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Alternatives to Icons and Start Menus?
Cibressus Lybir asks: "We've had icons, folders and menu's for a long time. I currently use two monitors, both filled to the brim with icons and several drawers on each desktop. My Start Menu, on my Windows machine is never used, because it's flimsy and too hard to navigate around. In movies you always see cool 3D desktops with stuff flying around and some kind of cool gesture or spoken word used to start up applications. The future will only bring more applications, more icons, and more time spent navigating around launching your programs. What are your ideas for the future of desktops? How can we rid our selves of the icon jungles that we call our GUI's?"
all you have to do is type the name of the program you want to run... wait
When giving the finger to your computer monitor, reboots it.
A utility called PaneKiller serves as an add on for your Windows Task bar. You can directory surf, detach views (like KDE), plus much more. This utility helped me alot when I coded for a living.
PaneKiller
try http://www.truelaunchbar.com/
*rushes to patent office*
How can we rid our selves of the icon jungles that we call our GUI's?"
Easy - drag everything to the Recycle Bin. Right-click on it and select 'Empty Recycle Bin'
Problem solved.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
The concept of lifestreams seems interesting and is an approage really different from the "classic" desktop.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Just how many different apps do you really use on a day to say basis? If you have an icon jungle on your desktop/start menu its your fault.
Make folders, taking advantage of the hierarchical filesystem. Put things you use very often on the quicklaunch . I have "Show Desktop", IE, K++ Kazaa, Firebird, and Winamp.
On my actual desktop I have the standard windows icons, links to games I'm currently playing, and development tools I'm currently using. I hardly ever even use the Start Menu.
Believe it or not, aside from all the eye candy, there isnt anything inherently better about a 3D desktop environment. A lot of people have difficulty reasoning in 3D you know.
There's a reason why we've been "stuck" with 2D since forever, it works, and if its not broken, dont fix it. Backwards compatibility is essential for usability, so more often than not "innovation" in the field of user interfaces is actually a no-no.
On OS X, I keep 5 icons (my working set) in the task bar. I keep my active documents (2-3 icons max) on the desktop, where I can get with expose. I use voice recognition to start any of about 10 apps, or run basic scripts, and I use audio feedback wherever possible to save screen space (someone logging on, then, reads me there name, rather than beeping and forcing me to change windows). For everything else, I use launchbar, which may be the best shareware program ever written.
I've had this sig for three days.
I currently use two monitors, both filled to the brim with icons and several drawers on each desktop.
How on earth do you get any work done with all that clutter?
Call me a minimalist, but I like my desktop clean when it's not filled with programs that I'm currently using. I would totally hate having things zoom around in 3D. Too distracting.
But then again, I know what's on my computer, and what programs I want to run, and when. YMMV.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Anytime I am faced with an X environment, I tend to use WindowMaker. I like the way Icons on the side dock and reside, but by itself, it isn't perfect.
A while back I tried an alternative to the standard windows shell, called Aston. While it also had its issues, one of the "themes" I tried had an interesting concept. There was a self-hiding dock bar very similar to how the taskbar worked. Except it consisted of x square icons just like WindowMaker. Except, each of these squares didnt launch an application (unless you wanted it to), but rather acted like a "drawer", that expanded outward when you clicked it.
So something like WindowMakers dockicons, but expandable in the drawer type way would be most fantastic in my opinion. The problem is, Ive yet to see it cleanly implemented.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I put things in folders. On my desktop I have a folder for my most commonly used applications, then a link to my ~/Documents, and a link to my ~/Documents/Downloads. I started doing this when I switched to Mac, as to keep the dock clutter down, but I've started to apply similar practice to my Windows machines and my graphical Linux systems.
Mewyn Dy'ner
More and more often, I start programs with start-run. Then I type the name of the program to run it (or drop to DOS, change directory, and fire the program from within DOS).
The installs of programs tend to splatter the desktop with icons. The start menu is even worse, with most programs giving themselves a mess of icons, so when you try to run it, there is too much chance of clicking the Uninstall icon by mistake. Bypassing the GUI sometimes is a lot more efficient.
This especially becomes apparent if you are doing similar/identical tasks on different machines. This is where the GUI fails as a way just to run apps. The desktops and start menus between two machines are typically very different from each other.
There is always Windows Explorer, but it is slow to load and unintuitive: I can have a Windows app fired from within DOS by the time I am halfway through the tedious navigation process "squint and click and wait and find stuff that has moved since the last time I looked" in Windows Explorer.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Have an output-only connector implanted in the brain (make it one-way wireless and have it run on body heat, perhaps); remembering or thinking of opening an application or document will cause the computer to launch the appropriate application. Output is still put onto a screen (or holographic projecter...) so that input (and thus the capability of "hacking" the human mind) is that much more difficult.
Or, failing that, the system used in Minority Report would be good. I liked the hands- and gestures-based management of the computer, recalling data, literally shoving it aside, calling up the needed information/documents/applications through hand gestures... it'd be nice, and much more intuitive than the current desktop and directory interface we have nowadays.
~UP
Eat the Path.
If only there were some sort of ... interface whereby the user could invoke programs using the keyboard, perhaps by typing commands. I suppose you could wait only the user enters a complete line to process the commands.
Seriously, though, how many programs do you regularly start? If, using one level of folders to hold icons, you still manage to clutter two desktops with programs you regularly start, you need help. Otherwise, you should simply recognize that removing programs you use infrequently from the desktop will make it easier for you overall, even if you don't like the start menu.
OK so I have a small cheat sheet taped to the monitors to remind me of the infrequently used combinations but I remember most of them.
I have NO icons on my windows desktop as I think it looks horrible, they're always covered by various app windows anyway - and it seems that people with dozens of icons spend ages looking for the one they want. Most of the time I'm not using the mouse so it makes me quicker getting work done.
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
How is the Start Menu flimsy? Does yours waver when you click on it, always bending out the way? You might want to invest in Ad-aware :)
Seriously, the 'intelligent' start menu in WinXP is a godsend to me...it works very well, although I can see a few cases where it wouldn't work so good (if you use windows to do nothing but cygwin work :).
and start talking to it.
(In Scottish accent) "Hello Computer"
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
The problem I and probably many other people have with the Windows Start button is that it just pops up a list of (almost) all of your installed programs. While I do fancy the alphebetical organization for quickly finding programs, it takes a second to get your bearings.
KDE and some other window managers organize applications by their function. This probably won't save you time when you know exactly what program you're looking for, but it can be helpful if you are looking for say, a midi player, but you don't know what its called. It also saves the confusion of having your whole screen fill up with application names at once.
As far as new age 3D menus go, I don't think that they'll end up saving you time. It may look cool in movies, but thats because its not exciting to watch a movie hacker sit in front of some xterms for an hour hacking, while it is exiting to watch them blast through firewalls using cyber missles. I think that the best advance will be better voice recognition. Even now, it probably wouldn't be too hard to patch together a system that could respond to "Computer, Open Office" (You decide whether thats Open office, or OpenOffice.)
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
After switching to Linux six years ago and spending a lot of time trying to navigate Gnome's menus to find what I was looking, a friend told me about WindowMaker. I edit the menus to weed out the cruft, include things that take a lot of keystrokes to launch, and open terminals to do my other work. If I need something that I didn't put in a menu, I have a command prompt to launch it. No muss, no fuss. This, of course requires a real OS.
(Playing along that the statement isn't a wild exaggeration): What a horrible future that would be! As it stands, I think that many people only manually run a small subset of programs installed on their computer, and possess extraordinarily poor organizational skills.
(1) small subset of programs
I doubt that the vast majority of the public uses Adobe's Acrobat Reader with such frequency as to warrant putting an application shortcut on the computer's desktop. Same with Winamp, with it's dual quicklaunch and desktop shortcuts. In fact, many programs install multiple ways of running the program, but it invariably includes the desktop. This includes applications that are only used as viewers and players, such as QuickTime (what college student actually runs the application and browses to the file instead of double-clicking on the file in the first place?).
(2) poor organizational skills
My Physics professor's desktop is overflowing with application shortcuts and URL shortcuts. Worse, he stores documents on the desktop! And so do a number of people I know. With the people I've had contact with, this is invariably a sign of a lack of organizational skill: they'd rather not have to deal with understanding how their files are stored. Thus, for internet downloads, they just click on the up arrow until they've found the Desktop, and then save the file there. For Corel Wordperfect, they just save it in My Documents, which eventually becomes a 2-foot-deep ocean of documents.
Thus, I don't think that the desktop has to be the ugly mess that it usually ends up as. I think it's a fundamental weakness of the users, not the system.
And good heavens, a 3-dimensionally navigable filesystem?! Didn't you see Jurassic Park? It takes like 5 excrutiatingly long, edge-of-your-seat minutes to get to anything! Like that door lock! No thanks, I rather use Bash and tab-completion. No velociraptors for me, thanks.
I completely agree with you: start menus are a pain in the ass. Every program takes a dump in there during installation, and it's pretty hard to come up with a good organizational system.
I use a simple program called kbstart on my Win2000 box. It's awesome. Although most aspects of UNIX aren't designed for usability, tool abbreviations are. It's much easier to type ALT-ENTER to bring up my kbstart prompt and type "PS". The alternative would be to do Start: Programs: Adobe Photoshop 6.
So I guess I'm saying, as far as launching goes, the future of GUI's is... no GUI :)
--You could try using Ratpoison and screen. Of course, there are a number of projects that seek to change the way various information is handled/presented/etc. See, for example, Chandler, Haystack,Gnome Storage, and WinFS. These all seem to be addressing the fundamental problem of managing ever growing amounts of information on personal computers.
Computer monitors make "interfacing" with a computer far less engrossing, immersive, and enjoyable than it could be. I don't want to use just 20% of my visual field to absorb, manipulate, and express information. I want to be immersed in the computer environment. It boggles my mind that 3D gamers haven't started demanding nice head mounted displays. The technology exists for a display that wraps around to use your total visual field, and such a display would be amazing for games and all computing. On a less revolutionary note: I think a 3D desktop does work. For example if you ever tried out a 3D chat environment such as activeworlds.com it is very cool. You can be walking around town and click on billboards and signs to open web pages or teleport to new worlds. Using a 3D world to organize information is very compelling in my opinion.
www.wisdomproject.net The open source think tank.
Multiple desktops and tabbed browsing are nifty too. They let you seperate your apps and web pages into tasks so you don't get cluttered. One browser window for Slashdot, one desktop for email and IM, another for music, another for what I'm working on.
It'd be interesting to have a database of all the apps installed, a quick description of what they do, and how to launch them. This would let you do, say, "Alt-F2 edit" and see a list of editors, if you can't remember their often-obscure names.
Litigious bastards
Take a look at this attempt at a 3D desktop. http://www.3dtop.com/what.htm Don't know if I would use it all the time, but it's an interesting idea.
Litestep can be used as a replacement for Windows Explorer or in addition to it if you want. It is completely (and I mean completely) customizable and has alot of modules out there to control winamp, virtual desktops, and other things. Litestep
What the hell are drawers? Are you using GEM ?
Regardless of the nature of the interface, if you don't keep on top of it then it's going to get messy and cluttered no matter what.
You seem to be making 2 seprate points.
1. when is the desktop of the future going to turn up?
2. Why is the 2d interface so bad that my desktop is cluttered?
I'm in the process of tidying up my bookmarks. Some are crap I've can't remember why I bookmarked. Some are things which got my attention at the time but I saved until I had time to read it properly, others are sites I used to visit but I don't anymore. So I am reorganising things. I spent 15 minutes the other day reorganising the start menu on my work PC because it was massive. After creating a few folders and moving stuff around it's much more manageable and applications are now in folders that make sense to me. A 3d interface isn't going to help solve your clutter.
The Romans didn't find algebra very challenging, because X was always 10
"Is there some replacement for the dining room table? My dining room table is full of mail and bills and dirty dishes.
I'm wondering if there some kind of 3D replacement, perhaps a series of dining room tables stacked on top of each other. I'm thinking there must be an eaiser way to find bills and mail and dishes when I need them..."
Sheesh. Clean it up, get organized. Those icons don't put themselves on the desktop...well, ok, some of them do...but not those other ones...you put them there, just clean them up.
Or make a folder called "Rug", and sweep them all under it.
What were you expecting?
We've had icons, folders and menu's for a long time.
I quit reading at this point. If you want people to read what you write, have the common courtesy to use correct spelling and punctuation.
If you're on a Mac, you can use LaunchBar. This nifty program lets you open up any application or file in an indexed folder, from any place at any time. What you can do is type Command+Space, and a little menu drops from the menubar. You then can type the name, beginning of hte name, or initials for the program you want. Then all you need to do is type "Enter". Any application is thus just a few kekystrokes away, and that is from any other application.
So for example, I merely need to type: Cmd+Sp, wc3, enter, and Warcraft III starts up. Or I can type fire for firebird (or moz or mf).
I should mention that LaunchBar handles ambiguities well too. It shows not just one match, but the top ten matches (and a scrollbar if there is more), and so if you typed something and hte top match wasn't the one you intended, it is usually somewhere else in there. It then remembers what you chose so that it is the top item. So if photo should resolve to iPhoto instead of Photoshop, you can train it to do that.
Anyway, I feel crippled on a computer when I don't have it, because it is so cumbersome to get to any application.
The problem with menu systems is that they are static trees organized by catagorical metadata. For instance "Utilities", "Applications", "Games". This guarantees that because the trees are organized by nonstandard catagorical metadata you must hunt under catagories, which are different from system to system and user to user, for a program. Even worse is that entries don't always reflect what is and is not on the disk. As the number of applications increase in time the overhead required for searching grows by O(n). Desktop icons are not useful for large numbers of applications due to obvious limitations in area.
One solution is to keep things flat. In unix a single word on the command line will invoke an application with no overhead.
A complication of a such a flat structure is, when the number of available applications becomes very large, it is difficult for users to remember all the commands. It is thus necessary to provide a database that allows users to search for applications with a desired functionality. For instance, although MacOS uses a directory listing of "/Applications" for its menu, because there is no database to search, one must do a serial lookup of all programs to find the one of interest. (Again with the O(n)!)
Currently the only system which provides this "future solution" is unix. It has a method to invoke applications with zero overhead (the command line) and a database to search for useful programs (man -k mkfs). Thus, unix, the 25-year-old operating system is your future solution.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
My first thought is that there's something wrong with the way you work, and that you you haven't figured out how to organize your Start menu. Assuming that's not the case though... :)
I've had some fun reconfiguring my Windows desktop using using Samurize. It won't give you a 3D interface or a voice commands or any of that, but it does allow you to provide links to your important applications in a different way. For the true geek, it also allows the embedding of various graphs and system monitors.
Numerous screenshots are available on the site, but they may not all be work-appropriate, so browse wisely (the main page is perfectly safe).
If you have a lot of icons then you could take the approach of classifying them in some hierarchy, and it would be nice if the path string provides more information about what is down 3 or 4 levels.
The icons are essentially of 3 kinds - files, folders, and shortcuts(url's or local paths).
So, here is the basic concept.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
After seeing the trailers for FFXI, I had an idea for a 3d networking desktop where each user had an avatar character. Then the characters could run around in their "home" or "my computer" with customized envronments.
I did a bit of googling and found there there were a couple of applications other there for windows. *sigh* Another idea down the tubes.
Surprised nobody had mentioned this one yet...
www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm
I've been watching its progress for years now and am pretty impressed, although it does take some time to get set up for your own personal tastes. Not for those who want to install and instantly use....
Windows XP has a built-in desktop cleanup wizard that is pre-configured to run every 60 days. With this feature on, Windows displays a pop-up balloon every 60 days if it finds shortcuts on your desktop that haven't been used in that period. It then gives you an option to clean up your desktop by placing all the unused desktop icons into an "Unused Desktop Icons" folder on the desktop. This should tidy up your desktop a bit. I think that this is great for the clueless computer users that do not know how to organize their desktops.
You can manually run it by right-clicking the windows xp desktop, select properties, goto Desktop Tab, click Customize Desktop..., and then click Clean Desktop Now.
A side note, I've disabled this feature on my windows XP box. My desktop only has the recycling bin and a few icons of programs that I do not already have in the quicklaunch bar. The desktop wallpaper gives personality to the computer and I would hate for it to be hidden by icons all over the place.
Likewise, I've organized my start menu alphabetically by functionality (multimedia, utilities, games, dev, imaging, etc). My drives are partitioned in a way so that it's easy to save files as well.
Ever hear of folders? You can put all those icons in them on your desktop... or maybe consider actually using the start menu efficiently.
Despite the strange, new deathgrip Apple has kept on the OS X interface, clever elves have been at work long enough so that by now, there are a number of really spectacular ways to customize the entire OS X experience and smooth that workflow.
DragThing - an old standby, yes, but who knew it would come in so radically handy - allows - hell, it allows anything. Transparent folders, titles only visible (no icons.) Every dock or file list as a mouse-over only drawer. Launchbar-a big fave-is just that, a small bar that glides in and out of view, just type in the first few letters of any file. A-Dock, which does everything the Dock ought to. YouMenu, in which you run your computer from the menubar.
The thing is, you don't need to wonder about the future - it's here. And it's very cool.
WindowMaker's dock keeps the most important application icons and applets in place. As the workspace clip's icons are specific to virtual desktops, it is quite easy to use one virtual desktop for word processing and spreadsheets, another one for drawing and a different one for WWW and email. Icons of minimized applications stay out of the way, too.
We're used to the word icon meaning that little bitmap on a desktop or menu. But in the larger sense, something iconic is a visual symbol, a graphic representation of a larger idea. In my field, architecture, when something is iconic we mean that it someone has used a shortcut to communicate some greater idea. A city hall may choose to represent being a seat of power by suggesting the form of a chair. Or a window may tell us it is floating within a wall by it's odd or angular placement within a building elevation.
The desktop environment icon serves as the visual handle for some object like a document, an application or an action. To say that we can find some new paradigm other than an icon doesn't solve the basic problem that humans need handles on things to understand and use them. Granted, there may be another clever re-interpretation of the desktop metaphor, but we'll still need the same handles. And because visual perception is the first means humans have to approach something, I doubt anything non-visual will serve the purpose as well. Let's just say that if we want to replace icons on the GUI, the replacement concept would need to be provable on road signs, transportation graphics, automobile controls... you get the idea.
(Let me just add at this point, that the inevitable humorous comments in the thread regarding the command line actually outline one way people do communication in the real world: voice. Typing at the command line is equivalent to verbal communication. But we can see the failing of this in a real world situation: road signs use shapes and color to communicate more than written text. Sure we need road names and specific situational info to be spelled out, but if every stop sign and light was only verbal, there would be a lot more accidents.)
Personally, I think real improvements could be made on the desktop metaphor. We walk around in 3D environments every day and get feedback by moving through spacial environments. While I'll be the first to condemn first-person game-like 3D navigation, I think there's quite a large area of exploration that is untouched.
For example, we navigate through a book by proceeding from page to page. These pages are numbered, too. And we have a table of contents. But did you know that a large percentage of people actually read magazines backwards? They defy the entire designed navigation structure for a spacial comfort. (It's arguably easier for a right-hander to flip a magazine from back to front.) You also have a sense of where you are in a book by the visual ques offered by the number of pages on either side of your present position. And you get a sense of the book's content and quality by it's heft, it's font, line spacing, margin widths and general graphic tone.
So why can't a computing environment use more and more types of visual ques?
I think the huge barrier to a new approach is the amount of coordination and effort required. Face it, most projects in my desktop environment are doing well just to have a picture, let alone one that also follows rules of purpose, frequency of use, tone, or anything else social that helps us to navigate the real world. We are appalled when menus re-organize themselves by use, but perhaps an environment that adjusts itself to my "position" more capably could rely on some of the same types of spatial input I get from the real world.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
I can also use the Windows key to bring up my start menu, if I need to. My entire desktop is just the dock at the bottom of the screen and a nice desktop picture... very soothing as compared to other "busy" desktops.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I use ObjectBar, a little taskbar reskinning program by Stardock. Its part of a greater suit of programs called ObjectDesktop, that basically includes a whole bunch of Windows-skinning programs. I don't use them though, they're kind of resource intensive. Object Bar is bad enough, but the functionality it gives me is irreplacable.
:)
What I did for myself was take an existing theme (Developer link and orignal shot), and rework it to what I liked. Its quite nice IMO Combined with sysmetrix (system data program), it gives me pretty much everything I need. I've got a thin bar at the bottom with Sysmetrix stacked ontop (and skinned to match seamlessly). On that bar, I've got 4 menus: System (Run, Find, Regedit, Console, Logoff, Reboot, Shutdown, etc), Settings (Win Update, Add/Remove progs, Display and System properties, Control panel shortcut, etc), Drives (HDs, CDs, floppies, MyDocs, etc, all with popup lists of their content), and LAN (network settings and access to other comps on the network). I've also got two shortcuts I use a lot (My Computer and Firebird), and the local time.
Of course, above this I have sysmetrix which i've tricked out to the nuts. It gives me CPU usage, CPU speed, RAM load, swap/virt mem loads, temperatures (CPU, CPU diode, case, outside), HD space, Network load (plus transfer rate and total data transfered), one click mail (checks for me every 10 min) and trash access, Win Uptime, and longformat date with three different timezones (GMT/EST/PST - i'm MST, which is on the bar below) and more!
Then i've got my popup sidebar, which shows pretty much everything else. Its got the systray and current applications (since its vertical, I can stack tons more programs into it. Plus, the width of the bar scales with program names, to a point). Then i've got a section with personalized shortcut menus, that I absolutely love. Its got primary menus (Games, Media, Utility, etc) that slide out into sub categories (Unreal Tournament, Media, Utilities, etc) that have drop down lists of commonly used programs. It gives me access to pretty much any program on my HD, but its sorted by program type rather than name, which is something I hate about the start menu. Speaking of which, the start menu popup sits above my own menus, just incase I ever need it (which isn't often). The best thing about the menu though, is that I can change anything I want. Sometimes, if i'm working on a project, i'll give it its own shortcut or side menu. I can drop in links to relevant programs, have popups to certain folders on my HD, etc. Very handy, and it only takes a few minutes to set up (templates are your friend!)
The thing I find lacking about traditional "Start" menus or other pre-defined ways of accessing a system is that they're made by someone else. The best system will always be one made by you, because you know what information you need at your fingertips. So all you really need to do is find a customizable way of organizing things (for your OS), and then go crazy. Yeah, it can take a while to get everything working just right, but the end result is so worth it. Not having to deal with the hassles and frustrations of finding a program or piece of info is priceless IMO, so I look at any time customizing my desktop as an investment.
That said, alternative interfaces would be pretty damned cool. I know it was mentioned in a previous post, but the way Minority Report worked (hand gestures) was very, very cool. I think adding more physical interfaces to our computers will be the next big step. Hell, i'm already addicted to mouse gestures in Fir
Oops.
Install litestep and download or code your own desktop the way you want it to be.
http://www.litestep.net
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
"What are your ideas for the future of desktops?"
Not my ideas perhaps but there are some interesting window managers out there in Linux land. The most interesting one in my opinion is WindowLab, although Ion's pretty cool too.
Would be to have a big most recently used list, as tall as the screen, sorted by name, selectively bolded according to each item's total frequency of use.
Another option would be having something to allow the user to assign hotkeys or mouse gestures to any file/shortcut on their computer.
And if IBM later tries to patent these ideas without permission, I'll sue them in a most public fashion.
Its like DOS, only pretty.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
MaxMenus is a way to make everything available via a keystroke or a menu.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
There's this thing for windows called "MCL", that is, "Mike's Command-Line" :)
It rolls up to a small button in the corner of your screen, and when you click it, you can type out whatever command you want- it has basic macro ability, etc. I'd love this sort of thing in Linux, it would be great to have it combined with full scripting support, bash-completion, etc. Still, in windows it is good enough. I enjoy typing a letter or two, getting what I want, and having MCL roll back up to a tiny dot I dont need to care about.
I dont tend to use it anymore, though. Mostly I just have everything I use frequently start automatically at boot
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
My tips:
Clean up your desktop.
Several years ago, I found a tool called WinKey, allowing to create a huge ammount of keyboard shortcuts that do not interfer with application-specific hotkeys. Imagine a keyboard that has 80 or 100 extra buttons for applications. Weird? Useful! Just hold down the Windows key and type almost any other key to start one of your 50 most used applications.
My current shortcut mappings are:
Windows-A = ACDSee
Windows-C = cmd.exe (DOS-Box)
Windows-G = http://www.google.com/
Windows-I = Internet Explorer
Windows-N = better than Netscape: Mozilla (Windows-M is used to minimize all windows and can't be used)
Windows-Shift-N = the original Netscape 4.7 - less frequently used, so the shortcut is more complicated
Windows-O = Opera
Windows-P = Putty Menu (selfmade)
Windows-Q = Quirk for Ultraedit (Windows-U is used by usability tools and can't be used)
Windows-V = VNC viewer
Windows-W = WS_FTP
Windows-X = access the Exchange server: Mozilla Mail!
(You are not limited to letters: Numers, arrows and F-keys also work, and you can combine with Shift, Alt and Ctrl.)
And of course, I use some of the standard hardcoded shortcuts:
Windows-E = File Explorer ;-)
Windows-M = Minimize all Windows
Windows-Shift-M = undo Minimize
Windows-R = Run command
Windows-Break = Break Windows using the System Properties
Windows-F = Find files or folders
Less frequently used:
Windows-D = Show Desktop
Windows-Tab = Switch Tasks in the taskbar
Windows-F1 = Windows Help Windows-U = Utility Manager (Windows 2000) - starts Narrator and other usability tools (Winkey does not know this shortcut)
Executive summary: Click count reduction and mouse movement reduction by using short ways for frequently executed tasks. (This is very similar to what packers like winzip do. See also "poor Huffman coding" in Apocalypse 5.)
Tux2000
Denken hilft.
On my Windows machine, I created a Toolbar that points to Desktop, and shrunk it down to its smallest width. To access it, press ctl-esc, esc, tab.
Desktop folders expand like in the Start Menu, including My Computer and Network Neighborhood. Every system file, device, and folder is available via a few arrow keys.
Not as good as a good shell, but mouse-free.
I find that familiarity is the number one key to finding what I want. After 2.5 years of organizing my bookmarks by location on the screen and color, my hand intuitively moves in the correct direction almost before I remember what site I want to visit. Access time is essentially constant. I've also managed to fit almost 300 bookmarks in one browser window with a little room to grow still.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
It's arguably easier for a right-hander to flip a magazine from back to front.
:)
Sorry to pick up on a minor, parenthesised part of your posting, but I agreed with the rest.
What do you mean it's easier for right-handers to flip a magazine from back to front? I'm mostly left-handed, and will pick up and hold a magazine by the flippy (right-hand edge, as it appears sat on the newsstand) edge in my left hand. I'm presuming right handed people will hold a magazine by the flippy edge in their right. (Seems logical). If I do this my thumb is to the rear of the magazine; therefore right-handers will have their thumb on the front. As I flip pages by letting my thumb riffle across the flippy edge of the magazine, the back cover goes first, followed by the back page, and so on... towards the front.
So how does a right-hander do exactly the same?
(Or is this some odd right-handed thing that right-handers do? I still can't get over the fact that when you're eating and you put your knife down, you change the hand you have the fork in. That's just absurd. Why don't you have a fork/spoon/stabbing/shovel hand, and a cutting hand?)
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Windows
Organize start menu by category: programs->media->{apps}, programs->network->{apps}, programs->office->{apps}. Remove icons you will never use. Add apps use use frequently to quicklaunch or on the main start menu (above programs). Use small icons.
Linux
Like windows, but hotkey ctrl-j to its own menu, then have hotkeys on that menu to frequently used apps. For example, ctrl-j k will go to rxvt. ctrl-j l will go to galeon. If the app isn't on a desktop, launch it. (FVWM2 can do this, from what I know, Sawfish should be able to as well.)
Desktop icons are evil, avoid them.
I see the next idea involving two gloves (yes we've all seen the glove thing, and we've all seen the 3D Glove thing, this is a variation someone has probably thought of before).
The gloves need to be light and thin so that one can smoke and type while wearing them, this is important. Using the gloves one navigates through the desktop, pulling it forward to navigate forward, pushing away to navigate backward, grabbing as if grabbing a box and rotating it to rotate the desktop. Tap fingers to select an object, hold finger in place to "carry it", double tap to open an application.
Of course the gloves couldn't be active all the time, otherwise god knows what happens when you light a cigerette or type on your keyboard. Simple solution you have an activator, but it can't be some complex or awkward gesture. Something simple like moving your pinky away from your other fingers, depending on which pinky is extended it selects between two logically grouped subsets of commands so their gestures won't be confused. Like file and folder operations versus spacial navigation.
Within your 3D vault you have boxes and shelves. And a workbench where you keep running applications. The gloves themselves of course would probably be corded at first and later wireless. Gamers and the blind might want feedback gloves down the line, so long as you can type comfortably with them it really doesn't matter.
I currently use two monitors, both filled to the brim with icons and several drawers on each desktop.
I think you are the problem. You need to organize yourself better. If two monitors are full of icons, then I have to wonder why you consider all of them so worthwhile you can't remove some of them.
I've walked by coworkers's desks and seen Windows desktops with icons lined up all the way to the right of the screen. This isn't a rarity. I can't understand how people work this way.
Organization and priority is the key. You've got four basic spots to put stuff. Menu, panel, desktop and folders. Put your applications in the menu, with links to your five most frequently used programs on the panel. The menu should be organized by category and frequency of use. Don't accept the default locations, use the menu editor! The desktop should not contain any applications at all. It should contains icons for drives, devices and projects. The latter is the key. Organize your computing into projects, and put all your data into hierarchical folders. There's also the fifth possibility of "the command line". There's no reason for non-GUI programs to be in your menu system. For instance, I use "tidy" all the time, but have never once considered making an icon for it. If you use KDE, the Alt-F2 key is your friend.
Finally, dump anything you don't use. Do you really need icons for five different music players, six different text editors, and a handful of CD burners and rippers? Do you have a document you're finished creating? Take it off the desktop and file it away!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Tidy it up from time to time , make sure it doesnt get out of hand.
The start menu is simple to use... and it's organized. Try learning how to point a mouse.
Perhaps menus and icons have been around for so long because ... I dunno ... they work?
Really, how much of your time is taken up by double clicking?
Europeans don't switch hands.
And neither do I - esp. since I have limited mobility in my wrists anyway. And my right hand is much weaker than my left hand (even though i'm a right hander), so I use my knife in my left hand and fork in my right. ALWAYS!.
I've actually dragged my windows start bar over to the right hand side. I set up about 4 toolbar folders, setting the text off, small icons, etc. (It's easier to do that while the toolbar is not locked.)
I've got a folder for my games, another for my internet stuff, another for my graphics programs, one for Microsoft office and a last one for my programming. I can fit 15-20 icons into a one inch square box. (about 5 icons across seems to work well.)
I have about 5 icons on my desktop and 45 tiny icons on my toolbar. If I need to find something that isn't a common program, I can find it through the start menu. I only have to use the start menu once or twice a week.
Be advised though that I'm using a 19 inch monitor at 1280x1024. It might not be usefull at lower resolutions.
Add a new directory called %USERPROFILE%/quickstart to your PATH, then make a directory called "quickstart" underneath your profile (i.e. C:\documents and settings\administrator\quickstart). Create a shortcut to that in your QuickLanch menu as well.
You can drag whatever shortcuts you want in there... make batch scripts in there too. Then you can call them from anywhere with the Windows Key + R combo, or you can open it inside quicklaunch and run stuff that way (even use drag+drop)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Using Gnome 2.2 (work) and 2.4 (home) now and have used KDE, WindowMaker, AfterStep, BlackBox, Enlightenment and everything else. About once every 6 months or so, I try various window managers and desktop "environments" and I can safely say that nothing comes close to being as good as the WorkPlace Shell was. If it were modernized a bit in appearance (icons and text prettied up a bit) I would switch to it in a heartbeat.
I always have an xterm open.
Instead of futzing around with the mouse to find the desktop shortcut or navigating the "K" menu, I just type the first few letters of the command, hit tab and there it is.
I don't expect everyone to feel comfortable with this, but at least the option should always be there.
The apps themselves are gui apps, but CLI is still the fastest way IMHO to launch them.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Not one of those customizations of the xp desktop, but a new way to think the interactions between apps, files, devices and actions.
The gui sucks right now, but the concept is interresting and refreshing.
segusoland
OK, so you've got your Gnome panel. You add icons to launch the terminal, the browser, the e-mail client and emacs. And maybe Gimp and Inkscape because they're pretty cool too. Remove all the icons from the desktop except for home and trash. Never click on them, they just look cool. Now you have solved all your clutter problems.
As for desktop window chaos, virtual desktops. The browsing desktop, the emacs desktop, the e-mail desktop. It's so simple.
Now wash your hands.
Heard some OK things about it, i guess you can restructure and completly configure your entire GUI, also making your machine incomprehensable to anyone else who may want to use it...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I have two systems side-by-side. Two windows desktops, the one on my left (i'm a lefty) is my mediaPC/messenger box, video (stuff i watch while working, vids and TV) and im/irc windows (also passive) are here. The main box houses games, the bigger monitor, DVD playback, superior audio, etc and it used for work, games and the like. I find the system works, there's something to be said for two screens with independent systems behind them. Although cutting and pasting between the two doesn't happen, thats was saving to the file server are for :)
Quicklaunch is my friend, Mozilla (browser, mail, partial chat), winamp and a My Computer link are there. Games are accessed (albeit less frequently than everything else) via CD auttorun or the start menu. Documents and files on the server... WinKey+F :) (for you unknowers out there, that means FIND)
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
But I would point you at Mac OS 11... or a coming iteration of the macos only because it has led the way in GUI design(at the beginning, and again with the resurgance of quarttz rendering and expose`) and voice interaction... You never know where it will come from, but my money is on apple with the next big innovation on a desktop machine.
I like to use the toolbars that you can make out of folders. I like to make one auto hide at the top of my screen and drag all my application icons to it. It functions like a dock. Then i use my desktop as a workplace. I actually never use the startmenu at all.
- delere useless stuff from the top of the start menu: just right click on it and do delete.
- move stuff from [Start][Programs] directly to [Start]: click on it, and drag it where you want it. If it doesn't work, right-click on it, drag it and select [move] when you release the mouse. I only have [Startup] within the [Start][Programs] folder.
- remove the apps from their folders and delete the folders: instead of having [Start][Programs][Jasc][Paint Shop Pro] I just have [Start][Paint Shop Pro]
- use folders for categories of apps within [Start}: Graphics, Internet, (Open)Office, Multimedia, Accessories, Admin, Programming...
And set hotkeys for the most used ones: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-I for Internet browser...Non-Linux Penguins ?
Does anyone do multiple desktops with different icons on each one (for Windblows I mean, Linux makes it easy.)?
Work desktop: Textpad, Open Office, etc.
Music desktop: Winamp etc.
Fun desktop: Games etc.
Significant Other out desktop: err... movies.
Obviously some applications can be run in the background and not interfere with your work background.
F1 starts web browser.
F2 starts terminal.
and so on.
Fialing that I invoke the program from the command line.
How difficult is that?
Unfortunately Windows makes it difficult and messy to do simple tasks under the false pretense that point and click is user firenldy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I was recently looking for a new wallpaper for my desktop, to replace the tired Sniper Kitten that's been there for a while. It occured to me that the desktop is just so much empty, wasted space.
I think the task bar is necessary. The system tray is great as a sort of background taskbar, to hide the applications that you probably won't have to switch to too often. Everything that's been around for a few years should have a built-in clock.
On the other hand, the start menu and desktop are wrong. Or at least not necessarily right. What if you replaced the start button with an auto-minimise-all button, to get you back to the (new) desktop. It could be a toggle button that put all of your other apps back where they were when you're done on the desktop.
The new desktop should be divided into customisable sections, based on tasks. It would need to provide access to all of your applications. It should contain links to recently used apps, recently edited documents, most used applications. It could even contain syndicated news feeds, private messages from other users, or other new features.
I had intended to flesh out my new desktop idea, perhaps make a fake screenshot to show what I meant, but it slipped my mind. Thank you for reminding me; I may get around to it now.
Why is anything anything?
Oragnize them! (subfolders, and sub-sub-folders). Delete icons that are useless, and so on.
Also, use keyboard shortcuts.
Have you read my journal today?
What I have done is create a secondary Toolbar (right-click on toolbar, select Toolbars/New Toolbar), and make the only contents your Quick Launch. Set the icon size to large, and dock it at the top of the screen. I put all of my most-used apps there, and if you set it to always be on top, you don't worry about maximizing windows on top of it.
Hi-Technical Excellent Taste and Flavor!
I'm talking Apple style dock here. You know, something you can pin to the side/top/bottom of the screen which is translucent, and magnifies when you roll over the scalable icons on it.
Gnome and KDE both have attempts at this, but they're always crappy small icons, no scaling, and no translucency.
I'd code one, and I even looked into it, but it seems X can't deal with translucency natively or something. I'm going to keep looking into it though, but I can't live without my docks on Windows now and I am dying to switch to Linux full-time.
It's called "Launch Bar" for Mac OS X. I love it.
A verb oriented interface. A very interesting looking app, with a radically different paradigm.
HomePage and Screenshots
Seems like every time UI's come up, some one I know always says that "the only UI you need is emacs in X windows". Prefer vi, myself, but that requires a real User Interface, one with green letters on a black screen and a hundred and one noisy, clacky keys.
Mice are for people who can't spell.
The screenshots have been removed due to bandwidth issues... Maybe it was Slashdotted?
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
The problem is more that what you mention of every program that takes a dump in my startmenu. I installed an Epson scanner the other day. The scanner is great, thanks. But there were like 5 items some with submenus in my startmenu! What sort of bullshit is this? That is MY startmenu.
Everything can go under "Epson", or "Scanner", thank you.
That, and program which install them selvves as Sierra/Games/Whatever or Massive Entertainment Corporation/Application Programs/SuperGame and crap like that.
A good install programs ASKS me where I want it and the same goes for icons on the desktop which is another favourite playpen for install programs.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism