Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
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.
Oh my god, Creative Labs produce software with some of the worst interfaces i've ever seen!
no sig.
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
"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.
But what did Windows revolutionize from the Mac or Xerox in the first place?
In fact, what did Xerox and Mac revolutionize from Doug Englebert? Not much.
In fact, no one has. Thats the problem, and it really seems that it is the problem that author of the rant. He isn't bemoaning Open Source GUI's so much as bemoaning "desktop" GUI's overall. No one has come up with anything better in over nearly 50 years now. We still have a mouse pointer, we still have WIMP, and we still have the whole desktop paradigm (Yes its a sucky word, but I don't care anymore).
The author may not see Open Source projects providing much inovation for the GUI, but thats a little unfair: No one is inovating for the GUI!
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.
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.
The lesson? The surest way to enforce adoption of a new technology is to disallow other technologies...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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!
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.
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.
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
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
Oh wait a second, this metaphor is already in use.
All of these features are available on Windows. For example. I have a dual boot box with an NVidia GeForce 3 in it. I like to run with 3 desktops. This is standard fair under linux. Under windows you can either run litestep and emulate what you have under linux, or in my case, I just use the new features included with my detonator drivers for my video card which provides multiple desktop support. Now, the mouse actions are provided by a windows power toy/tool downloadable from microsoft. There was also some shareware tools to do the same thing. So, this is hardly a Linux only feature. This same thing is probably possible on OS X, but I don't know how as the only OS X box in the house is my wife's iBook.
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.
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.
This was my biggest gripe for a long time.
Try a recent version of X and KDE. Fonts look great.
Next step, finding a way to replace X all together.
-Peter
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.
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.
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.
Both those features are available in the PowerToys. You may complain that they're not included with stock Windows - well so what, most people don't want them.
I think linux should model itself to look like OSX
XP is ugly as hell
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'm supposed to take design advice from someone putting up a scrolling two column web page??? Sheesh!
What's a sig?
doubt it - the average person would say "This Windows doesn't work right" and buy XP.
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.
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!
'cause a 3D OS would be pretty clunky?
I just have large cursors in Linux
in KDE
Settings(Icon) -> Peripherials -> Mouse -> select
"use large cursors".
Then restart your X11.
That's it.
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
>...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
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!
A common misconception. Studies have shown repeatedly that the human eye is generally able to read quicker and comprehend more when the text is presented in narrow columns of about 65 to 75 characters each, or about as wide as you can actually read at once with no eye motion. Consider: make your window as wide as possible and stare at the middle of this line. How many words on either side of where you are staring can you read without moving your eyes?
If the lines are significantly wider than that amount, then it leads to more eye motion and greater strain. TeX and its derivatives and siblings have the right idea; if you've ever used it, you'll note that by default it creates narrow columns.
Or consider the newspapers that you have pointed out yourself. The column width was not implemented due to some limitation of early printing machines. Pages were printed all at once; why do you think they made columns the width they did? The WSJ could easily change to having two columns per page, but that would make it more difficult to read, so they continue to stick with six -- not out of tradition or an inherent limitation, but because that is the "friendly" thing to do.
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."
Possibly one could argue such a thing, if one had an exceptionally narrow view of what kind of work is done on PCs.
I can honestly say that, for the first six years that I worked with computers, the majority of my work was done with the mouse, not at the keyboard. I was a typesetter and layout artist for a small print shop, and only a small part of my work involved entering text at the keyboard. Most of what I did involved building grid layouts on screen and positioning bits of text and graphics on those grids. You couldn't ask for a more mouse intensive job. However, such tasks are not all that rare: CAD operators, GIS folk, graphic artists, and GUI designers all require the use of a pointing device for more than just launching applications.
The fact that Windows tries to use the mouse for everything, even tasks better suited to keyboard input, and many X Windows programs use the mouse for almost nothing, says more about the deficiencies of the GUI 'designers' working on Windows and X 11, than it does about the inate usefullness of mice versus keyboards.
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 hate talking. I like silence. I want to be able to use my computer without my roommate hearing me say "play porn.file". I want to be able to type really quickly. I absolutely hate the idea of having an audio interface. I like looking at my two monitors on my Mac and watching the two terminal windows on the left monitor, typing here, meanwhile glancing at the two icons in the dock that tell me if I have new mail or ICQ messages. I don't want the computer talking to me or beeping at me or singing to me or any of that crap. The most useful thing I can think of would be a USB light that could replace the beep and not disturb the screen.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
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.
...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
- 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.
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.
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
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
So, you're in luck.
Softimage may be considered the best but I never heard anyone give praise to its interface.
Have you really saw it?
I expect about 80% of people are of type 1, so when you'll try to market product like Bob, you'll get A LOT of bad words from people who do not like it...
This is exactly right. Changing the underlying data representation is the first step to enabling truly new GUIs. As Gelernter says, it simply doesn't make sense to use a 1960's era data model (the hierarchical file system) on 2002 hardware.
Also, while radical approaches like 3DUIs don't make a lot of sense on top of the traditional file/folder storage model, they become much more compelling when the file system becomes a relational database.
And you are absolutely correct that Microsoft is pursuing this opportunity with a vengeance. By battling for the "Windows desktop", most Linux UI developers are fighting yesterday's battle. Instead, they should be looking forward and trying to beat Microsoft to a truly next-generation environment.
Nooface
In Search of the Post-PC Interface
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?
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.
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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!
I find this comment curious. (As Gelernter [technologyreview.com] says, it simply doesn't make sense to use a 1960's era data model (the hierarchical file system) on 2002 hardware. )
Why wouldn't it make sense? After all we are still using the same computer architecture, as the 60's. And The hierarchical file system can support other file systems, making it flexable enough to handle specialized data types.
In fact, the exact behavior that you describe has been part of the Mac Human Interface Guidelines for many years now. Unfortunately many apps don't follow that particular rule. Interestingly, most Microsoft products do.
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
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
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!
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.
He says 31st December :) The big problem I see with this is that it's specific to ReiserFS - not a problem in and of itself, but the desktop environments get hung up about running on Windows (!) so I think it unlikely there'd be a mass redesign of all the software to make it specific to one filing system. The most interesting thing with Reiser4 is that the kernel has been changed to allow files to also be directories. I can see sooooooo many uses for this
Optimum column width may also be affected by the 7-plus-or-minus-2 rule. Narrow columns mean that there are just enough words on a single line to be easily held in short term memory, thus easily 'digested' during reading.
Setting text on a computer display, however, is a different matter, especially when the display is configurable by the user. The assumption with the web is that the user will reconfigure both display size and text size to suite their circumstances. The fact that this guy thinks he knows better than his reads how they can best read text on screen, does not bode well for his qualifications as a user interface expert. (the first rule of user interface design is to listen to your users. This guy would rather dictate: it's no suprise that he worked for M$)
The NethackWM
I would use that.
"Hachi eats a Dwarf corpse"
The middle mind speaks!
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.
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.
Skinning is nothing more than graphical masturbation when it comes to improving the Linux GUI. Sure you can change the look of every widget, every color, every shape. Does it change the the fact that you're stuck with yet another implementation of the desktop metaphor?
You bring up a pet peeve of mine. Skins and themes only give the illusion of empowering users. Give a newbie a desktop with a bunch of themes, and they'll often have a blast cycling through them. Being able to change so much about their desktop environment gives them a sense of control over their computer. Unfortunately they still won't understand that you don't have to double click everything. Even though they know how to make the cursor look like a snake, they don't know any more about actually using the computer. It is still essentially the same UI.
An effective user interface is one that you don't notice. Take your average toaster. It has one lever that you push down to start tosting. It also has a single slider that you push sideways to determine how dark to toast the bread. You've got solid visual cues everywhere, all inviting you to use the thing. The slots are bread shaped. Pushing the lever down not only makes the bread fit completely in the slot, it turns the unit on. The slider is most likely color coded, one side light, the other side dark. The design of the toster makes an attempt to communicate how you use it. When you go to make toast you don't need think about how the toaster works.
I'd like to suggest that computers should operate in much the same way. The less the end user thinks about how the computer works, the greater the effort they can apply to the tasks they are using their computer for. Coming up with this design is going to take a new approach rather than a rehash of the desktop. By creating something greater than the desktop, we'll lure users away from that old 'desktop' OS. If the other OS companies do it first, then what happens? Much of the work put into KDE, Gnome, E, and all of your pretty skins become desktop era cruft in a 'post desktop' world.
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
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.
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?
Programs are allowed to act like Unix/Windows ones and exit when the last window is closed. Some Apple apps do this, like the preferences panel, and I'm sure a lot of stuff ported from Unix or Windows will act this way. As far as I can tell this is harmless to the user experience as long as the program starts quickly (this can be accomplished by not using NeXTStep :-)
The "taskbar" introduced the idea that there would be a thing on the desktop representing a window that stayed there whether or not the window was open. Almost all modern interfaces copy this (OS/X and the new Linux ones) and as far as I can tell MicroSoft invented it. Before that everybody, including MicroSoft, thought of "iconization" where a window was replaced by a small representation, and the small representation disappeared when the window was opened.
If anybody can point to prior art where there was something created when the window is created that did not disappear when the window was opened I would like to know, but as far as I can tell this is a real invention by MicroSoft.
I also want to commend them on figuring out that text is much more important than icons, and getting rid of the large icons, especially in the taskbar, and supporting large amounts of text. This was a dramatic reversal from contemporary designs then and they should be commended for it, though I guess it isn't really an innovation.
I believe having Alt+Tab navigate to closed windows (not just opened ones like it did in CDE) is an innovation as well.
I think MicroSoft should be criticized for some stuff that now pollutes Unix and Windows and often is considered "user friendly" so it is impossible to fight them: click to type replacing point to type was very bad. Clicks raising windows completely defeats the whole purpose of overlapping windows. MDI and tiled windows are a horrible abonimation that was created because of the clicks raising windows. Tying all the app windows together so you can't insert non-app ones inbetween also defeats the purpose of overlapping windows. And icons on the desktop (why not in a window that can be raised?)
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."
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
Actually more interesting is that it looks like a lot of Apple applications exit when you close the last window, such as Itunes and Iphoto. But some don't, like Preview.
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
How can anything improve if people with perspective and objectivity can't comment on it? I don't have to be a mechanic to tell you my car sucks.
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.