Ubuntu 12.04 To Include Head-Up Display Menus

For the first few years of its existence, it would have been fair to say that Canonical was essentially polishing, packaging and publishing Debian Linux (and Gnome) to create the base Ubuntu desktop, to great acclaim. For the past few years, though, the company has pushed new looks and new applications (cf. Unity and Ubuntu TV), and refused to stick with prettifying existing interfaces. Now, Barence writes with this excerpt from PC Pro: "Ubuntu is set to replace the 30-year-old computer menu system with a 'Head-Up Display' that allows users to simply type or speak menu commands. Instead of hunting through drop-down menus to find application commands, Ubuntu's Head-Up Display lets users type what they want to do into a search box. The system suggests possible commands as the user begins typing – entering 'Rad' would bring up the Radial blur command in the GIMP art package, for example. HUD also uses fuzzy matching and learns from past searches to ensure the correct commands are offered to users. Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth told PC Pro the HUD will make it easier for people to learn new software packages, and migrate from Windows to Linux software without having to relearn menus. The HUD will first appear in Ubuntu 12.04."

Comments

Too fast !

[Pieroxy]

I'd rather have them make Unity usable first. We'll see if they are able to do it and we may decide to move forward from that point.

Re:Too fast !

[jawtheshark]

Indeed, there is something wrong with everyone ditching mature products... So now Unity is "ok". I found that after adapting myself to it, it works. Not as great as Gnome2 did, but I can live with it as a default desktop. However, they're going to change even more. I wrote about this mindset a while ago.. For the TL;DR crowd: Mature software is not seen as something "good" but as "something to be replaced". It's a sad time we live in.

Re:Too fast !

[Pieroxy]

You claim to be able use Unity, so I have to ask: Did they fix the multi-workspace issue where the bar showing all your running apps show them all, not just the apps running in the current workspace? Because there's little point in having multiple workspaces if the bar showing programs doesn't make any difference between them..

That's one of my biggest grudges against Unity.

Re:Too fast !

[enemorales]

"... and migrate from Windows to Linux software without having to relearn menus" I do like typing the name (or part of the name) of an application to run it, but still I'm really not sure about this one. Menus, at least, are a lot more standarized in term of names (for the most common tasks: copy, pase, search, undo...) than applications names. I'm a long time linux user, for example, but I have not idea how is called the presentation application in open-office (or libre-office). Will I have to type "presentation"? How many people will guess that and not start typing "powerpoint"?

Re:Too fast !

[scottbomb]

Xubuntu. XFCE to the rescue.

Re:Too fast !

[david.given]

My father's been using Ubuntu for years, and really likes it; he prefers it to Windows. As he's not a Linux geek and installing Linux in such a way as to reliably not wreck anything else on the system is still not foolproof, I've been managing the system for him.

I've been holding off on upgrading him since Unity came out; he's running the last LTS from before that. But that's getting a bit long in the tooth, so when the recent version came out I showed him Unity and Gnome 3. He loathes them both, calling them childish --- he particularly dislikes the huge, unlabelled icons. Eventually we found the (highly non-intuitive) way to shrink the Unity dock bar icons and he says he can live with it, but he really just wants the old Ubuntu back. Gnome 3 he thought was unspeakable. No task bar, no minimise, and above all he dislikes having the dock on a different screen. (He wasn't keen on the Unity launcher screen, either.)

But this is the really telling thing: I tried him out on various systems, to see which one he liked best. His favourite? Haiku.

Re:Too fast !

[theguyfromsaturn]

I actually like Gnome 3 better than Gnome 2. I bitched about it at first. But it improved my productivity. Sometimes we only resist change because we are used to something. True, change for change's sake is not necessarily good. But sometimes you have to experiment with new things. Otherwise, you can't find a better way of doing what you always did before. The old way of doing things is often based on the limitations of the time. It's good that we keep distros and desktop environments that apply the old ways. But it doesn't mean that the new way may not be better.

And sometimes the new way is not all that new. It seems to me that the new heads up display is very much like what I usually do anyways... Alt-F2 and call my fav. command. That was true to call an application why can it not be true about a menu command? Sometimes the menu command is easy to figure out, but where it is being kept is hard. And lots of time is wasted in finding it.

It's actually an old interface if you think about it. The first version of AutoCAD I knew (for DOS) had this command line that you could use in conjunction with the mouse. It increased productivity back then enormously for not forcing you to constantly wave the mouse back and forth between the menu and where it needs to be. Once you memorize the commands it just works. And guess what? AutoCAD still has that function. Since the 1980s. It's probably what has kept it as the top CAD solution (at least in civil engineering it is) despite its price tag. The command line is awesome. Now, Ubuntu proposes in essence to carry on that power (no quite, I'm sure you can't just cut and paste a string of commands from the clipboard thus making a spreadsheet a preferred interface of mine to AutoCAD) to pretty much every application. I think it is awesome. I think it is not new, and about time that it was done. Watch out AutoDesk. AutoCAD may end up having some competition through no fault of their own (the competitors, I mean).

Re:Too fast !

[jawtheshark]

I support users... Users will be using Unity, I need to know it. The world doesn't revolve around me.

Re:Too fast !

[TheRealMindChild]

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.
In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey will make an attempt with the same response - all of the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Keep this up for several days. Turn off the cold water. If, later, another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it even though no water sprays them. Now, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Replace the third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs.

Why not?

"Because that's the way it's always been done around here."

Cherry picked from http://www.wowzone.com/5monkeys.htm because I don't know the origin

We all get complacent with our tools because we know how to make them work. Don't be opened to the fact that how you do something may not be the best way to get it done

Re:Too fast !

[tehcyder]

The world doesn't revolve around me.

Blimey, there's a phrase I'd never expected to see on slashdot.

Re:Too fast !

[spasm]

Err.. You already can. Alt-F2, then:
mail user@host.tld file.txt

if you want a subject line,

mail -s "Here's he file" user@host.tld file.txt

I thought it was for "human beings".

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been doing this for years... so much, in fact, that I have no idea where most menu entries are on my Windows and Linux boxes, and I'm sure many don't even have menu entries. My wife can't navigate my desktops.

I hit "F2" and type commands on Gnome/Linux, and hit "r" all the time. It makes me look like a hacker and is really intimidating to inexperienced users watching me.

Expecting the user to know which command they want - especially in Linux where most program names have nothing to do with their functionality - just seems like a very strong turn in the opposite direction that Ubuntu has been taking.

Re:I thought it was for "human beings".

[Flammon]

You didn't read the article, did you?

Watch the video and then let me know how you've been doing this for years on Windows and Linux because I'm really curious now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=w_WW-DHqR3c

Re:I thought it was for "human beings".

[Stratoukos]

I've been doing something similar on OS X.

Every application's Help menu item has a textbox that filters all menu items. You can also reach this textbox through a shortcut (cmd+shift+?).

So, for example, if I'm editing a document and I want to make some text superscript, Instead of hunting through its menus, I just hit cmd+shift+?, type 'sup' and hit enter.

LTS?

[CheShACat]

Isn't 12.04 supposed to be the next LTS release? Seems like they've gone far wayward from their original goals if they're introducing such huge new projects into what's supposed to be a stable, reliable release that enterprises can trust. It would be a better idea to introduce it in 12.10, surely?

Re:LTS?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are introducing such a far reaching goal you probably want as much time to work on it as possible

You clearly don't understand the LTS release cycle in the slightest.

Re:LTS?

[squiggleslash]

LTS has never been for software that's already stable. Traditionally LTS releases are the most buggy versions upon launch. No system administrator jumps from one LTS to another without waiting a few months for Canonical to get the kinks out.

When people talk about "stability" with LTS releases they're talking about it being unchanging, not being free of bugs. Because it's unchanging Canonical usually makes sure LTS releases come with the latest greatest of everything, because three years down the line it's still going to be stuck with that version of everything - with bug fixes of course.

It sounds counter intuitive, but it wouldn't make sense for something you need to support for three to five years to come with software that's "tried and tested" - because that'd mean a distribution that's obsolete long before its support period is up.

Emacs...

[WeirdAlchemy]

has had this for decades. M-x allows you to enter a command by name, with tab completion.

Innovation is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Replacing the 30 year old GUI with the 40 year old CLI*.

(*plus autocomplete, yay)

The concept...

[christianT]

...sounds good. That is almost the way I work now on windows or linux. On windows I more often than not hit (windows) + R to get the run box and then type the name of the .exe I want to run. On Ubuntu, it is (alt) + (f2) and type a command. I for one hope our Ubuntu overlords pull this off.

I liked Ubuntu when it was "polished" Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Now Mark Shuttleworth is well on his way to being the next Steve Jobs, for good or for bad.

And I've gone back to Debian, which is a huge relief after the crushing disappointments that were the last few version of Ubuntu.

In a year or two I expect Ubuntu to be as "open source" as IOS...

LTS?

[AikonMGB]

Why are we introducing a dramatically new interface feature for a long-term support (LTS) release?

This reminds me soooo muuch of...

[tyl]

"For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme."

s/radios/linux/g ; s/listening to/running/

Nearly there. Time to start spinning in your grave, Mr. Adams.

Philip

Innovation

[Max Romantschuk]

I have to say it... While there have been a lot of issues with Unity and Ubuntu in general I love the fact that Ubuntu dares to try and do genuine innovation.

Let's face it: It's easy to bash something that "sucks", but it requires a lot more courage to risk braking stuff and trying to find genuinely new approaches to existing problems.

Re:Innovation

[ledow]

Courage: Yes.

Sense: No.

Lots of things take courage, including throwing yourself off a building. It doesn't mean it's a good idea.

My first thought was actually:

"For fuck's sake. No another attempted 'paradigm' shift on how my users are supposed to run the only program they use and print a document from it."

Seriously, innovation is all well and good. But can someone please innovate around getting a system that increase productivity by NOT requiring retraining. Every "new" way to do things costs money and customers. Whereas a lot of people would pay a lot of money for a system that operates pretty much like Windows 95 did, but without the bugs and other horrendous ideas it had like Active Desktop.

Where is the "Productive Desktop Distro"?

Re:Innovation

[JustinOpinion]

Agreed. It's fashionable to decry any new UI ideas as stupid. And indeed many UI redesigns are a step backwards, or purely aesthetic, or confusing, ... I'm not a fan of Unity, for instance. But we have to be at least somewhat open to new UI ideas, or computer interaction will never move forward.

This particular idea seems really good to me. In fact it's something I've been wanting for a long time. There have been small pushes in this direction (e.g. the Ubiquity add-on for Firefox would let you type commands (like "map XXX" or "email page to XXX") and get immediately useful results), but for it to really work, from a user perspective, it has to be available in every application so that it's worth the cost to learn the new style.

Being able to search the menu structure is really powerful, especially for applications with loads of commands (photo editors, word processors, etc.). I've lost count of the amount of time I've wasted searching through menus for a command that I use infrequently. I know it exists, I've used it before... but does it count as a "Filter" or an "Adjustment" or an "Edit"? Why can't I just search for it? Moreover, I shouldn't have to train myself to remember where it was put. Once you get used to typing commands, it can be extremely fast to do so, becoming almost as fast as a keyboard shortcut. (Obviously this will be more the case in applications where your hands are already on the keyboard, like word processors; it could be slow in applications like photo-editing where your hand is usually on the mouse...)

The ability to rapidly invoke commands via the keyboard is something that I would think most slashdotters would love: it adds back in some of the power of the commandline. It also inherently streamlines across applications (you should be able to just type "Save" or "Preferences" in any application and get the expected behavior, regardless of where they put the menu item. If they're smart, they'll kind synonyms, so that "Options" and "Preferences" map to each other...)

While I am excited about all this, they do need to leave, in my opinion, the usual menu bar accessible and visible. The reason is simple: during the initial learning phase of an application, you don't even know what's possible. You need some way to explore the available commands, see what the app can do, and experiment. Only once you're somewhat familiar with the application does it make sense to quickly invoke commands with the keyboard.

Wasted money

[rev0lt]

So the big menu improvement is... a text console! The idea itself is not new (AutoCad and several games use the same principle), but what I find hilarious is that apparently, is targeted for beginners - the same kind of users that usually don't know the name of the option/command/whatever they want to select. In most cases, advanced users don't use the menubar that often, because of... keyboard shortcuts - yes, using the keyboard to select actions from the menu! I guess that improvement will be announced on a next version...

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[Bradmont]

Generally, the "Obligatory XKCD" meme requires that the XKCD in question have some relation to the subject at hand....

Obligitory

[Rik Sweeney]

"Oh for fuck's sake, where are the preferences?"

*ping*

"Oh, there they are."

It's NOT Quicksilver

[RichardDeVries]

There are a lot of comments saying that this is copying the Run command in Windows or Quicksilver for the Mac. It's not. These don't get you to commands within applications, As Shuttleworth says: “It’s all hooked in below the application level.”

Apple did it before, more or less

[drx]

OS X Lion has a similar feature, you can search the menu of any application by typing the command in a menu search box. The menu still stays on the screen though. It is actually quite useful, because if a menu item is in a obnoxious place, it becomes more easy to find.

The life of the GUI comes back full circle!

[Anita Coney]

GNU-Linux started as a command based OS, various GUIs were attempted, and now we're back to typing in what we want to do.

Re:sounds like the mac finder

[Rary]

Sounds more like they are taking an existing tech, that was never really promoted, and promoting it, rather than actually producing something new.

If you watch the video, you'll see that they've expanded on the idea. It's not just an app/document finder, it's a functionality finder.

For example, I'm using Firefox right now. Let's say I can't remember how to add a bookmark. I would pop up the HUD box and start typing "bookmark", and just a few letters in I would see something like "Bookmark > Bookmark this page", which I would select.

I can't speak for OSX, but the Windows launcher functionality, while really helpful, does not do that.

Re:They're inventing the CLI?

[oakgrove]

I can already do that with kubuntu

So if you are using GIMP in Kubuntu, you can just type "Undo His..." in the desktop's search box and the menu entry for Undo History will come to the forefront? I just tried it for shits and giggles and it don't work. This is very smart on Canonical's part but don't let the Ubuntu-hate grind to a halt on my account.

Re:"...without having to relearn menus"

[udoschuermann]

I think that anyone who is so intellectually impoverished that they cannot or will not relearn menus really ought not be using a computer

I beg to differ: Computers are tools, and when these tools do the job we need them to do, and in a way that satisfies/pleases us, then turning the world upside down is not just counter productive, but unnecessary, and will meet with push back or even rejection. Change for the sake of change seems to be the rage these days, perhaps because "different" is often mistaken as a synonym for "improvement."

A real improvement would either be so obviously better that everybody will realize it at first sight, even if it's dramatically different; or it would offer the improvement above and beyond the existing functionality without throwing existing users for a loop.

I would hope that the typed menus under discussion are of the latter type, not the former.

good riddance

[Tom]

Reading stuff like that is making me happy I left the Linux-on-the-desktop world years ago.

Where is the research showing that menus are bad and the studies proving this new system is better? Everything else is just geeks doing mental masturbation. Unless you have a seizable number of actual user tests, you are a fucking idiot to put a massive change in user interface into production.

Experiments are cool, and needed to move forward. Don't get me wrong. And as someone who is in love with Quicksilver, this is absolutely an interesting approach.

But you are still a fucking idiot if you confuse "interesting idea" with "ready for production just because we've finished the code".

Don't test UI ideas on your users. As long as you do that, Linux will never be ready for the desktop, because non-geek users hate that.

Re:stuff that doesn't work

[TaoPhoenix]

Hmm, I think I disagree a little.

Per your other rants, it's not my duty on *my computer* to "change paradigms" at the whim of pseudo-bored software companies. When they want to fiddle with stuff, I am likely to try to put it back. I put back the classic menus in Excel, I put back the classic flywheel Start menu, etc. Bonus - my plugin gives me the original menus in Excel rather than the horrible new ones. It proves that the code was hidden, not dropped.

I am a fan of low-tek plugins / widgets for stuff like that. So if some feature has a dumb bug in it, maybe try to code a little utility that fixes it! (Or commission someone else to do it.)

Case in point - Windows 7. I like that it has 8 more years of back end middleware so that some more stuff "just works", but I was grumpy with all the little bumps, so I hunted around all the settings and disabled most of the candy. (You know, it's like cotton candy from a fair, it looks all swirly but there's nothing there.)

However, yes, there are limits, if the company totally overhauls the UI, and strips out the original feature code, rather than hiding it, then you might as well use a whole other distro / UI / platform/ etc.

Re:Who is in charge of Ubuntu's usability?

[Knuckles]

If you could chill the Ubuntu hate for a second, you could see that this not replace the visible menu tree, but adds an additional option.