Slashdot Mirror
Did Metro UX Elements Come From a 2009 Demo?
First time accepted submitter oso2k writes "In 2009, as reported by gizmag, Robert Clayton Miller proposed a UI that borrowed from familiar iPhone gestures and translated them to a multi-tasking data-input rich desktop UI. It would seem, however, Microsoft was paying attention. Elements in Miller's design seem to have been lifted for Metro UI, such as dynamic sized widgets (tiles in Metro UI) on the home screen, swipes alternate between open, fullscreened apps, left tap for the app context menu, right tap for the system context menu. And in Miller's video at [5:41], it would seem Microsoft used the same or nearly the same font [4:30]." It's interesting to spot resemblances here, but how many UI ideas don't have more than one inventor?
Don't you mean the interface formally known as Metro?
They should be sued and shamed - they are supposed to do their design and development in a bubble!
Metro design elements date back to at least 2006 with the Zune and evolved in 2008 with the new Xbox 360 UI. The font Microsoft uses for Metro is Segoe and dates back to 2004. Seriously, I know Slashdot is anti MS, but this is just getting ridiculous... first a post about how only 25% of Windows 8 prefer the OS to other versions of Windows, when 74% of those polled say they never even used Windows 8, and now this?
"... how many UI ideas don't have more than one inventor?"
Anything "invented" by Apple. Duh! Just ask their legal team!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
This is actually an interesting concept.
As one who enjoys tiled window interfaces, I'd like to see more concepts that avoid the stacking window management we've had for so long.
I do think the model posed is a bit more restrictive than I'd like, though.
Just like a flood of Athenas - flooding from the forehead of Zeus!
We are awash in the innovations and creativity gushing from Microsoft. One simple antecedent in the case of the Metro interface hardly mars the unbroken record of stunning inventiveness and groundbreaking vision that can be directly attributed to the far-sighted leadership of Ballmer's Microsoft.
Someday, the humble Zune will be recognized as the beginning of the post-PC era, which Microsoft ushered, leading from behind.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
While it looks cool and all lets consider this for a minute. Mouse one point, hand 10 points? Wrong! mouse and keyboard 3+3 and one pointer. But wait the 3 keyboard say shift alt ctrl and 3 mouse can be differentiated! that means 6+6 combos fro touch for total of 12 different interaction modes that too can be combined for 1*2*3*4*5*6 = 720 combos. so ten gui has what 2*(3+3 pinch) plus 2 pointing areas gee.. doesn't sound so great now does it. granted the FIRST pointer of the flour sliders makes sense tough realistically only 3 sliders possible little finger doesn't have so good manual control... And they are neglecting the tactile feedback and the thumb. Then theres the 2 pointers how often do you actually draw with your other hand? Maybe roll the paer etc but hell the keyboard could sense this by sliding against the lower rail.
So no not better just different. Basically until they develop the tactile feedback pixel they will suck.
The last time anything in history had a single inventor... well, is unknown. If it ever happened, it happened during prehistoric times.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
"left tap for the app context menu, right tap for the system context menu"
So just like Left Click and Right Click then.
Except with a finger instead of a mouse button...
All decent UI ideas were already done by Douglas Englebart.
You'll have to pardon me, though, I don't have time to elaborate -- speaking His name reminds me that I have to go dust the shrine and do my ritual obeisance again.
(To meet Poe's law requirements: :-) )
The article calls out TUI's ( text based interfaces ) and then claims that the GUI is the ultimate replacement. Based off the introduction the article was written by someone with a mild amount of computer literacy. In many cases a properly designed TUI will destroy a GUI any day of the week all day long. The GUI has it's place but so does the TUI, anyone who disregards either has no right to write technical reviews.
Metro design elements date back to at least 2006 with the Zune and evolved in 2008 with the new Xbox 360 UI. The font Microsoft uses for Metro is Segoe and dates back to 2004. Seriously, I know Slashdot is anti MS, but this is just getting ridiculous... first a post about how only 25% of Windows 8 prefer the OS to other versions of Windows, when 74% of those polled say they never even used Windows 8, and now this?
If you want to see some Slashdot comedy gold, you should go back and read some of the past anti-Microsoft stories and comments on Slashdot.
For example take this one http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/2259257/Draconian-DRM-Revealed-In-Windows-7
If these kind of retarded stories were run on some other company, it would be called a FUD campaign secretly sponsored by some evil corp.
This is evolutionary not revolutionary. Aspects that were designed for one platform are moving to another. Big deal. The Dinosaurs are not inheriting the earth.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
It's obvious Miller went forward in time and stole Microsoft's innovations ..
AccountKiller
They're not the same thing.
UI is user interface. This can be a CLI (command line interface), GUI, touchscreen, or really whatever sort of way in which you can think to interact with a computer. As such, conflating it to a GUI, a graphical user interface, is narrowing things down too much, since it's much more general by definition. Each different input method is then going to have different things in which it's good for or not good for, and will need to be taken into consideration when designing.
For instance, a CLI is going to almost always be the most powerful input method, although it suffers from low discoverability, since you need to learn some basic commands to interact with it first before you can become too proficient at it. And the best CLIs are going to be ones in which you can infinitely chain commands together and even string them out in its own programming interface, so that you can then set up a batch of jobs together with a few clicks of the keyboard. Heck, I'd even classify voice command interfaces as CLIs as well, like Dragon NaturalSpeaking or even Siri, since while they don't involve keyboards, they have the same strengths and weaknesses as user interfaces (although the voice input could be seen as a fuzzier input method, much like how touchscreens are to GUIs, since you lose a bit of precision in the interaction, due to voice recognition software having to figure out what you intend to say).
While for UX, that stands for user experience, which is a completely different concept entirely. UI only designates how someone interacts with a computer, while UX is more so about whether that interface is optimal for the task at hand, or even whether there's consistency between the user interface interaction. So in essence, the UI designates the what, but the UX is how.
For instance, let's focus on using a touchscreen interface, which is one GUI implementation, and compare it to a mouse input. For starters, a touchscreen is never going to be a precision interaction method, because while you might be able to increase the screen size, you'll never match a mouse without lowering the DPI of the screen drastically, which then makes interaction a bit clumsier. Likewise, a mouse is going to be confined to a single input, while a touchscreen doesn't have to be, but can take in multiple inputs simultaneously, and as such, the mouse will never be able to quite match a touchscreen on this front. As such, while they both do represent graphical user interfaces, they do not share the same user experience, which is part of the reason why you hear complaints from people who don't like having to use one for a desktop, because forcing one UI for both then requires that in order to not completely suck on one input method, it needs to make compromises in the other.
Of course, there are some people who seem to believe that designing for the fuzzier interface while providing ways of doing tasks with single inputs will automatically make it optimal for both (I'm looking at you GNOME 3 and Windows 8), but this is sheer lunacy. Much like a CLI interface is not the most optimal for all cases (e.g. graphical manipulation), despite being the more powerful alternative, a touchscreen is not going to be a replacement for the old tried and true mouse and keyboard, which then allows for you to cram and browse through more information on one screen than a touch interface would, since a touch interface can't handle as much precision as the mouse can, and needs to be fuzzier by default in order to be useful.
So perhaps you might not care about all of this, since it does at least appear like you aren't within the industry since you dismissed all of this as being names for the same things, but at least you've had a brief 101 excerpt of HCI (human computer interaction), and can't claim ignorance to these terms as a defense any more. Because surely you likewise wouldn't say "CPU? GPU? RAM? Why do we need so many names for the same damn thing? It's not like we're using desktops anymore, so what difference does the C or G make."
Zune was around in 2006, and Metro is obviously just an evolution of the ideas in Zune. So no, Microsoft didn't steal anything from a 2009 video, and Slashdot editors are idiots for posting this without even doing the most cursory examination of the claim.
Comment of the year
Nice thought, but a majority of the Metro UI has been around since at least 2007 on Windows Media Center/Vista (including the fonts, a proto-version of the tiles, and many other familiar elements).
the demo is exactly like webOS.... except in webOS it looks good, and is useful.
the demo fells kinda retarted showing the side apps instead of giving the full screen to the app... also, dragging in from the bottom of the screen to enter "window selection mode" instead of dozen fingers gesture...
Who copied who arguments....
Really how boring is this argument?
People have ideas, ideas that are derivatives of other ideas. When it comes to user interface design these ideas have to be derivative as otherwise people wouldn't find them intuitive, communication is all about expressing things in terms people understand, e.g. alphabets, left to right writing systems, touch, gestures.
You change the paradigm too much and no one will understand it, this doesn't leave a whole lot of options, repetition in amongst people trying to create an incremental shift in a communication paradigm is going to happen all the time, we should just get use to this and stop being surprised/suspicious of plagiary whenever two things like this look remarkably similar.
Apple only has to convince a jury. Then Microsoft will have "samsung" that same sad tune.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling