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Thinking About Desktop Eyecandy
An anonymous reader writes "This article ponders over whether excess eye candy and special effects being incorporated on the desktop is a good trend after all? The author explains why he thinks the users are taken for a ride by the OS companies in compelling them to upgrade their hardware in order to enable these processor intensive and memory hungry special effects."
...as long as everything is configurable. The minute something becomes distracting I should be able to disable it. Forced fancy effects that do nothing but distract you and spin away CPU cycles are a waste.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Do people honestly believe that consumers are the ones who benefit most from a new operating system?
I don't mind home users buying this, but why do companies?
It bugs the hell out of me that a select licenced windows server cd comes with eye candy switched on(ok its not much but it's a server!)
why???
OS X has loads of eye candy. The obvious benefit is that users get more feedback on their actions. This means less calls to tech support, because it is obvious to the user whether they are taking the right actions or not. For example, when a program crashes in OS X there is a spinning beachball, and when a program launches the dock icon bounces.
The hidden benefit is that much of the eye candy in OS X is very soothing. It makes it easier to get work done when you have a soothing background and your actions on the computer generate a continual calming effect. Everything from the click of the keys on my powerbook to the way programs open and close is designed to put the user into a state of flow.
A prettier GUI is often easier on the eyes, and if you have a load of extra resources (do you really need a 3ghz machine with 1 gig of ram just to browse the web?) might as well use them to make the interface more attractive. Though whats attractive to one, may not be attractive to another.
I'm all for eyecandy in my OS so long as it is in moderation. To me, that means 2 things:
1) It's not excessive. I don't need 10-second animations to show a window has popped up.
2) It's not too hardware intensive for the time it's released. Around 3 generations ago for video cards.
3) You can scale it back if needed.
For #1, it shouldn't slow things down or cause a distraction. Something cool, but subtle. OSX's dock bar is a nice example.
For #2, I mean you shouldn't need a current-gen system to render everything. If Vista came out today, I don't want to be required to have an nVidia 6800GT to view the desktop with the defaults on. If you required a Geforce 2 or 3, then fine; they've been out long enough that most should have something as good or better (plus you should be able to turn it down if you don't).
For #3, you should be able to run an OS in a lighter configuration. This is for people that either don't have recent hardware or just want a light experience for performance (or personal preference).
But building more special effects in the OS level will rob the extra power and memory from the applications and games which rightfully require them.
.. the PC I'm typing this reply on has a 2.6GHz CPU and 1Gb of RAM, with a Radeon 9800pro graphics card. That's faaaaar more than my desktop requires. If I didn't "waste" the extra capacity on delightfully shiny effects it'd just go to unused. It's not like Firefox would start using it.
.. I *like* swooshy effects. I'm a PHP developer. I need cheering up. ;)
This guy is incredibly clueless. Effects only take up "power" (argh) and memory when they're in use. The likes of OSX automatically scales down the fancy stuff if your system doesn't have the grunt to run them well, I imagine Vista will do the same. Switch of the swishy bits and your system will use no more RAM or CPU time than if they weren't there in the first place. Besides which
And further to that
http://twitter.com/onion2k
It depends - some can be quite useful. For example, the genie effect when minimizing a window in OS X shows you exactly where the window went, so you know how to get it back. That's awesome for a beginning computer user and very intuitive.
On the other hand, the water ripple effect when dropping a widget in dashboard in os X is pretty much useless. The ONLY possible way you could call this usefull is because it's an indication that you did in fact let go of the mouse button, but that's a serious stretch.
I personally find the smooth movement and eyecandy in os x to be great - sure you could make something like expose work without the eye candy, but the smooth scaling of windows makes it very easy to use and intuitive. I stare at a computer screen for a large portion of my day - I do, in fact, enjoy the fact that it's nice to look at.
Eyecandy incorporated in the proper way can in fact be useful. It can provide extra visual cues to indicate what's going on. It can help new users familiarize themselves with a system. However, for the most part, the ways it's currently being implemented are more of a distraction than a useful feature.
This guy's the limit!
Italics are quotes from the article:
But building more special effects in the OS level will rob the extra power and memory from the applications and games which rightfully require them.
I generally play games that require a lot of processing power in fullscreen mode, so the OS using fancy features for display will have very little impact (all of the OS's textures will be swapped off the GPU unless I alt-tab or otherwise task switch away from the fullscreen game). And the vast majority of applications I use just aren't going to have any significant negative impact from a bit of eyecandy. Computers are ridiculously fast these days... Word processors and web browsers have more than enough power to spare some for eye candy. There aren't too many applications for which this kind of eyecandy actually hurts performance on modern systems. Even things like, say, movie encoding or other heavy number-crunching apps aren't impacted significantly because almost all of the work in displaying the eye candy is done on the video GPU which would otherwise be unused anyway.
There are other valid reasons too which prompt me to take the viewpoint that less eye candy is better for the OS. Experience tells me that it is futile to do productive work within a desktop with all the special effects enabled. The last time, I tried it, I was severely distracted and fell short of completing my work. Is it just me or are there others who have been through the same experience ? To do productive work, it always helps to have a fully functional but spartan desktop.
I disagree here too. "Eyecandy" if used well (see MacOS X for some examples) can give subtle cues that actually make me more productive. This part is clearly subjective so YMMV.
But the Windows users do not have this luxury. For example, a person using Windows 2000 will be forced to buy a copy of Vista if he needs the added security and extra features like better search. And to install Vista on his computer, he will most certainly have to embark on a spending spree to upgrade his PC to accomodate the extra special effects that are integrated into the OS
The guy who wrote this should have done some research. You can run Vista without the Aero Glass UI being active, just as Windows XP can be dumbed down to look, feel, act and perform like Windows 2000 (except with much faster booting times).
If you don't want the eyecandy, shut it off. You CAN do this in Windows XP and Vista, despite what the misinformed article states.
I really disagree with the article. Computer interfaces should look good and be efficient. GUI's will always push the envelop of whatever technologies come around. If OS and software vendors aren't pushing the envelope, then they aren't working hard enough at improvement. Who cares about your lame 486's, anyway?
The author then makes the claim that nice interfaces rob the computer of processing power. I disagree. Most of the time the computer (especially desktop) is doing nothing. In anycase, if what I understand is true, upcoming MS windows and some future X implememntations will use hardware acceleration for rendering window graphics-- so, the CPU won't be under any "strain" at all.
Anyways, I paid my dues with the vt100 era. It is now a pleasure to use a nice interface. I would not have it any other way.
Just like the fact people like to decorate their slave boxes... Err... I mean cubicles, people actually like working with fancy high-tech OS technology that they see like the ones in the movies. The affect might wear off after 2,000 hours at working the same dead end job day in and day out, but if it feels like you are on the deck of the enteprise while doing Excel spreadsheets you might feel better about coming into work on time.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
A certain amount of eye candy can make things more pleasant, though. I used twm for years, but now I use enlightenment, because it gives me the simple, uncluttered design that twm does, but has nice shading and other visual effects that make the whole experience more pleasant.
I like uncluttered and simple, but I also like a polished look. I don't use the window switching bar thingy on the top (it wasn't even turned on by default in the version I have now), and the only icons I have on my desktop is a single row of virtual desktops along the bottom edge. Simple, elegant, and lots of uncluttered screen real estate.
That's why there's fluxbox
Is eyecandy really necessary?
Depends on the person. Some people like beauty, some people like function, some people (such as myself) like both.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
First, let's all just admit that out GPUs are sitting mostly idle 96% of the time. This is not simply a question of CPU cycles anymore, like it used to be.
Second, lets admit that when you refer to 'eye candy', you are framing the quesiton as a perjorative. It strongly implies that what you are talking about has already been judged as useless decoration.
Good design follows function, as the saying goes. Examples of "good" eye candy - the Dock in OS X's genie effect. Its fast, it tells you where your minimized document is living, and it can be turned off (to straight scaling). Nothing wrong with this at all. Where developers go wrong is usually in two areas. One, developers are not designers. Developers write code, and should not attempt serious design, any more than the Photoshop and Illustrator jockeys should attempt C++. Second, picking an appropriate bit of eye candy should always follow an already identified need. This is the form-follows-function. Animation always draws the eye, it should not be misused to redirect your attention where it is not needed. Here's a great example: pull-down menus in Mac OS X vs the same in Windows XP. On the Mac, pulldowns appear instantly, and fade away once something is selected; this is correct behaviour, as you asked for a menu - there should be no delay. Fading away is fine because the selection has been made, and you have moved on. In XP, the menus fade up, and vanish instantly - totally backwards. That is bad eye candy.
In the end it is always a question of design. Eye candy by itself is nothing, no value judgement can be rendered.. it is the application. So the way this article is framed is mostly useless for purposes of deciding when and where to employ such effects.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
i beleive "eyecandy" refers to the useless effects, as, its candy for your eyes, and candy is not useful to a healthy diet. On the other hand, some foods are both good for you, and taste great, but i dont have much of a sweet tooth, so i dont know about others.
:(
:( Sorry everyone, i should probably delete this...
Its true some effects are nice, personally i perfer a elegent destkop, but speed and function are my primary concerns, so i have to use a ugly desktop, because all the elegent ones have no function i need, and are to power hungry. (example: i have to use worker as my file manager, its functional and speedy, but down right ugly), shame theres no better file managers that can open files based on their type (worker is very good at this, which is why i have to use it, i dont have the time to assign extentions to thousands of files just so other file managers can get off with being unfunctional). Altho, wmii is a very elegent window manager, if you dont want to waste time managing windows (which i dont), so there are some elegent and functional projects out there, i just wish they would all use the same toolkit, so they could all look the same
owe, poor me, i ranted
Man, those long-hairs in the 60's could delete information so much more efficiently. I'm totally jealous.
I am a Linux user myself at home, and trying to get it worked into the corporate strategy, but I can guarantee you that they weren't "more productive" when each application required reconfiguring for specific hardware, you had slower communications, and no graphical capabilities. No GUI is great for filling out forms with text, but for other office-style tasks, it's much harder for the average user.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"Tis better to remain silent and appear stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
I know, I've read on several sites now that the fanciest of the UI effects will only be available if the machine meets the requirements, and that the effects and general UI look and feel has many many steps down it can take in the event that the hardware of the current machine doesnt meet the specifications needed.
Chances are the server OS is based on most of the same technologies, would these people assume that you need a GeForce 7800 GTX in your server just because it runs Vista Server?
I can see it now, a Terminal Server with a Athlon FX-60, 500 gig hard drive, SLI GeForce 7800 GTX's...
Come on you GUI Nazi's get over it, technology evolves, plain moves to pretty, it's been happening for decades now. If your hardware doesn't support it, make it look like windows 95 (or redhat 6 if that floats your boat instead). Not everybody uses their computer with bread and water type work nessesity only. Some of us are into computers because we're enthusiasts, and we like to have lots of UI candy, and we don't give a shit if it takes 24 pixel pipelines to get there, cause we've got em.
Isnt is funny how the people who want and will enjoy a fancy accelerated UI are the same people who will have hardware to run it, and all the folks bashing it and saying it't not nessesary are the ones that are going to get the "windows is laughing at you message" during install that probably will verbatim say ""Microsoft Windows has detected that you are using a legacy video accelerator device. Enhanced display options will not be available at this time.""
Queue the Simpsons bully laugh "Haa-ha!"
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Linux offers choice in GUIs, but so will Vista (as did XP). What would be really slick is a single, consistent GUI that doesn't remind one of Windows 3.1 or Fisher Price but still runs smoothly, auto-downsizing effects if the system can't handle it. OS X has that, I question whether any OS will ever achieve that though.
Adding an image. Perhaps even an image that tells me something about the contents of the window could be considered eyecandy OR and extra clue. Was it gnome that colored the entire desktop red if you ran as root? Eyecandy or vital visual feedback?
Stricly speaking everything not in X is eyecandy. Run solaris on a xerox printer machine and you will get the bare basics of a window manager and yes it does everything it needs to but gee gods it is hard on the eyes.
So where do you draw the line?
Personally I liked Enlightenment but now run XFCE4 wich suggests that while I like a pretty picture I don't want it to get in the way of business. KDE 3.* is nice and all but gee gods it loves the animations. Gnome is too inflexible for me.
Give me candy but don't slow me down. No animations. INSTANT popups/slides/whatever.
Then again I do usually have gkrellm open. Lots of flashy blinky shiny thingys. But they don't slow me down and while they are eyecandy also tell me someting about my computer. Since I am on old hardware wich I tend to try to do things it isn't designed for I "use" the gkrellm eyecandy to tell me if I can expect a freeze to happen or when gentoos emerge is about to fill its HD space again.
So usefull eyecandy?
As for pure eyecandy effects like the holy grail of true transparancy. Well. My terminals are semi transparant and I would have it anyother way as I think (just my opinion) that it is easier on the eyes then a monochrome background. True transparancy would perhaps look even nicer and if it was as smooth as a FPS then all the better.
Yes off course it doesn't really matter and I would hardly use a bad terminal emulator over a good one just for the sake of transparancy BUT if two terms are equal is the one that lets you choose your type of background better?
Is the windows manager that then allows your term emulator to offer you transparancy then better for it? Etc all the way down to the kernel.
I personally don't like eyecandy that steals window space OR takes time but I do like eyecandy that makes the desktop less endless grey slabs of unused space.
Should the OS/window manager developers care about eyecandy? Well that is the beauty of OSS isn't it? Use pure X if you hate all eyecandy or use any of the window managers if you want more.
A bit of sugar makes the medicine go down. Yes the medicine still needs to be good but sugar helps.
Will windows new 3d desktop rendering be a good or a bad thing? Well, there was a recent discussion about offloading physics in games onto the gpu. That would help run the game a lot faster. Ages ago, long before GPU's, some video cards started offering windows acceleration wich supposedly helped offload some of the desktop rendering from the CPU onto the vidcard.
It makes sense in a way. If you can save the CPU a boring task then it can spend its cycles on more meaningfull things. I do know for a fact that a true dual CPU machine has a lot less waiting for redraws then a single cpu machine. Would a single CPU machine with GPU desktop rendering be just as responsive? Surely that can't be bad.
In a way I don't see the problem that the author has with it. Sure sure, windows users who want vista "security" (see a few articles below about IE7 for vista and how secure it is) need to upgrade and pay for the eyecandy but that is MS business model. They got more money some some countries so it works. Anyway I am fairly sure MS allows people to turn off all the candy they don't want.
Ultimately the candy has little to do with the underlying OS. How a widget is drawn has
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You can bet they will.
If it's not the eye candy it'll be all the 'essential' system services. 2000->XP required an upgrade, XP->Vista will need an upgrade. It's just the way things work.
I would but I can't shop photos or model solids in DOS...
Collector's Edition
I dont know about you, but my laptop's battery life drops drasticly when the GPU is used, plus the CPU runs at 600 mhz all the time. So I seriously doubt a laptop will run vista good on battery power. But plug it in? Blazing.
If you think about it, everything is focusing far more on graphics and eyecandy than ever before. Films concentrate less on plot and just go for over-the-top special effects, even everyday objects go for looks over useability. People seem to be so obsessed with something looking nice that they don't think to find out if it's actually any good or not.
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
A lot of what people call "Eye Candy" in XGL, are actual usability improvements. For example:
The cube. While the fastest way to switch virtual desktops is to hide all the current windows and show the windows in the other virtual desktop, the feedback is so little that to the new user it looks like the applications crashed. Rotating a cube makes it really obvious that your windows are still alive but just in another place. And makes it obvious how to get them back (rotate the cube the oposite way)
Drop shadows. Allows the borders to be smaller, and thus increase usable space, while still mantaining a visual clue as to the limits of the window. It also helps the brain identify what window is on top.
Animated minimization. The fastest way to minimize a window is to just hide it. However, visually it looks virtually identical to closing the window. By shrinking the window smoothly into the task bar, it is obvious the relationship between the minimized task bar icon and the window and it lets your brain quickly identify where the window went.
Expose like feature. This one is really obvious, it helps you find windows very quickly, by picture, not by just the text in the task bar.
Some of it though is hard to justify, for example there is no apparent usability improvement from the wiggly windows (someone please correct me), but given that is completelly optional, and it can be done by the video card withought really affecting the CPU, I fail to see the harm of it.
My idea of a good desktop interface is one that doesn't slow me down. There are two kinds of eye candy, static and dynamic. Static eye candy in the form of a visually appealing interface that is simple, elegant, and ergonomic is good. Dynamic eye candy in the form of visual effects tend to be bad.
Bad Eye candy:
Example 1, fading menus: The default configuration of Windows XP features menus that fade in and out. Right click on the desktop of a fresh install of XP and you'll see what I mean. This is bad. Why? Because the rendering that is being done takes TIME. It slows down the user who has to wait for it to render. Admittedly it is only a few tenths of a second, but when you're a grand master hacker (!cracker) a few tenths of a second do make a difference. I always turn this 'feature' off.
Example 2, window animation: Gnome has a very annoying "feature" where it animates the resizing of windows. Minimize a window and gnome draws a series of progressively smaller outline boxes on the screen tracing the minimization of the window. I'm not sure what use this is supposed to be. I do know that it slows me down. When I do something it should be as instantaneous as possible. KDE has the same "feature" but unlike Gnome it can be disabled. There are problems that I have with Gnome and the inability to turn off the bothersome BS (of which this is but one example) is a big one.
Good Eye Candy:
Example 1, Bouncing icons: Recent versions of KDE include what I call icon bouncing. When you double click on an icon to open a file or start a program, a miniaturized bouncing version of that icon appears next to the mouse pointer. The reason that this is not bad is because if I've double clicked on something I expect for there to be a lag while the program or file opens. The bouncing cursor does not slow me down. The reason it is good is because it lets me know that the program or file is actually trying to open. There are times when you double click on something and it doesn't quite register that you've done so. Without the bouncing cursor you might sit there for several seconds waiting for something to happen before realizing that it isn't going to. With the bouncing cursor you know immediately whether or not the system has registered your request or not.
Example 2, Icon highlighting: Both Gnome and KDE feature icon highlighting. Whenever the mouse pointer is over an icon, it changes color. This is not bad because it does not slow you down. It is good because it gives that extra little bit of feeback to the user and creates a more interactive environment.
In short user interfaces should be as efficient as they possibly can be. Eye candy that increases efficiency or improves aesthetics without reducing efficiency are good. Eye candy that reduces efficiency is bad, even if it arguably makes the interface more aesthetically pleasing.
Now I realize that some people demand special effects and other such things. There is no reason why they cannot be accommodated. But at the same time the user MUST be able to turn any and all effects OFF. Furthremore I would argue that there should be a simple configuration tool that will provide both fine grained control of the effects as well as a set of general effects level settings (max, medium, low, off) to allow users to quickly set the level of eye candy they have to endure.
I understand that Microsoft is adding in all sorts of eye candy to vista and that this is the primary reason why they recommend you have a Nvidia 12800^e24 super ninja turbo card with vertex dimpling and pixel shader 15 to run it. I have not seen vista yet, but I suspect that this is a grave mistake and that most experienced users will turn most or all of these new fangled 'features' OFF. I know I will.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Should people have to retrain?
:) I think it said something about how the speaker clicks every time I moved the mouse as well, some kind of bug in the beta.)
This is a personally interesting topic for me. I remember trying out my first beta of Windows 95 in late 1994 or early 1995. At the time, I was the only desktop support guy at the headquarters of The Buckle. (I think it's just Buckle now, the clothing store at a lot of malls. Anyway, I digress) One of my reponsibilities was to help a lot of nontechnical office personnel use Windows 3.11. I had everyone (Even the older people who had never used a computer before this job) trained up and comfortable using the Windows 3.1 Program Manager interface. One of my first reactions to seeing the Windows 95 interface was to post some idiotic rage posting to the Win95 beta group just trashing on the new interface and how stupid it was to have to have everyone retrain.
Looking back, it's just funny to me that I was unable to see how much better the Win95 interface was than the shitty Win3.x program manager interface. (Even though the relatively static Win95 interface was just a step in the right direction, but back then you couldn't drag stuff to the menu, and couldn't tweak it out the way you can now) A major personal learning experience for me, to not get myself stuck in a comfort zone and reject the new just because I didn't know much about it yet.
So, my point on this is - if the new interface actually makes it easier for people to use, then the retraining IS worth it. However, if it's just a bunch of snazzy eye candy then I could care less.
So, I'm going to hit the new interface with some patience and learned wisdom before I trash it. (And very much hoping nobody can find my stupid old rage post about the Win95 interface, as I really find it embarrassing in retrospect.
So yes, I totally agree with where you're coming from, but also want to give it a chance to see if it's a true usability improvement. If it is, then I welcome it.