It's always worth looking at beta's of upcoming OS releases to see where they are heading...you never know there may be one or two good ideas that should be in Linux....But looking at these shots of Vista I am wondering if MS have sacked half their UI team (if they haven't they should do)
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1931914,00.asp
Check out the media player shot non standard widgets, confusing boundaries between content tree and content files, media buttons that force you to mouse down to the bottom middle of the screen....madness or unfamiliarity clouding my opinion ?
We stuck IE7 preview on a spare XP machine at work, same UI issues, looks pretty but is totally unusable for power users...The only good thing I would like to see implemented in firefox is the tab preview button that gives a screen of thumbnails of all current tabs.
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Check out the media player shot non standard widgets, confusing boundaries between content tree and content files, media buttons that force you to mouse down to the bottom middle of the screen....madness or unfamiliarity clouding my opinion ?
Media player has had a godaweful interface for a long time. I have been on Linux (KDE) so long I had forgotten how nice it is to have a consistent user interface. I had to use media player a few months back when visiting my brother-in-law. SUch a confusing interface.
I have an app for a simple tdk CD label printer and it is just a s bad. And recently I helped my neighbour with her CD burning software and this was the same, huge clunky totally non-obvious icons and nothing where you would expect it to be.
Ian
On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 23:42 +0000, Ian bell wrote:
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Check out the media player shot non standard widgets, confusing boundaries between content tree and content files, media buttons that force you to mouse down to the bottom middle of the screen....madness or unfamiliarity clouding my opinion ?
Media player has had a godaweful interface for a long time. I have been on Linux (KDE) so long I had forgotten how nice it is to have a consistent user interface. I had to use media player a few months back when visiting my brother-in-law. SUch a confusing interface.
I have an app for a simple tdk CD label printer and it is just a s bad. And recently I helped my neighbour with her CD burning software and this was the same, huge clunky totally non-obvious icons and nothing where you would expect it to be.
It seems to be a trend, particularly with media applications. I hate those skin-able apps. Or apps that try to look like an appliance. The first one I think I encountered was some hateful audio app called Jet Audio perhaps 7-8 years ago...then came winamp and now even previously quite good applications like Nero seem to be falling over to these so called user friendly but inconsistent interfaces.
Now it looks like MS are trying to make a whole operating system look like Windows Media player....I never thought I'd be wishing that something has "Windows XP style" as a classic interface option.
What do we think the implications will be for Linux when Vista becomes available, will the KDE team try to follow on a similar path ? Will Gnome look really old and outdated to users coming from Windows ?
I don't think pretty and usable have to be mutually exclusive, and in fact I think OSX almost has it right....should we aim for this to keep Linux looking "modern" ?
On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 23:25 +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
It's always worth looking at beta's of upcoming OS releases to see where they are heading...you never know there may be one or two good ideas that should be in Linux....But looking at these shots of Vista I am wondering if MS have sacked half their UI team (if they haven't they should do)
I think this explains a lot !
http://research.microsoft.com/vibe/pubs/stepUICHI06.pdf
Peter ;-)
On 01-Mar-06 Peter Onion wrote:
On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 23:25 +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
It's always worth looking at beta's of upcoming OS releases to see where they are heading...you never know there may be one or two good ideas that should be in Linux....But looking at these shots of Vista I am wondering if MS have sacked half their UI team (if they haven't they should do)
I think this explains a lot !
http://research.microsoft.com/vibe/pubs/stepUICHI06.pdf
Peter ;-)
Should appeal to organists.
Rather exciting, in fact -- In many ways the keyboard is more flexible than the mouse since it's two handed and multi-fingered, and you can play a lot of keys at the same time or in rapid succession, like playing a keyboard. (Remember WP-5 on DOS?). The mouse, however, is really a one-handed device with very limited multi-finger capability; the main gain lies (theoretically) in the possible choice of millions of pixels to point at, compared with the 100+ keys on a keyboard; though whether you really gain in functional choice depends on the design of the GUI. A lot of GUIs seem to give you about a dozen choices at a time.
With a pedalboard to play with one's feet at the same time, the keyboard could be multiplied by a large factor.
I think this "Step UI" should be extended to allow user control via what I have christened "Balancing User Mechanism", or BUM -- otherwise described as "steering by the seat of your pants". An array of pressure sensors installed in the user's chair would allow this to be implemented.
And while I'm at it -- why not? -- can I invite discussion on the possibilities of a Whole-Body UI? (I already have some ideas about this, but space and other considerations preclude going into detail).
Best wishes to all, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 01-Mar-06 Time: 20:20:53 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 20:20 +0000, Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
And while I'm at it -- why not? -- can I invite discussion on the possibilities of a Whole-Body UI? (I already have some ideas about this, but space and other considerations preclude going into detail).
Interesting but didn't we go there with Virtual reality and discover that the sensors are too cumbersome.
How for example does your interface work for those with limited body control...does it exclude them or are you considering an accessibility mode. Also what about portable computing (which is after all the biggest growth area it seems...I remember reading somewhere that Laptops outsold Desktops last year)....Gonna look pretty silly and cause a lot of disruption to other passengers if you try to use such an interface on a plane.
On Wednesday 01 March 2006 20:57, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 20:20 +0000, Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
And while I'm at it -- why not? -- can I invite discussion on the possibilities of a Whole-Body UI? (I already have some ideas about this, but space and other considerations preclude going into detail).
Interesting but didn't we go there with Virtual reality and discover that the sensors are too cumbersome.
How for example does your interface work for those with limited body control...does it exclude them or are you considering an accessibility mode. Also what about portable computing (which is after all the biggest growth area it seems...I remember reading somewhere that Laptops outsold Desktops last year)....Gonna look pretty silly and cause a lot of disruption to other passengers if you try to use such an interface on a plane.
Could add a whole new dimension to emacs-fu, quite literally. "Emacs user arrested for 'plane rage".
Ten
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Ian bell -
Peter Onion -
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
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Wayne Stallwood