-down menu system that would be guaranteed to remain static during the whole time they were editing a particular document. Mac users are not accustomed to having their menus change on the fly, and they rely on muscle memory to make the MacOS menu system work efficiently. Those who were trained on the Star GUI didn't have a pull-down menu system to contend with, and they were used to seeing contextual menus that were different depending on where or when they clicked. The document centric model fit naturally into the Star GUI but not into the MacOS GUI which was originally designed around an application centric model.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Have you guys forgotten the look and feel of the BeOS GUI? It rocks, doesn't it. I would just love a window manager with the look and feel of BeOS. Its much faster than any other GUIs and much more usable than Windows. In fact, its probably the only best GUI than Micro$oft Windows.
Gopalarathnam V. Registered GNU/Linux User #218746 http://counter.li.org Please avoid sending me Word or Powerpoint
I actually usually go where I want the document to be, do right click->New whatever, provide the name, and press enter twice to open the document in the appropriate editor.
This is frequently faster and easier because a) users don't have to mess with the 'Save' dialog at all (their usual browsing method is more intuitive to them), and b) you don't have to go hunt down the icon for the app which can get very lost sometimes.
My only complaint about the New->Document thing is it should be more elaborate, allowing submenus if more than one registered application can handle creating a certain file type in different ways. Document type categories might even be a good idea to keep the list down, along with a shortcut list at top.
My favorite window manager for Linux is XFCE, you should give it a try. It is really easy to use, and to me feals more natural than KDE or GNOME. It also doesn't take up all of your RAM, like other certain window managers, cough cough KDE, cough GNOME.
nost of these unix guys actually went to fuckin college you dunmbfuck. they didnt just take some stupid MCSE class at youre local scrub college like you.
Linux as an OS is agnostic as to the GUI, which is as it should be ; as a result there is a GUI to satisfy pretty much any user or task. What is missing? IMHO just 2 things.
I would argue that tabbed documents are best (like in Excel). But also to have the posibility to "detach them" as in Galeon. This would be the best of both worlds.
The MDI methafor does not work very well for me (lots of windows within another window with different sizes). If I want different sizes I'd preffer each to be a TRUE window as I'd probably need another app to the right or left and not another Word document.
In fact, it would be nice to have a generic way of tabbing applications (if there isn't a way already). That way, I could arrange a "tabset" to include a document I am working for, the internet pages i am using as a source, and maybe a gnumeric spreadsheet related to it (ok, you can embed, but that's a different thing with other uses).
I could create different tab sets, detach and rearrange all visually. I could name the describe tab with a relevant name. I don't CARE if it's an Abiword or gnumeric app, I care that it's "this project related stuff i am working on". I could be even giver the opportunity to "sessionize" it, ie: to SAVE ALL, close. And recall the project later.
It'd be like a project manager that could relate all GUI documents no matter what apps I am using. That way I could come back later, of have several "projects open", and not having to guess which is the correct item to click on the taskbar and being reminded of all the parts.
Bottom line: instead of a Window Frame, a "Windows Project Frame" with built in docking and that could "assimilate" several files no matter what apps are used. And with advances features like detach, save all, shortcuts for example to cycle with them (and optionaly a toolbar, menubar, or whatever needed).
Anyone would like this?
unfinished: (adj.)
Most of the things that people say about The Linux Desktop are either wrong or have already been said 3,894,092 times before, so I came to the article expecting to be disapointed. But this article turned out to be really interesting.
It's hard to say why some people love computers but other people hate them. I am one of the former. I think that I did used to get the feeling that the computer was waiting for me to give it input. There was something charming about amber text on a black background...
User interfaces these days don't give you that same impression. They're too demanding. Too gaudy. They're pushy and rude. Everytime you start your computer your programs flash across the screen and make honking noises. They flood your eyes with blinking advertisments. The software feels mass produced and ungainly. It insults my inteligence at every turn.
Unix computers come with fortune installed. It's fun. It's easy to use. Depending on how large the data files are, you could go on typing it for hours. I like the idea that everytime you turn on the computer there is something new to surprise and delight you.
It takes an average of 11 clicks to open a document in notepad. I'm sure that the windows version of fortune would be 38 clicks. I'm not sure my heart could handle that much happiness.
The trick is to find a way to make computers fun again. The article is not about Linux needs for the desktop, it is about all desktops.
Very interesting, thanks for the background. I've read a lot about the Star, but nothing about how it actually worked (beyond the contextual menus thing) and I've never had a chance to play with smalltalk. It'd be interesting to see this system in a full-fledged modern effect. You're right about the meshing with the Mac version of the UI that made it difficult, and windows has the same problem (only it's compounded by everything else). I'd actually really like to try a fully modern system with that as the philosophy. I don't think that could be bolted on to Linux as is without a lot of work though. Interesting thing to think about, nonetheless.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
If this is the guy I can blame for the uber sucky interface that Avid|DS (formerly Softimage|DS) has, then I don't think he has much credibility. As with the DS interface, the article seems to be confused and all about style over substance.
He is also wrong in saying that the best product always wins, other things like market lock-in and monopolies also help products win. So for open-source to win share from Windows it has to emulate/support much of what it does.
GNOME is not a window manager, and neither is KDE. You're either a moron or a troll, and I would bet on the first one.
That wouldn't be a good idea, someone would be bound to make an acronym out of it.
And here is a tip for most of the male /. audience, since someday you may be lucky enough to need it - The first time, after you hopefully figure out where it is, don't spend all your time on it. Pay attention to it, but don't abuse it. Be gentle with it. It can be confusing at first, but if you are observant, you'll get the hang of it. It is a very powerful thing, and if you use it correctly, you will be rewarded.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
First, are there application or user experience standards for KDE, Gnome, X, or command line apps?
n /standards/k de/style/basics/
u p/hig/draft_ hig/
t y-Apps-HOWTO/
Why yes, yes there are (strokes beard):
KDE User Interface Guidelines
http://developer.kde.org/documentatio
GNOME 2.0 Human Interface Guidelines
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/g
Designing Integrated High Quality Linux Applications
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HighQuali
I was thinking of mentioning the Newton (and other truly original ideas) in my post, but refrained for the sake of brevity.
If the personal computer had the physical interface of the Newton, then I am positive that the current WIMP GUI would be dead. But the physical interface of the computer still consists of a keyboard/mouse underneath the user's fingers and a non-tactile monitor in front of their face. This style of layout has been in existance for forty years or more. Expecting new, original (and useful) GUIs for this kind of setup are not going to happen in my opinion.
Where we should be looking for new interface paradigms are in new physical interfaces, like the PDA. I'll lay good money on a wager that the current WIMP GUI will be obsolete seconds after the invention and public release of digital paper.
But as long as the my computer has a monitor and a keyboard, I won't be holding my breath. Expecting that would be like expecting the elimination of steering wheels, accelerators and brakes in automobiles. Sure, some genius may come up with something radically orginal and useful for the automobile tomorrow, but would you waste any time hoping for it?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If you want to do something revolutionary, then put the emphasis on the whole reason most Open Source geeks became Open Source geeks in the first place. Offer a GUI you can make completely your own down to the last niggling pixel. Call it myX or something.
... I'm not.
What comes to mind is a mark up language specifically for the myX GUI. Reduce the GUI itself to little more than a basic script compiler with a handful of default scripts/skins to keep joe six pack happy and lazy.
LOL. If I were a real code monkey, I'd do more than just make the suggestion. Alas
-Guanno
Some of you code monkeys gotta start writing games for Linux. I'm talking hard core Playstation/XBox/GameCube kind of stuff. Get the kiddies nagging mommy and daddy for it, and you'll have Linux in every home in the wired world just to shut them up. :) The rest will become history. I do like the ideas "psicE" and "TFloore" were tossing around in the "I've got an interface for you" thread. The sunglasses idea, with the ROM embedded Linux sounds slamming. Occam's razor together with a cattle prod (the christmas list) is the sure way to Joe six pack's wallet.
-Guanno
test
Down with Crapitali$m. Anarchy NOW!
So would I. Unfortunately, due to the structure of the software market, which is/was dominated by operating system vendors and application vendors each trying to make their product more all-encompasing and ubiquitous, the document centric model never took off.
Now that its libraries are mostly complete, building an OpenDoc like structure on GNUSteP might not be that bad.
There's a lot of talk about UIs being analogous to real-life tasks. People make arguments about different UI's advatages based on such analogies.
I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out, but aren't computers supposed to replace and improve on these analogies? Why do we bother with them anyway, if not to replace things?
Sorry, maybe this is an obvious point. It just blows me away when people want things on their computer to be as clunky and dumb as real-life.
COMPUTER! Whatever happened to Blueberry Muffin?
I would like to have a browser from start instead of an almost useless desktop with icons. This is not a new idea, Microsoft tried something similar with ActiveDesktop, and before that, Nestcape had a wonderful idea with it's Constellation project (http://www.webreview.com/1997/02_07/developers/02 _07_97_2.shtml).
.PDF files (in example), browse your music, cad documents... any file in your local drives or in the net. The new interface shall not be much different than my Opera browser, with an advanced search engine.
The new shift shall be: browse anything (any digital file). Browse a web, browse your text files, your
Instead of having to launch every single app, each of them popping up to their own window, a single window interface shall put me in command of everything and with nothing popping in my screen, apps load in the background as I request them though the type of file they are set to handle. I can read a PDF inside my Internet browser, but if I want to edit it I have to launch Acrobat (I know this is beyond an open source proyect, just wanted to explained the idea).
This browse-anything approach would kill the launch button and menu. For example, I would like to have a centralized Preferences for everything, from my sound preferences to my CD recording preferences, or my PDF viewing preferences, cookies, keyboard. If I wanted to change any, I would click Edit/Preferences/... And If I want to record something to a CD, I would have the option in a context menu. The point is to forget about apps, and let all apps integrate and share a single interface.
TABS
It's a long time since we have text editors with tabs, I also have tabs from long ago inside the Opera browser, now Mozilla has also tabs, but as far as I know, no single GUI has tabs between apps. From my experience, within KDE or GNOME or BeOS, or MS-Windows, different apps are dreadfully "ordered" in the taskbar. If I could only see them ordered in tabs.
MORE TEXT, LESS ICONS
I'd like to wipe all icons off the graphical interface, I like and understand text, and belive icons get in my way nowadays, lets make a WMP (Windows Menus Pointers, no icons). I like being able to get rid of most icons within GNOME2, but the icon invasion remains, they multiply like gremlins, get 'em out! TEXT. TABS with TEXT. I mean, letters are already icons, I don't need fancy artistic shapes and colours to find my way, text always helps.
I find somehow refreshing, the GUI approach they have developed at www.OEone.com , many things stay the same (taskbar, menus,...), but I like seeing a browser from start, no desktop.
Yes, this are all the old, same and loose ideas, but not really implemented yet. I see OEone's Homebase as a GUI that could evolve to accomplish some of them.
As for the keyboard manager - I still think the best bet would be a script to translate the bindings you use in a tty to your window manager of choice. You really want something that can put the text in the correct window, and if you write a keyboard manager to do that (keeping track of mouse focus as well as keyboard events) then you have written a window manager.
What I mean is just a simple script that tells everything that gets keyboard and mouse events to behave the same way - just something that translates configuration files. You only run it when you add in a new window manager or change what keys you've mapped. Not a lot really - but you could just easily use bash, csh, awk, sed, java or whatever you normally use - you are just handling text, and only need to do it when you make changes. X is actually less than you thought it was at the start of the discussion - the window manager handles most of the stuff you are talking about (and gnome and KDE have there own clipboards, since gnome people wanted to copy MS OLE and KDE people wanted to copy CDE and "mwm"). There are better implementations of X than XFree86 (even on linux), but only on the right hardware. The good thing is that X is getting extended all of the time, but stuff like X in a web browser window isn't going to be seen in many places for a while. I like X because it can be networked, and I have more control over it than with win* (so I can actually use all the display modes that the monitor and video card can do) other people like or hate it for various reasons ; eg. XFree86 is a pain to configure by editing the file, and some configuration programs only let you have a single resolution. Lately I've been getting the rpms of XFree - and the configuration file spat out by the configuration program still needs editing by hand. Adding in stuff like mouse wheel scrolling in apps still needs to be configured by hand. Yes, the unix way of lots of little programs that are all very good at what they do - and everything is a file. X is a different (and very large) beast - and certainly was running on VMS (among others) a long time ago. It does, however, load stuff in modules that can be enabled or disabled - keeping things small if necessary. I used to run X displayed on a very low end intel machine with all of the apps running on a very high end SGI machine, and for six months I ran X on an NT4 box with the enlightement window manager running remotely from a linux box (I didn't want to go back to "twm"). For most people the networking aspect doesn't matter - hence the "berlin" project.I've posted an abstract of my ideas here:
U TF-8&threadm=rOdGr40LMPU3-pn2-EeozQOdBNe9U%40local host&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%2 6group%3Dcomp.human-factors
http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=
My abstract haven't shown up yet, but it should some time later today. It should give you a much better idea what I mean, as the discussion the two of us are having here is revolved around two basic premises:
1) I don't care how I can make X "work", as I feel it's flawed.
2) You don't care about my points, as you feel you can work around the idiosyncracies I describe.
I hope you don't get too offended by this short summary, and that you might want to read up on my abstract, when it turns up on google.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
For me, when i'm in linux, most of what I do, is through the command line. It's simple, fast, and gives you what you want without any of the "purdy graphics" and other stuff that makes doing what you want more time consuming. One thin I CAN'T stand is, under Windows, when the programs menu on the start button shows only your most recently used programs! i know it's a small annoiance(sp?), but it's just SO annoing!
It is ture, however, that GUIs are the best place to start for beginners, but you don't allways need them.
Three cheers for all the users that still like a boring old command line!