Haiku GUI - just mucking around

Apple seems to think the same thing:

Discoverability.

Encourage your users to discover functionality by providing cues about how to use user interface elements. If an element is clickable, for example, it must appear that way, or a user may never try clicking it. Be sure to use Aqua controls properly and avoid making controls invisible to inexperienced users.

Aqua buttons, for example, appear three-dimensional, enhancing their resemblance to buttons users see on physical devices. Well-designed toolbar icons make the commands they portray recognizable to users. This familiarity gives users the confidence to explore the functionality of a new application.

Don’t discourage discovery by making actions difficult to reverse or recover from. For more information on this, see “Forgiveness.”

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGHIDesign/chapter_5_section_2.html

You need those icons with the title. I find that if I only had the icon I might not get the title. If I have part of the title (result of truncation), I might not get the title. But if I have the icon and part of the title then I can usually make out the link.
Another thing to point out is that we have workspaces so we now have 3 levels to deal with; workspaces, windows and tabs. What I would propose is a vertical tree and the ability to name these workspaces.
So you would have a widget that displays everything that's on your system:
Workspace #1 Internet
>Firefox
>>Gmail
>>Haiku Project
>IRC client
>>efnet
>>freenode
>>>#haiku
Workspace #2 Games
etc

I think that makes a lot more sense than the graphical workspaces app

well you could still drag and drop with my idea. just drag something over the entry like you would in Tracker or Explorer or any other tree widget.

You're not getting much information about the individual windows in the workspaces app and this is even true with Apple's Spaces which tries to show you what is inside the window, but smaller. That only works if you deal with images. It sure is a cool way to show off their UI technology but is it the best solution for users?

Interesting GUI-science. I have my DeskBar on the upper left side of the screen, Trash lower right, Workspaces upper right (if I start it), mounted volumes under the Desk bar in the middle then icons grouped together in clusters when they have similarities (music apps eg.) or not if they are 'single'.

No offense taken. This is an open discussion, so we should all be able to maintain our opinions without any worries.

Uhh... Looking back at my post, I meant that one of those menus would contain the menu for whichever program you had selected, so you don't go looking for the menu bar. I know that in some programs I've used, the menu is in some crazy place and I spend half of my time in that program trying to remember where they put it. Forcing the menu bar to a certain place on the screen would let users concentrate more on what they're doing as it takes one potential uncertainty out. A program could even consider a certain part of itself another place and have a different menu, but as you said that could get confusing.

Another context sensitive thing that could be interesting is having the OS keep track of how often two programs are used together, so when you open one, it automatically adds that program's partners to a "quick launch" (an in Windows) bar. Preferably, this would not appear out of nowhere, but link itself to the OS menu, keeping it consistent.

I mostly said that the top left should have OS tasks because it's the first place somebody looks when they break flow to look for something else. As often as not in my usage, that something else is a new program. I use hotkeys enough in my main programs that I rarely open the top left menu, but some people are different. I know people who still don't get the little icons under the title menu in MS Word. Customization would probably be the best compromise, allowing people to choose which menu contains what tasks, as well as some other nifty features.

My argument to the focus being the OS is that it wouldn't be as soon as you opened a program. I'm a bit biased against desktops though. To be honest, I'd prefer it if my background could be a window for file navigation. The only icons I have on the desktop are the file browsing related ones. Again, everybody's different, but I would like to at least have the option to kill what I consider dead space.

Most of the suggestions are just pointing out weak spots (as I see them) in current OSes interfaces, and suggesting the first solution that comes to mind. I'd like to hear other peoples' takes on these issues, as this forum is a good place for brainstorming. Well, I'd keep blathering on, but I'm finally seeing Batman tonight. :P

It looks beautiful... I would love to see a vmware build with this type of theme... the icons are bleh, but we already have those, right?

I really do like this idea, an extra quick start bar for that would be a very cool idea!

Did you try the folder on desktop thing from KDE 4.1? You can put a window on the desktop which shows a specific folder you choose. You can copy files into this folder or start programs etc. If you go down to another folder in this window the file browser will start and take you there. It is an interesting concept. You can't copy files to the desktop anymore by drag&droping them onto the desktop what might keep it more clean. I don't know how useful it is for me yet, because I just started trying it on PC-BSD7 and it took me a while to get my dualscreen setup right... .

For me the desktop has a major downside. Things on the desktop are always covered when you need them or you lose your focus when you use them. I do use it randomly, but usually I enjoy the background picture (or video/screen saver put onto the desktop) :-s

I like the BeOS way better, but I'm sure everyone has different opinions on that :-)

I agree with you here, I really like how Microsoft did that in Office 2007. It is great for people who use it for the first time and grouping similar tasks and color coding them is great too. It's just annoying if you used to know where your buttons where hidden ;-)

I don't know if it was possible in GoBe Productive, but it would be great if you could unhook and hook the tabs to "tab or window" the content back and forth. Sometimes you just need the content of a tab in a new window to compare stuff or just have a better reading experience. I do that a lot with Opera tabs.

That's what I ment was not finished. It's great that you can show bigger icons, but the width of the deskbar has to increase too so the names behind the icons are still readable (and the text should scale too of course). To cut it short you need a full scalable Deskbar :-)

I won't hit you for liking the Zeta looks, I think yellowTAB did a good job on it. The ZSnake thing was cool too (not sure where that came from) and I did like the Settings Program, even though it had some glitches.

I didn't like the "bulbs" in the newest Zeta Deskbar http://www.bebug.be/images/MM.jpg, the old "boxes" http://www.bebug.be/images/apps/Zenverter.png for the runing applications looked a lot better to me. Don't ask me why, I can live with both :-)
I do see the "bulbs" look more modern, but somehow they don't look right... maybe they should be more like a button style?

I don't know why I didn't see this screen shot
http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?image=haikublackma7.png

I actually like it. I only think it's useless to pull the deskbar to the bottom if it's empty. That just wastes space. In my eyes it is a lot better to let it expand with new entrys.

The Black and yellow theme is nice, but it is a bit Vistaish since Microsoft just recently started black. Apple is following already, does Haiku have to follow too? ;-)

Have a great day,
Thomas

Hmm I think it could be handy to be able to grab windows anywhere and be able to move them, with KDE it is possbible to do a 'alt-mouse-grab-the-window-anywhere-to-move-it'. This way borders can be really thin (and yellow!) and you can resize the window by clicking the border. I can imagine resizing being hard to do with small borders but I usually move windows more often then that I resize them.

Therefore I believe an approach with holding a modifier key and clicking and dragging the mouse anywhere inside the window could resize it quickly without too much focus and strain.

Take a look at KDEs's window behaviour options.

Window grouping features sound really great.

I agree that if we could group windows to tab groups, we might be able to do without tabs inside windows. I do think the groups should be represented as groups in Deskbar though, so you could quick hide them, if you needed space on the screen.

Talking about window behavior, what I'd really like to see is scrolling with a hand like in acrobat reader when pressing the middle mouse button. I think the first OS I saw that in was BeOS and I think it is a lot better than mouse wheels. Especially on long pages the mouse wheel isn't the best choice and you can't move from left to right. I did love the mouse wheel when I had a "ball mouse". Back than the mouse sometimes wouldn't move nicely, but the mouse wheel would always allow sooth scrolling. Today I don't think we need that anymore.

(oops, sorry, that is a bit off topic)

Thomas

OpenTracker already has a single window mode, but it's just not the default. The other neat things in tracker are the folder tree menus (right click in a window), and click on the "x items" in the bottom left of the window to get the parent folders. These aren't obvious functions though, and could probably be placed more intuitively. They definitely need a mention in the "welcome guide" for new users.

Simon

I wonder how windows with a wood or bamboo texture would look like. I'm really bad in doing mock ups but maybe someone else could try? :-)

Someone already made a KDE theme that looks like this:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=2&id=75804&file1=758...

It might look good if it was consistent and used for the whole GUI, but I think I would prefer brighter wood flavors... . That might be a way to get away from this Vista/MacOSX look. What other materials might look good? What do you think?

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@nutela multi touch would be great. At the same time I would love to be able to plug a second mouse into the pc and get a second pointer. That would mean I could have two programs in focus at the same time. I could check my mails while my wife is playing Mahjongg on the same computer at the same time without complaints (if my screen is big enough).

Too bad implementing that will probably be pretty hard (What happens to a program when two buttons are pressed at the same time?) and I never have the time to get a close look at it :-(((

Even worse that I feel like the only one who would want something like that :-)

Have a nice day,
Thomas

I think the texture must by high resolution and large (ie. not repeat too often) to look pretty.. or maybe a vector image. It will be slower for sure.

The problem with more input devices is that even if more windows could have focus at the same time is that which input device (read keyboard) will interact with which window? How do you differentiate (active window colour) each active window.

Mouse pointers you can differentiate because you see the cursor on screen but not keyboards.

Two buttons are never pressed at the same time because they are scanned after each other not at the same time I believe.

I thought the simple shiny stuff needs resources too so it would equal out. Anyway it was just a thought on how to make things look new and unique.

LOL that was the movie where they had a "rabbit" in their system, eating it... right? ;-)
I don't like blinking stuff on my desktop it distracts me. If I want blinking I could deactivate my flash blocker ;-)

@nutela You're right on my multi input idea two keyboards would be a bit hard. It could be solved if the system remembers the order the keyboards and mice were plugged in and glues the focus together. But I don't care about the second keyboard that much. I think two mice would do for a start. The active window color could get a shine of the colour the corresponding mouse cursor has. If you only allow multiple mice the active window colour shouldn't be too much of a problem. You know into what window you just clicked.

If Haiku allows grouping windows it would be nice if there were different options to rearrange them. Beside minimizing and maximizing windows one could be "Tabbed view" and puts the windows behind each other, one could put them beside each other and one could keep the previous active window big while ordering the others around that window. Maybe someone has even more ideas. I think that would be cool.

And yes that wood thing is a bit ugly, but it has potential :-p

http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?image=haikublackma7.png

it may be a bit too dark!
I like the shape and structure though I might add, one problem with the title/window widgets is that they don't stand out so much.

Very nice, smooth without going over board on the gloss. A little too 'Human' through, so I see where some are getting the relation to Linux (Ub in particular). I personally enjoy the fact that this design seem to keep out of the way like Gnome/GTK use to.
With the buttons on the second layout, I am not too sure. It something that does annoys me with most of the GTK engines when they round buttons (like the one in your tab), they just can't help coming out as Mac OS 9/OS X derived... the curve is too forgive, maybe I would like to see someone try a smaller curve, see how it looks on button. If anything, avoid the squared look... it something a little jarring for the layout, distracts from the work at hand and I am not sure you want to do that to the user. (Or if square it something that you want to do, avoid the two-tone gloss colours... something to make it look different from the Vista/Mac-look without being distracting)