What Features Would Make a "Better" GUI?

Rudyatek asks: "When it comes to desktop OSs, there has been much talk about 'the end of the desktop', 'reinventing the GUI', etc. Usability has become increasingly important as we battle the ugly UIs of Windows and X11, and watch companies like Red Hat and Ximian try to improve them. But I'm curious if anyone has any clear ideas on what a truly 'better' UI would really be like? As a hobby OS programmer I have a great interest in alternative OS ideas, and this is one that I hear more complaining about than actual ideas. Anyone have ideas?"

Comments

More keyboard-friendly

[fuzzbrain]

Some of the most interesting window managers I've seen lately are those that are controllable from the keyboard, like ratpoison and ion. I've been using Ion just about exclusively for the past month and it is really quite good. You can arrange your windows the way you want once and save the configuration so you'll never have to waste time moving xterms around so you can see them all. And because all desktops are tiled, screen real-estate wastage is minimised.

Re:More keyboard-friendly

[peeping_Thomist]

ratpoison is awesome. I used ion for almost two years, but made the switch to ratpoison a few months ago. Once you get the keybindings on ratpoison set up the way you want, it's the most usable interface imaginable. And not a single pixel is wasted: every square inch of the screen is used.

Nothing beats ratpoison on a Xinerama display.

Better fonts in X the easy way

[FeatureBug]

Folks love to comment how ugly they think GUIs look under X in Netscape/Mozilla, and the same folks often suggest the solution is to use anti-aliased fonts. Sure, anti-aliased fonts are good.

However, I'd like to share my experience with a very simple alternative method of getting really great looking fonts in X without installing or changing any software.

Change your X11 display resolution so pixels are about the same size as the dot pitch of your monitor. The jagged edges of the unaliased X fonts totally disappear. Quasi font anti-aliasing is as good as true anti-aliased fonts but without the hassle! If I had my macro lens handy I'd take a photo of my monitor screen running 1600x1200 and show you the incredibly smooth font outlines I've got with this very ordinary variable width Times Roman 18pt font. If I reduce X to anything less than 1600x1200 like 1024x768, of course, the jagged edges return.