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Ask Slashdot: Is the Rise of Skeuomorphic User Interfaces a Problem?
An anonymous reader writes "The evolution of user interface design in software is a long one, and has historically tracked the capabilities of computers of the time. Early computers used batch processing which, is mostly unheard of today, and consequently had minimal human interaction. The late 60s saw the introduction of command line interfaces, which remain popular to this day, mostly with technical users. Arguably, what propelled computer use to what it is today is the introduction of the ubiquitous graphical user interface. Although graphical interfaces have evolved, in principle they have remained largely unchanged. The resurgence of Apple saw the rise of skeuomorphic graphical user interfaces, which are now starting to appear on Linux. Are skeuomorphic designs making technology accessible to the masses, or is it simply a case of an unwillingness to innovate and move forward?"
Specifically in the case of Linux, does the presence of skeuomorphic UIs in some applications really matter if the user decides "hey this sucks" and rips it out at the roots and installs something more to their liking?
I don't think any evidence has been provided that shows such UI designs are better than a well laid out traditional UI, but people will try whatever they can. So long as it isn't rammed down my throat, that's fine.
I guess one could/should expand that to "various devices always in some way connected with warfare, police espionage or distracting entertainment".
From the linked Wikipedia article:
"Portion of iCal, calendaring software from Apple Inc.. Skeumorphs in iCal include leather appearance, stitching and remnants of torn pages."
Digital skeuomorphs:
Many music and audio computer programs employ a plugin architecture, and some of the plugins have a skeuomorphic interface to emulate expensive, fragile or obsolete instruments and audio processors. Functional input controls like knobs, buttons, switches and sliders are all careful duplicates of the ones on the original physical device being emulated. Even elements of the original that serve no function, like handles, screws and ventilation holes are graphically reproduced.
The arguments in favor of skeuomorphic design are that it makes it easier for those familiar with the original device to use the digital emulation, and that it is graphically appealing.
The arguments against skeuomorphic design are that skeuomorphic interface elements use metaphors that are more difficult to operate and take up more screen space than standard interface elements; that this breaks operating system interface design standards; that skeuomorphic interface elements rarely incorporate numeric input or feedback for accurately setting a value; and that many users may have no experience with the original device being emulated.
Skeuomorphism is differentiated from path dependence in technology, where functional behavior is maintained when the reasons for its design no longer exist.
One of the earliest examples of a skeuomorphic interface was IBM Real Things.
and I cannot find the little floppy disk icon to save the item. Where'd it go?
Vision with execution is hallucination.
>One of the earliest examples of a skeuomorphic interface was IBM Real Things.
I know you talk about the resurgence, but please attribute it with the first example - the INNOVATOR.
I'm tired of hearing how Apple "invent" everything.
Obviously someone just swallowed a thesaurus and burped out "skeuomorphic".
The linked Wikipedia page describes it thus: "Many music and audio computer programs employ a plugin architecture, and some of the plugins have a skeuomorphic interface to emulate expensive, fragile or obsolete instruments and audio processors. Functional input controls like knobs, buttons, switches and sliders are all careful duplicates of the ones on the original physical device being emulated. Even elements of the original that serve no function, like handles, screws and ventilation holes are graphically reproduced."
First, I'd argue that most software doesn't emulate physical artifacts - we don't "pull" open file drawers for instance. Second, this doesn't sound like anything that's really about GUI, it's just prettying stuff up - much like the concept of "skins."
The Apple reference... oh sigh.
Three Squirrels
The mother of all demos.
Sketchpad, even earlier.
People weren't stupid, and no, space didn't drive any of the technology related to computers. It's the other way around, technology drove space. But that's another story.
I have to say I fall on the side of saying that skeuomorphic design is bad. The classic one is the latest iPhone podcast app which looks like an old reel to reel tape recorder. I mean I'm in my mid 40s, and I only saw one of these once when I was a tiny child, and even then it was obsolete.
As for the leather bound notes and address apps, I've never owned a leather notes folder and I've never owned an address book with the letters down my side. My mum had one when I was a small child, but I haven't thought about such things for ages. As these devices expand into so many countries and new cultures, I'm sure these references are going to seem even more obscure and ridiculous.
After looking up skeuomorphic and realizing that it meant current designs that reflect the original designs where the current design is cosmetic, and the original was practical I realized that this is a very stupid article.
Apple is progressively moving towards fewer and fewer button.
Windows are doing their windows 8 thing.
Ubuntu was a 1 hour try before giving up on their unity interface.
Kde is still my favourite. (It's like the Rolls Royce of UI IMHO)
Gnome is the kid who never get's used but always gets installed.
What does this have to do with maintaining cosmetic designs I have no idea. I think the guy picked a word out of a hat in order to get a link to postman deliver aps spot on the front page.
Good job...
I would hardly say there's a "rise". The mail "envelope", the attachment "paperclip", the color "palette", the directory "folder" icon, the clock represented as an "analog dial", the video "movie reel"...
Command lines are vastly more powerful than traditional GUIs, which are in turn more powerful than the new crop of phone/tablet interfaces.
At each stage, the interface is simplified, but at the cost of power and flexibility. As computers become little more than media consumption devices, the natural tendency is towards extremely simplified forms of user interaction.
I've been waiting years for a chance to use 'skeuomorphic' in a conversation.
This might have been a question to ask perhaps 5-10 years ago, when such things were all the rage (brushed metal, faux glass, reflections, etc.), but it seems that of late, between interfaces like Android (especially Honeycomb and later) or Microsoft's Metro, things have been taking a sharp turn away from skeuomorphism and decidedly towards an unabashedly digital styling.
If only they included a link to something kind of online encyclopedia to define that unfamiliar term...
Damn, this computer shit is fucking complicated. Links: How do they work?
Required reading for internet skeptics
"Batch processing" is not mostly unheard of. It still exists as an important component of all modern operating systems. Ever heard of cron jobs or process scheduling? Both of these require you to write code (or rather script, in the case of cron), but it's still a form of input to the OS.
After batch jobs came CLIs, which are also essential, but for other forms of user interaction where you don't want to go through the firewall that some graphical designer put in the way of you.
Mouse-and-keyboard-GUIs, such as for desktop computers, are good if you only need to perform the most common actions. The mouse combined with graphics is also an efficient way to deal with 2D representations of the system.
Touchscreen based computers appear to be good for people that barely ever bother to change the settings of the program they use. While I could never imagine myself in this category, I understand the need and I think that it's an interesting step.
The best solution is to use the right tool for the job. This could mean that you have a computer with all of these forms of input, or a selection of them that best suit your needs. An example scenario: use a tablet to see the status of your server park, a GUI to perform basic tasks such as restarting servers, a CLI when hardware needs to be fixed and use cronjobs to rotate the logs into a dedicated log server.
On topic: I have no idea what you mean with skeumorphic GUIs, but either they are a useless fad or they can work side by side to other forms of UIs. Nothing will replace anything.
Have you seen Ubuntu lately? It's basically OSX lite these days so it's not really any big surprise that they're borrowing a few more of Apple's designs.
As for the leather bound notes and address apps
I agree those are annoying. However, there is a difference between skinning and real skeuomorphic design at work here.
The Mac desktop Calendar app? Sure it looks like leather but in no way does thinking of it like any kind of traditional leather-bound thing you may have known help you figure out how to work with it.
The iPad Calendar app is better in this regard. Same leather look, only now it looks like two tall facing pages. Because it looks like pages you expect you can "turn" them - and that does work, with a drag. Then you notice as you do this that the bar at the bottom changes, so you realize you can interact with that directly and so on. There the design is really somewhat skeuomorphic in that it's helping use your understanding of how real books work to figure out some of the non-intuitive interface controls (since gestures are always invisible and hard to discover).
In the end perhaps the only area where skeuomorphic design really adds anything is in leading people to discover these otherwise hard to discover controls in a UI. But it seems like you always have to have some kind of more direct control also or else some people can and will get confused. Skeuomorphic design then seems more like a limited technique than an area that all design will move towards.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes it is a problem, and seems to be taking us backward in terms of usability. Apple is the worst for this, imo, their iPhone interface for setting an alarm is abysmal, hard to use with any accuracy, because you're sliding dials around, which have physics attached to them. So instead of being able to type in: 7, 3, 0 on a keypad, you're forced to deal with 3 different dials, pushing up & down until it gets it right. (It also stinks of 'hey, lets use multitouch for EVERYTHING).
Also, accessibility takes a hit, as you're now dealing with pictures of physical things, and all people are left with are the equivalent of ALT tags on images with image maps.
Thanks for doing the legwork on that for us. I'd never heard that word before, though all of us have seen them (if usually just in icons).
I have to say, I think there's a good argument for there being a wide range of acceptable-to-unacceptable, and it depends on the user. Dragging pages into folders and trash cans... that works pretty well for managing a filesystem. Email buttons that look like paper envelopes and pencils to compose... those make sense to me.
When they get really elaborate and abstract (like that Ubuntu app), I get a little less comfortable. I think it's pretty, and some people probably prefer it, but for me that's a bit too dressed-up and abstract for desktop use.
Avoid unfamiliar terms, even if you link to a page explaining them. As you can see, 90% of the discussion here is about how an unusual word was used where GUI would have served the same purpose, which not only takes away a lot of space from a discussion about the actual question, but also made me skip pretty much all of it because I didn't come here to discuss the pros and cons of showing off ones word stock but whether GUIs are troubling. But now, instead, I wrote this note, which adds about as much to the actual discussion, but might serve you as a reminder to avoid things that take away attention from the actual question you're asking.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In order for user interfaces to be able to move away from skeuomorphic techniques one has to consider the willingness of the audience. Web design has been a great test bed for this very things. For many years using anything beyond the base set of html controls + date pickers was considered largely pointless, as businesses needed interfaces that took very little training. As the web evolved into a more entertainment oriented place, technologies like DHTML, Flash, and Javascript allowed designers to experiment with things like sliders, switches, and different types of paging. Apple capitalized on this by taking the best new controls created and built them into the iPhone, which worked so well it gave designers a much larger base set to work with.
In short, introducing stripped down UI's or new controls tend not to succeed when they are forced or simply swapped in because they are "more efficient". They are versioned in for a reason, because people need time to adapt to change.
As for "useless areas or designs" such as torn edges or leather borders, this is all about aesthetic. It's doesn't take a scientist to understand that people like things to look appealing. In the same manner a gamer loves his graphics to look as realistic as possible, so does any other user who sees imitation materials on their screen. Well designed abstract or purely digital layouts can look very nice, but they do not invoke most people's sense of value and worth. Furthering skeuomorphic techniques allows designers the license to introduce other larger changes (like new controls) with little more cushioning than some UI customization.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
If a "skeuomorphic" GUI is meant to resemble a physical desktop space, then I don't think it's a very good idea. The more a workspace attempts to graphically simulate a real space, the more system resources are wasted. Development time is squandered on tuning appearance rather than performance. I think both technical users and everyday users prefer a program that is simple and functional. Imagine how resource heavy OpenOffice would be if it simulated pen strokes as you typed. Yuck. Users are plenty capable of learning how to use software that don't resemble real world objects.
Didn't Samsung just do that to Apple ? Made it look familiar, like an iPhone, but underneath its a sh1t load better :-)
if
Thanks for doing the legwork on that for us
Really? All you had to do was click the word; it's linked to the definition.
It's less work that scanning the comments hoping someone would copy/paste the definition from the page to which that word is linked.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Thank you for your erudite response. Are there skeumorphic controls for this?
define "Link" you arrogant bastard, not everyone knows the latest jargon.
It's just design. There are going to be some instances that work really well and others that are not so great. There will always be people that complain about things that look pretty, preferring to spend their time in front of a command line.
Skeuomorphic design is just in fashion at the moment. Hardware goes through design fads too. Brushed aluminium, wood grain, gloss white, matte black, bright colours, etc.
The more they Think Different, the more they think the same.
We are living in the modern aesthetic, as defined by the Bauhaus et al back in the day.
There isn't anything inherently wrong with other aesthetics. Form should follow function, but that doesn't mean you can't embellish things a bit.
I mean, there's no reason to be a Nazi about it.
Digital stuff is totally plastic - look at something like Bombardier's Guild on the iPhone: it has a ridiculously fun steampunk look. Why not?
Links don't appear in the RSS.
no, journalists are taught from day 1 to use simple language.
not for dumbing down, but for brevity - time is money, and if you don't have to reach for a dictionary, you shouldn't.
including the definition, or simplified part of it relevant to the article would have been appropriate and saved the ire of the /. hordes.
I don't think it was (and notice the tags). Either way, it was helpful.
Hate to break it to you but batch processing lives on strong. Anyone worth his/her salt has written scripts to handle stuff. Take a look at Debian for example; the whole build system is a one gigantic batch processing tool that takes the submitted code packages, builds them of reach CPU architecture performing multitude of tests and packages them up and distributes the packages to repositories. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Perhaps you meant in the UI design sense "batch processing doesn't exist". It's actually quite the opposite; systems that work without UI are the ultimate expression of working. It always works, it doesn't need an UI. UX is that it just works.
Why has nobody mentioned the penultimate in skeumorphic design, Microsoft BOB?
I am unfamiliar with this word "Fuck" that you constantly mention. Could you please define it?
Links: How do they work?
Computer scientists? They're fuckin' lyin'.
" Are skeuomorphic designs making technology accessible to the masses, or is it simply a case of an unwillingness to innovate and move forward?""
Neither. It's a move backwards in every sense of the word (Bob is calling and want you back in the middle ages). And we can thank it to Apple (oh my, just look at their sk.m. UIs lately), since lots of people mimic them just because they are Apple.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
If only they included a link to something kind of online encyclopedia to define that unfamiliar term...
Damn, this computer shit is fucking complicated. Links: How do they work?
Actually, there's a very good reason to define it inline rather than (or in addition to) providing a link: RSS readers. The link doesn't show up in RSS readers (at least not Google reader or my iOS reader), so I had to load the full article, find the (now tiny) link, tap it, and scan the overly wordy Wikipedia article--when all they had to do was add, "(making apps look like real-life things, such as leather)".
Anyways, no, I don't think it's a problem, so long as the skeuomorphic UI doesn't get in the way of work. With that said, I really don't like the OS X Contacts app. There's an example where skeuomorphic sensibilities get in the way of functionality. On the other hand, Calendar works just fine.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
I am unfamiliar with this word "Fuck" that you constantly mention. Could you please define it?
Please refer to the Linux kernel source code where "fuck" or a variant of "fuck" is frequentkly used.
The arguments against skeuomorphic design are that skeuomorphic interface elements use metaphors that are more difficult to operate and take up more screen space than standard interface elements; that this breaks operating system interface design standards
Personally I'd argue that skeuomorphic designs are almost certainly worse for usability, but that might be outweighed in marketing by their attractiveness / emotional connections with the product.
In UI design, it seems to me that one of the things you're trying to do is communicate relationships between the various controls, the things they manipulate, etc. And you have a two-dimensional non-tangible interface with which to communicate those relationships. (Even with touch, you're not actually "pressing a button" you're tapping on a coloured region of glass.) The trade-offs that optimise communication are almost certainly different than if you have a tangible three dimensional interface (eg, a physical tape recorder, instead of an audio memo app). In a skeuomorphic app, you do not have the physical haptic pliability of the button to your thumb, just a slightly wobbling brown graphic. In a skeuomorphic app, you do not naturally see the item in three dimensions as you pick it up and its orientation to your eye changes on the journey to a comfortable manipulation distance. You just have a flat graphic of a pretend item from a preset angle. The affordances are different, so the optimum design to help the user achieve their goals is probably different.
The example I'd use is Windows -- over a decade or two it has steadily moved away from previously being skeuomorphic (eg, panels looking like they're in little bevels, buttons looking like square raised things) to something much cleaner. Those bevels etc introduced lines that distracted ("why is my eye drawn to a bevel that does nothing again?") and made an element feel divided from the surrounding controls that they probably wanted to communicated were relevant to it not separated from it.
The exception however is marketing and the attempt to get a purchaser to emotionally engage with an item (rather than find it easy to use). A picture of a beautiful old tape player is probably more appealing at first glance in the Apple Store than a white background with clearly distinct controls. Likewise a slightly harder to use item might feel as if it can do more even if it can't.
If only hyperlinks were identified by a picture of a computer mouse next to a monitor with a stylized mouse cursor hovered over a picture of a linked chain. You could visit the target of the hyperlink by clicking your real mouse on the left button of the picture of the mouse.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
The only type of software I've seen where this is the norm is music software, especially VST plugins.
I guess the thought behind this is: "If you emulate the sound of a classic synthesizer, why not emulate the look-and-feel of it as well?"
Of course it is easier for someone who has actually played the physical instrument to find the correct controls, but I think it's more a question of aesthetics than usability.
The idea has carried over to instruments and effects that have no physical counterpart: If you have an analogue-sounding synth you'll get knobs and patch cables ( moog style); if it's a FM synth you'll probably see a lot of labled push-buttons (Yamaha DX7) and so on.
Electronic musicians love their gadgets and now that we don't fiddle with actual knobs and sliders anymore, we still like to be reminded of them in the UI.
Still, I don't think this represent "an unwillingness to move forward". Maybe part nostalgia and part the fact that these devices looked great and inspired you to play them.
Episode #12:
Using Proper English
Everything you needed to know about the word, "Fuck".
Enjoy!
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
define "Link" you arrogant bastard, not everyone knows the latest jargon.
By "link" I think he means a hypertext reference. I dunno why people can't just keep it simple.
it's called 'facade' versus 'functionality.'
The classic counterargument is that Courbusier advocated frill-less (and thus cheaper) "functional" towers, but himself chose to live in a replication of a medieval Italian villa.
+5 karma to those of you who get the 'Blade Runner' reference.
Check the left side of your foreskin. If you don't have a foreskin you'll need the remote.
Someone desperately wanted to use the word "skeuomorphic" in a /. submission.
Aside from that, was there any actual content? I didn't notice any.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"...used batch processing which, is mostly unheard of today, and consequently..."
That's simply not true (and there's a comma in the wrong place). Batch processing is widely use, just ask your bank or most large organisations.
not for dumbing down, but for brevity
So brevity demands that we write "interfaces-with-all-too cutesy-allusions-to-real-world-objects" in place of "skeuomorphic?" Several times in each article? Especially when anyone one who has been following discussions in technical press about interface changes in OSX since the release of Lion should be familiar with it. I first read it in the Ars Technica review of Lion and wasn't all that upset at learning a new word.
if you don't have to reach for a dictionary, you shouldn't.
If you are not (at least figuratively) reaching for a dictionary several times a day chances are your vocabulary is no longer growing exponentially. :(
Look, this is a summary of an article. It's supposed to be a brief and informative summary giving readers a quick idea of what's going on. You only need to mention the definition once when the term is first introduced, not replace it.
As for the link to the (very shitty) Wikipedia page, it doesn't even get to Digital skeuomorphs until halfway through, and that entire section is entirely lacking in citations. The page is even flagged as being sub-standard due to lack of citations. If you're going to slam on the guy for asking for a brief, descriptive blurb and tell him to get a dictionary, then maybe you should put up a link that is worth a shit and actually has some kind of decent information about exactly what a "skeuomorphic design" is in relation to the software industry and why we should even give a shit about it.
...the only option left is to draw the classic telephone silhouette in the icon.
Nobody forces you to use those interfaces, but for people new to technology it can help if they can relate certain functions to their real world analogues.
So brevity demands that we write "interfaces-with-all-too cutesy-allusions-to-real-world-objects" in place of "skeuomorphic?" Several times in each article?
No, brevity prefers you write "live-like, or 'skeuomorphic'," once, perhaps with a small definition. Then use "live-like" for the rest of the article.
Are you writing to make yourself look smart or to help your readers understand?
If you are not (at least figuratively) reaching for a dictionary several times a day chances are your vocabulary is no longer growing exponentially. :(
You might want to grab yourself a dictionary and look up the word "exponentially".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
We used to do this crap in Windows in the early 90s - notebooks with rules lines and faux punched holes, folders with flaps that opened, old fashioned analogue clocks - and we stopped because it was stupid.
Korma: Good
They kind of did. The one link in the summary is to the relevant wikipedia page. A perfunctory glance sort of vindicates them for not trying to shove a somewhat long winded explanation into the summary, instead favoring to link to an outside definition.
let me google that for you....
Ya know, I tend to opt-out of such knobs and manually provide a specific value if given the option. This isn't because of any basic objection to the whole concept, but rather because these knobs and sliders can be so poorly tuned and overly sensitive at times that coaxing the damned thing to land where you want it to can be difficult at times.
That is, I KNOW I want the value to be 40 but I spend more than several seconds trying to not get it to land on 39 or 41.
There is a story told that rather that in previous centuries 17th~18th, court clerks would instead of writing down the charge of For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge would write f.u.c.k. instead (bit quicker than doing longhand).
However, thats wrong and if you are of puritanical disposition you should blame 13th century dutch sailors of the introduction of this quaint little word into English. For this word to survive and keep its meaning and use I think this must pain the self-appointed morality police.
But on a computer, you're a second level away from the actual thing. There's no ACTUAL knob to twist on a computer screen.
And an example of BADLY doing this skeuomorph are the calendars that are emulating the EXACT rolodex style calendar you can find on executive desks. Including all its weaknesses.
Can you link to a document on your rolodex calendar? No. So you can't do it on your computer one either.
eBook readers that "show" a turning page. Why? There's no page. Just go to the next page.
A podcast player that apes the radio on a Hi-Fi reciever. Therefore you can't go directly to the 8th podcast, you have to skip the first 7, just as if it were real. And it takes 20x the screen real-estate to show this brushed metal and knobbish interface.
Sometimes the real thing has limitations. And aping the real thing is becoming so close it is aping the limitations too.
How daft is that?
I've never seen the word skeuomorphic before now. Is this a new coinage to describe the disasters of Gnome 3, Unity, and Win8?
I don't think it's too much of an issue from what I've seen. Apple definitely do it the most, but it's in programs like Calendar, Contacts, and Reminders, which perform limited functions and don't require complex user interfaces. Prettying them up a bit doesn't detract from usability. If you were to say, add a traditional paint pallete to Photoshop, that would be a different matter.
Links in the RSS feed are not shown as links. So that if you are reading via google reader. et. al. you don't see it. It wasn't till I came to the site to see comments that it was available.
dimes
Within the context of a news site basing an article around a very esoteric word, it would be good practice to include a brief definition. Especially a site that deactivates hyper links in its rss feed(the wikipedia link to skeuomorphic is only there on the direct site, not rss).
Just saying.
But yes, obviously one can google that which one does not know.
cheers,
dimes
D'Oh! Couldn't they just say it's a reboot of the Leather Godesses Of Phobos? Mmmmh, .... Phobos ....
Sure, that can be good too.
But someone who has a lot of experience working with a specific model of doodad (let's say an audio compressor) can look at a skeumorphic version on-screen and INSTANTLY see what is going on because the knobs and buttons do more than just setting the values, the knobs also DISPLAY the settings, values, and general state of the system.
I hate having to try to rotate a knob using a mouse and prefer interaction methods that are designed for the tool I'm using (trackpad, mouse, hardware interface) but sometimes skeumorphism actually has a point.
Othertimes, such as in Apple's Calendar, not so much...
Showing a fake desk calendar with selection buttons embedded in the leather, then some sideways scroll buttons, and those sideways scroll buttons trigger a pageturn animation (in/out, not sideways)...
The problem isn't necessarily the skeumorphism, but rather the mishmash of concepts which results in a confused mess.
The reason floppy disks suddenly became unreliable was because everyone suddenly started looking for the best deals on them. When you're shopping for the lowest cost disk on the market, you can't be surprised to get the lowest-quality disk on the market. Once I realized this, I bought a ten pack of the most expensive floppy disks on the shelf, which were only about double the cost of the cheapest. They were the last package of floppy disks I ever had to buy.
I hate having to try to rotate a knob using a mouse and prefer interaction methods that are designed for the tool I'm using (trackpad, mouse, hardware interface) but sometimes skeumorphism actually has a point.
If the knob interface is designed properly, though, you don't have to try to turn the knob with your mouse... you can simply mouse over and use the scroll wheel. I've seen it a few times like that.
But yes, I remember a program years ago that I think was called AudioDeck, where you had to actually click on the little indicator dot on the knob, and turn the mouse in a circle to try to adjust the level, and that was annoying as all out.
A "Link" is an elf that plays the ocarina.
Why, on the fucking thing, do I have to go to settings, and click on brightness to get the brightness slider. Why can't there just be a damned brightness slider, isntead of a link to the brighness slider.
That's because you're on /.
You'd never know what that was about in the first place.
How do you fuck that much in one day without your dick falling off?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
It might be, if it had that effect and wasn't if it wasn't so cheesy.
That's what this is about. The interface isn't for doing, it's for buying. The device isn't for making, it's for shopping.
You are welcome on my lawn.
My cock.
Personally I'd argue that skeuomorphic designs are almost certainly worse for usability, but that might be outweighed in marketing by their attractiveness / emotional connections with the product.
Right. There's a reason iTunes isn't shaped like a stereo. We tried that in the 90s and it sucked.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Links don't work in the RSS feed. Which is stupid, but... if you're going to submit a story to Slashdot, you gotta deal with Slashdot's quirks.
Look, the point of this article is to get everybody talking about whether interfaces mimicking real-world objects are a good idea or a bad idea. Since the first 3-4 most highly moderated posts are all "what the hell does 'skeumorphic' mean?" this article has failed at its purpose.
That's the point of the people complaining.
Now the other problem with the question is that the very premise is flawed. Only Apple (and a brief experiment at IBM) ever used skeumorphic UIs in the first place. Microsoft never did, and Metro/Windows 8 is less skeumorphic than anything that's ever been seen before. So... if you like them use Apple products. If not, use products from every other vendor.
Comment of the year
I see somebody learned a new word today and wrote some paragraphs using it to impress their peers.
no, journalists are taught from day 1 to use simple language
Really!
I moved from the UK to Spain. I can speak the language, but not well. I try reading the newspapers here but struggle, as they are full of needless metaphors that just get in the way of the actual content. The TV on the other hand is pretty well dumbed down.
He did. It's called a link. Welcome to the Internet.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Might be a woman
which is totally what she said
and they know how to capitalize properly and what a sentence fragment is, too!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Can't somebody calm the text down?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I think it would be better if someone could provide a link!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
(-1 for obscurantism) AFAICS, all GUIs use skeuomorphs to some extent -- pictographs representing menu choices. The "Volume button" looking like a loudspeaker as one example. Some go further than others with "skins" incorporating non-functional decorations.
I believe (no solid data) icons were introduced and continue to be used because
they take fewer pixels than equivalent text;
they look nice in demonstrations by practiced users.
Interestingly, some GUIs provide text when mousing over their icons, doubtless in response to user complains about the ambiguity of icons.
Personally, I use batch whenever possible (wget), CLI normally and GUI only when absolutely necessary (graphical content). The later interfaces have serious drawbacks (require attention, no pipelines) along with their vaunted advantages.
In the audio are, this is just way too exaggerated, but on the other hand, imagine a price of $349.00 for a tool like this: (nearly full UI... at least the main functionality)
http://imgur.com/D8PTB
Its no nice they've now come up with a jargon term for brain-dead GUI design.
I'm not exactly a trained professional GUI designer, but even I know that the computer offers unique user-interface possibilities and challenges that are completely different that what you have with physical objects. If you don't take this into account, but just slavishly copy the physical object, you aren't even bothering to design. I don't think failure to design really merits a special name like this.
I once worked on a project that involved creating a kiosk-like system for USN destroyers to handle water valve switching within the ship. We had pictures of the old system, which was a kiosk with a subway-like map of the piping drawn on it, with pushbuttons placed in various locations in the drawing to allow opening and closing of the various valves. The obvious issue here is that the operator has to work out in their head what combination of valve states will case the water to flow in the pipes the way they want. It seemed to me to be a great idea that we were compterizing this, because we could give them something better.
The task of making the GUI was given to one of those guys on our team who is really productive, but doesn't do a lot of actual thinking (I'm actually kinda jealous of folks like that). He of course just drew the same map on the screen, using the same colors, with pushbuttons in the same places made to look as much like the original pushbuttons as possible.
The waste of the computer's potential in doing it this way actually annoyed me so much, I worked through several lunches to make an alternative. The system I came up with actually drew the network to look like cross-sections of pipe, and would fill in for you which pipes had water flowing through them (based on the condition of all the valves) by showing blue water in the pipe or not. The valves were drawn to look like simple valves, but with indications on them that the were active objects.
It turns out that (unbeknonst to me) we were in a backchannel political competition with another vendor for our project. When the project engineer saw this design, he got all excited and said "This is the kind of thing that will sell this system." I can't say for sure he was right, but I know we didn't end up losing the project. That isn't why I did it though. I just couldn't stand the idea of sticking our poor users (sailors) with that dumbass interface.
define a largely unfamiliar term
skeuomorphic: The process of spending more clock cycles skewing morphing wallpapers.
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The problem might be that if it was defined it would be fairly obvious that the entire argument is hollow.
For those who missed the other posts, skeuomorphic designs are those which incorporate anachronistic aspects of other (usually previous) designs. The premise is that user interfaces which incorporate these concepts are 'on the rise' when it is fairly clear that they are an ever-present aspect of user design. The use of typewriter-style keyboards, the filing cabinet metaphor, the 10-key dial pad, the 'window'. Selling people something new has always been difficult, so incorporating aspects of what they already know into their interfaces is one way to reduce the shock for potential customers. Any perception of a 'rise' in this is simply a function of the lowering of restrictions to adding these features and the increased conservative non-technical consumer focus.
It's an all-too-common tactic to use fancy words to alter the initial perception of an idea allowing it to be accepted more easily. This applies to truely innovative ideas as well as complete bunk. I'd classify this in the latter pile.
I don't get the problem, it helps immediately understand similar concepts from the real world in the computer space. The whole desktop UI metaphore used in Windows/OSX and many UNIX versions is full of skeuomorphisms.
I am on Win7 right now:
Little trashcan icon, for deleting/undeleting files.
Top Level icon is of a "computer", under it I find my hard drives, which look like pictures of physical HD.
My files are organized into folders (that look like little file folders)
The icons for text files are little pieces of paper.
etc... etc...
IMO, this is very good way to create a visual UI for a computer to relate concepts to what we already know from the physical world.
Of course anything can be overdone. When it starts to impair functionality then it has, but I have seen little evidence of that happening anywhere.
Sentence fragment.
Sentence fragment.
Another.
Good device.
Will use again later.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I wish I had some mod points. This is one of my biggest gripes with Slashdot.
www.wavefront-av.com
Now the other problem with the question is that the very premise is flawed. Only Apple (and a brief experiment at IBM) ever used skeumorphic UIs in the first place. Microsoft never did, and Metro/Windows 8 is less skeumorphic than anything that's ever been seen before. So... if you like them use Apple products. If not, use products from every other vendor.
There are a shit load of skeumorphic Windows programs out there. And how else would you describe Microsoft Bob?
The biggest problem, IMO, is that Apple had a bunch of programs that were normal, then they went and fucked them up by turning them into skeumorphs. It sucks, it's stupid, and utterly pointless.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Ironically, the wording of the article is as far from skeumorphic as humanly possible. Thanks for doing the editors' work and telling us what the fuck we're talking about.
www.wavefront-av.com
I like that kind of interface design. It looks nice and feels cozy.
Wanna give an example? I don't know of any.
Bob fits, but it was sold for about 6 months 20 years ago so I don't see it being particularly relevant to the here and now. But yes, I guess if you mention IBM RealX products, it's fair to mention Bob, since they're roughly the same age.
That's why I personally left the platform when OS X came along. Apple had already been going in that direction (with Quicktime Player being the 'vanguard'), but with OS X they dove head first right in it, forget everything they'd spent 15 years learning about spatial computing, and made Macs a lousy clone of Windows. (From my perspective.) Well, if I have a choice of two platforms, neither of which has a spatial UI, but one of which is cheaper and has more software-- I go to the cheaper one.
If only Apple had been able to add in all the technical underpinnings in OS X without screwing up the UI, I'd probably still be using it.
Comment of the year
After the Command Line instruction to execute a program, was a format called the, "Menu Driven" format, it was revolutionary. One didn't have to remember commands, one simply chose an option, and that program would run. You might want to check it out?
There's definitly something to be said about aesthetics too.
For example, imagine a synthesizer. You could reduce it to a list of checkboxes, radio buttons, sliders, and text boxes. However, working with that would be a chore.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I'm sure that moving your finger around and around to turn a virtual knob will end up infringing on someone's "patent".
Here's your fucking link.
Great post, thanks!
I love this line "Early computers used batch processing which, is mostly unheard of today". Cripes! What do you think happens to all the cheques that poeple still write? They are processed by the big banks in a nightly "batch process" for clearing. Batch-mode processing (as opposed to interactive routines) is still the bread and butter of "real" data processing on the larger systems, such as zSeries mainframes and the smaller iSeries (formerly known as AS/400) midrange systems. I love Slashdot but somebody needs to keep kids with no knowledge of the larger IT world beyond their PCs from posting this kind of disinformation. it's like my other favourite question to ask these kind of "PC kiddies"... What's a mainframe? They invariably say "computers from the 1960s that used tubes and stuff" oblivious to the fact that they just accessed the bank's shiny new 2012 zSeries Mainframe from their iPhone. LOL I feel like the old guy keeping the kids off the grass every time I have to remind people of this stuff.
Officially a geek since 1984
I agree with the parent. The link provided wasn't good enough for you? Really? What kind of self-important people are we becoming if it's just too much effort to look up the damn word yourself? You're complaining that a citation for a more in-depth article wasn't given? There was no definition provided for your benefit? Call the waaaaambulance.
It's not a professional journal publication, it's an extended teaser, a synopsis if you will. On Slashdot.
Man up! Take 3 seconds and look it up yourself. What a lazy, entitled people we have become. We should have just aborted this latest generation of whiners.
There is a term Affordance which is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action. Simply put a button on a screen looks like button so the user is clued in that it is something that can be pressed. It doesn't always work very well even in the real world (e.g. a door which has a handle which suggests you would pull the door towards you when actually it should be pushed).
for digital examples on this "page" there is a slider which indicates i can move up and down the page and is currently showing the middle of the page. Even the blank box which cues that I can write in here to make this comment.
skeuomorphic is quite closely related it is intended to provide affordance to make it easier for the user to use.
The one theme I noticed running through the Wikipedia article was that it tended to be that objects that were skeuomorphic were cheaper imitations of the real thing and the word that springs to mind is tacky cheap imitations. The trouble with some of the digital versions are that they are intended to give the pretence of a more luxurious real world object. It's no real surprise that Apple products are tending to engage in more of this, to differentiate it's products from the more utilitarian windows products.
If you have three books one leather bound the one a standard paperback and one a paperback printed to have the appearance of a leather cover even though the information is the same, the users perceptions are different. Which is better the leather bound is better made the standard paperback does the job and the third is quite tacky or cheesy. There are a lot of chinese made products which use the third format which is probably why we have the phrase cheap chinese knockoff.
Utility can be elegant and clean, it can also be particularly ugly or beautiful too. The use of a metaphor can be very good at providing affordance, A bookshelf metaphor is obviously a bookshelf The problem comes when the metaphor too closely follows the original design including it's drawbacks If the visual representation of the book was the spine then titles would be printed side ways and be hard to read, of course you could put the bookshelf on it's side. .. The alternative of book covers facing out isn't that much better if you have more than a dozen books since you then need to scroll the bookcase and your metaphor is broken.
A much nicer interface is the coverflow which lets you visualise and manipulate faster ideally you could use filtering like a text box to allow you to whizz through to the section you want. There should be other filters though in the case of books you might be looking for C++ or romance novels. Cover flow doesn't seem to have filtering. It also doesn't really have a real world equivalent.
This is slightly unexpected I initially thought a bookshelf was a good example of a good skeuomorphic design and it isn't. it's a really bad design and cover flow can actually be better if implemented well. The utilitarian design of a listbox of some sort also sucks as it gives equal rank to all the items without a visual cue.
It seems both extremes are , extreme.
Slavishly following a real-world metaphor is a problem if you are implementing functionality badly. Rotating knobs are a really bad idea on a computer screen. Especially on a laptop which doesn't have a scroll wheel.
Rather sadly I've just found that if i run my finger up and down the right side of my Track-pad it acts as a scroll wheel. (ok hands up everybody who just tried it and found yours does the same).
The Utilitarian approach isn't always the best either, it can lead to an ugly and sometimes inefficient design so that is something to consider. I think Developers have a tendency to ignore the V in MVC. I think Apple is right to consider the appearance of a design especially when the design is used by people for pleasure. Windows tends to have a utilitarian approach, and more recently some bad design keys, that authoritarian corporate ap
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Perhaps you should look up the word yourself; it's quite obvious you have much learning to do and the experience might prove beneficial.
It must be eliminated.
This just in, real life and computer tools have radically different interfaces; and no, don't tell me that touchscreens are about to change that. Twisting a knob and dragging a finger across a glass pane is NOT the same thing, and never will. Kinect-style motion recognition never will be more than an approximation of the real feeling of things; using that sort of tech to perfectly replicate the feeling of putting a hand on something, feeling an actual physical resistance would be an immense ressource sink hole. If we ever try, we WILL end up in the bottom of the Uncanny Valley of motion control, just like so many CGI animators. That's why I think skeumorphics is an error.
What must be done is to create a metaphor that is suited to the interface at hand, regardless of how seemingly close the interface is to "the real thing"; that most of the time implies that we must get rid of unnecessay details, of bloat. The best example that comes to my mind is Ableton Live, a digital audio studio. Before Ableton, Digital Audio Workshops (DAWs) tried to imitate the physical layout of an actual studio, with a graphic reproduction of a mixer next to a graphical copy of synths and compressors and etc. It... Well it did work.
What Ableton did is to completely get rid of all those details that belonged to the physical realm, and start anew to create something that would feel good not for a pair of hand, but to a mouse and a keyboard. And they did it! They created one of the most fluid UI experience available in a modern DAW.
Um, it's called "google", mmkay? Do look into it before being such a Stressy Bessy -- we wish you would.
Shows an unwillingness to move on or innovate
Insisting on keeping things familiar in designs can often slow down innovation.
Remember, Apple's tagline used to be "Think Different".
you can simply mouse over and use the scroll wheel. I've seen it a few times like that.
Absolutely cannot stand that. I much prefer a click-and-drag - usually up or right (or both...) raise the value while down or left will lower the value.
Synthesizers are good examples of Skeuomorphic interfaces done right. You usually end up with a horrid ugly unusable pile of controls if you do not go the Skeuomorphic route.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
MIDI is as "skeuomorphic" as you want to be and always has been. Pointing to MIDI isn't really a great example here. It's fundementally a wire protocol that may or may not be attached to an interface that looks remotely recognizable.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's funny. I never had heard of the term, and it took me all of 5 seconds of skimming the wiki page to understand what it meant.
Maybe you have a learning disability?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
It would have taken you less time to google it than to throw that tantrum.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
You touched on the key element there; The difference between real usability (quantifiable) and perceived utility (qualitative) (both measurable). Perception drives adoption. If something looks plush or appeals to the user's particular aesthetic choice, then more of those types of users will adopt the product. So certain types of people like the real world look and feel, whereas others like the minimalism of industrial design. Each type of design says something to the user. They reinforce a brand or a theme that the company wants to enforce; comfort or utility, safety or sturdiness, etc. So we shouldn't say "skeuomorphic is crap" or distance ourselves from it purely because it's a distraction or creates usability problems. We need to find a balance where it can be used in a way that creates comfort and usability issues are minimized. In some regards I think Apple does this well. They have a mix of industrial design, minimalism, partnered with real-world details that create comfort for people who aren't fans of minimalism. But the details aren't OVER the top (for the most part). They're subtle and suggestive. At the same time the simplicity of the interfaces keep things usable.
Here you go.
It would have taken far less time for one author to write a short one-sentence description than for hundreds of readers to go read the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page.
would it fucking kill you to google it? you're at the computer, ffs.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
How do you tune the radio in your car?
With a rocker switch marked "SEEK". One button linearly searches for a radio station with the next lower frequency; the other the next higher. Some people use the six buttons for bookmarked frequencies that a typical car radio provides, but unlike a computer radio button, they typically don't light up when the current frequency is equal to the bookmark (that is, when pushed).
Your complaint is about a poorly implemented Skeumorph.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I suppose it might be comforting to the person who just spent $700 on software that is meant to digitally emulate the function of a $3000 vintage compressor to have an exact visual representation.
The problem is that the ergonomic usability is crap.
What is lacking is a button that switches to a stripped-down, more standardized type interface for quick, accurate input. Then, if you want the visual display you could switch back to it.
If you don't already know what the primary term for an article is, I don't want you posting about the item anyways because you have no experience with it.
Live-like? That's just stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I tend to run into this in the realm of audio processing.
Radial knobs and toggle switches, while pretty, are absolute bollocks with a mouse. I will use a plug-in that has linear sliders or numerical input if it sounds "good enough" rather than deal with the frustration of a pretty interface that slows my work down. It would have to sound amazing for me to bother.
If a non-audio app has knobs I simply won't use it, no matter what functionality it provides. I'd rather go without. It would be a different story if radial knob peripheral input devices were more standard for computers, but as it stands, keyboard and mouse are dominant.
For the love of christ, let me double-click the knob and manually enter a value, just in case i want some level of precision.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Would it fucking kill you to define a largely unfamiliar term in the goddamned article summary?
Have you read the masthead? "News for nerds." You're supposed to be educated and literate. The educated and literate know what to do when faced with an unfamiliar word (and they linked a very good definition for noncompos muggles like you).
On topic, I think the question posed ("Are skeuomorphic designs making technology accessible to the masses, or is it simply a case of an unwillingness to innovate and move forward?") is a dumb question. The skeuomorphic designs make innovation available to those who know the old tech. It would be harder to innovate without skeuomorphic designs.
Free Martian Whores!
This is an argument for skinnable UIs, modifiable UIs and GUI/CLI cross use.
Every user has their preferences and we should be able to customize our computers to those preferences. If you want the faux-wood paneling, it's there. If you want some Strong Typing, you should be able to interact with it in bash. It'd be great to be able to type batch commands for Photoshop, even if it was just simple stuff like crop and re-save.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Well, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
You said "Microsoft never did", and it didn't seem to me like you were exaggerating for effect, so the age of the example to disprove your statement is irrelevant.
You missed the point. If I don't know what it is, I don't know whether I care enough to click to read the definition. Then if you look at the page, the first half of it is completely unrelated to the contextual usage.
More than half way down they get to the digital part, which is what the summary connotation would be. And then, the digital section starts with
WTF does plugin have to do with anything? Worst encyclopedia page I've seen recently, though there are doubtless many worse I have had no reason to click.
I had to read the wiki page twice to figure out what the point was, and then go back to the summary to understand the point.
So no, "all you had to do" involved a lot more than just clicking. And the comment with actual information is close enough to the top that it pops out immediately. A lot of readers look to the comments to see if it's something they should care about before clicking. It would have saved me time in this case, certainly.
Aesthetics is not equivalent to functionality. Making workflow harder is not the same as removing unnecessary metaphors for interaction.
Something you linked to makes sense for someone used to dealing with the physical product, and wanting the same thing in software. It also uses a rather intuitive interface that allows for self-discovery since dials and sliders are natural for anyone who grew up in an analog age.
The problem comes when the original is no longer familiar. In gp's example, the idea of a piece of paper representing an e-mail is archaic at this point, when few people write letters other than bills, bill payments, and postcards. And pen or pencil has nothing to do with typing an e-mail. A paperless office puts food waste in a trash can, not paper.
As time goes on, the interface you linked to may only make sense to people who interacted with software designed to mimic devices they never touched. And the aesthetics may interfere with the workflow instead of helping it.
For my perspective, I think this is a shit design that is too hard to work with because I apparently have to interact with things my clicking to drag a dial around, instead of just entering a value. I think it would be much easier to have a keyboard-friendly interface, with a visual view of the same if you wanted, and you could optionally use that exclusively as well. Hot-keys, shortcuts, and direct entry are my thing, not dials and sliders. But I realize that's only my opinion. Hopefully you will see that aesthetics are not important for functionality unless a user already has that model in mind.
No, brevity prefers you write "live-like, or 'skeuomorphic'
Live-like ... live like a band?! What is that supposed to mean? I prefer the actual English word to such nonsense. If you feel your audience is non-technical, sure explain it and then keep on using 'skeuomorphic.' Get used to it, while Apple and other GUI designers persist in this practice you'll be reading it a lot. And after a while even you will find the repeated explanation tiresome.
You might want to grab yourself a dictionary and look up the word "exponentially".
I'm pretty sure think I know what it means, mind you I can look a word up at a hundred miles an hour ... are your are going to ask me to look up 'hundred' now, holding a speed camera? Besides there was a time in your life when your vocabulary was literally growing exponentially.
Not to mention that the function of the knob is rarely obvious. Many years ago, it was common to require people to move the mouse in a circular motion to turn a knob. Some software requires you to move the mouse either horizontally or vertically only, though this is obviously easy to learn in a second.
The worst, which seems to be the norm these days with audio software, is to click and hold on the knob, and the closer the mouse cursor is to the knob, the faster but less accurate the turn is. The further the mouse cursor is, the slower and more accurate it is. However, the angle of the knob rarely follows the angle of the mouse cursor relative to the knob. It's such a pain in the butt. Just trying to explain this to someone takes more time and effort than it's worth. Just use a damn slider! They do use those in the audio industry.
Rather sadly I've just found that if i run my finger up and down the right side of my Track-pad it acts as a scroll wheel
True. Though kudos to by far the cheapest "laptop" I have ever bought, original Asus EEE PC 701, which had it visually indicated in the right part of the trackpad. :)
There should be a way for Asus to be able to financially benefit from this social service
why should users be forced to know file names..
3 points here :
1. Search has improved drastically in nearly all popular OSes. We have come to a point where it is less necessary to remember file names (or paths).
2. In the real world, it is far worse. People misplacing things, especially middle age* and older people, is an extremely common sight.
3. Same problem as the real world applies : when "placing" something, one strongly and falsely feels that he will never forget where it was placed. Tags do not solve this problem very well. People having the discipline it takes to manually tag will have found many other ways to remember things, including better organization in the first place.
* In middle age one starts to have too many things to keep track of, for multiple people because most middle aged people have spouses and kids, and of course the mind is not at its sharpest any more.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
The real damage is done when one insists upon a single set of controls without giving user or administrator option to set one or the other. You can actually have both by allowing skins to be applied to .
I still fail to understand why Microsoft did not offer the ribbon as an alternative option to menu control (or vice versa.)
One of the genius things that Microsoft did was to make WMP skinnable.
Some of the programs and systems I've loved best had toggles for an advanced or expert mode for those who preferred them.
For my perspective, I think this is a shit design that is too hard to work with because I apparently have to interact with things my clicking to drag a dial around, instead of just entering a value. I think it would be much easier to have a keyboard-friendly interface, with a visual view of the same if you wanted, and you could optionally use that exclusively as well. Hot-keys, shortcuts, and direct entry are my thing, not dials and sliders. But I realize that's only my opinion. Hopefully you will see that aesthetics are not important for functionality unless a user already has that model in mind.
I get what you're saying, though I think I should have specified that you don't enter absolute values in these kinds of things. Unless you are trying to duplicate the settings on another - in which case you use patch saving/loading.
You're supposed to use your ears, and tune the settings until you hear what you are looking for. Only a genius savant is going to know they want their oscillators exactly tuned to a particular frequency.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
"Rather sadly I've just found that if i run my finger up and down the right side of my Track-pad it acts as a scroll wheel. (ok hands up everybody who just tried it and found yours does the same)." /kills self
Why is RSS feed retarded?
Social Credit would solve everything...
Would if kill you to click on the link? Sheesh!
Don't worry, the author of the article has no idea what skeuomorph means either...
Here are some common examples of skeuomorphs and their original counterparts:
The computer desktop / a real desktop
A computer file / a real file
A computer keyboard / a typewriter
A mouse pointer / a pointing arrow
Etc etc.
Skeuomorphism isn't skin deep, and is an important part of any modern interface including Android's silly flat blue theme from the future.
Skeuomorphs allow us to transfer our understanding of outdated objects to their modern replacements. It's not strictly necessary to use skeuomorphism, but more often than not the alternative is to force a user to learn arcane, bizarre and unintuitive interfaces like the command line.
FYI, one of the less well-known bits of Google's repertoire is the "define:" interface. In this case, searching for "define:skeuomorphic" will answer the original question. The top result is, unsurprisingly, the wikipedia article, which tells us "A skeuomorph /ËskjuËÉ(TM)mÉ"rf/ SKEW-É(TM)-morf, or skeuomorphism (Greek: skeuosâ"vessel or tool, morpheâ"shape),[1] is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original."
as for whether it's good or bad ... "meh". It's not as if you have any choice in the software that you use, so shut up and get on with your job, unless part of your job is to answer questions from the designers working on the next generation of your in-house software.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Would it fucking kill you to define a largely unfamiliar term in the goddamned article summary? Jesus christ. Fuck.
fer'eal. pretentious assholes.