Is it time for complete OS visual redesign?

Hi porga,

As much as I'd like a complete visual overhaul of both the OS and the website myself, it is extremely low on the list of things that need to be done (as it should be). What's the point of having a beautiful OS if it isn't complete? I'm with you on this point, but I still think we're at least 6 months away from any significant aesthetic changes.

And when it comes to the browser, PulkoMandy has already done a considerable amount of work on getting Web+ up to par with other major browsers. It's already showing respectable speed test results, and it can only get better from here. Keep in mind that the bulk of the work being done on the browser is by one person...so it'll take a bit more time.

The only way to speed this process up is money; money that can be used to fund more contracts to really get the ball rolling on development. Unfortunately, not everyone has money to spare. If you'd still like to help in some way though, I recommend switching your search engine to GoodSearch (http://www.goodsearch.com/nonprofit/haiku.aspx) and selecting Haiku as your non-profit of choice. While the amount you get per search is small, over time it can really add up. I believe it's been less than a year since Haiku started using GoodSearch and it's already nearing $1,000 in donations from 2,564 users. If even a fraction of those users regularly used GoodSearch, Haiku could be netting in an extra $5,000 a year to fund contracts.

Apple magic? Mostly transparency tricks, and gestures. Trivial things, but perceived as much more.

It's something that could be added fairly easily if the devs decided to enable the "pseudo-light-years ahead" look, albeit with no more real functionality. Maybe that would reduce the "windows manager" request posts. My wife was quite impressed with her iphone, and how the weather page was guzzied up with transparency and night sky lightning strikes behind the forecast text. It became so much more fancy a device. Each to his/her own, I guess...

That is something I didn't find, but would certainly make life easier, though I would prefer it at the top of the screen.

you can drag the deskbar and place it in any corner or along any edge

I personally like the new UI design concepts introduced by iOS. I like the transparencies, the bounces, and the ripples. I don't think it would be difficult to introduce these to Haiku for a UI designer/coder. I think the C++ Haiku/BeOS API is ideal for designing this kind of UI.

Maybe a good way to get this started is to recommend Haiku for use in upper level undergraduate Computer Science classes or Masters level thesis development work.

Certainly 3D hardware support would be useful. This would mean completing MESA drivers.

Not as part of the system, but as an add on later, perhaps,

(I personally hate that kind of thing as it just 'wastes' resources.)

it isn't controversial at all, though. desktop usability standards are pretty well understood by now. and all the desktops have pretty much looked alike forever, design fluorishes adding little to usibility, but lots to the ability to protect the intellectual property of a given desktop

I fully concur.

UI design is very subjective and no matter what there will be many users extremely pleased and as many others extremely displeased with a given design at a given moment in time.

A design is a compromise on many requirements and wishes.

As an end-user, I would prefer a focus on progression to R1 with current UI than a mid-course re-direction to a UI redesign.

An excellent point. we only have so many devs hacking on the project, and there are so many things that really need doing before we even start to think of tinkering with the interface. Save it for R2.

I agree with both of these. I generally use Fluxbox/Openbox on Linux, these use a simple toolbar/menu system, which I would like to see on Haiku, eventually.

Just to pitch in my own $0.02: by no means. I see Haiku as the last remaining OS that isn't pretentious. It just boots and stands back, leaving the user to decide what to do and where to go. I can see that this isn't some UX designer's personal art project, instead the user interface clearly shows the function of everything on the system. In this way, I find that Haiku has found a perfect balance. Its icons neither convey their message using enough visual effects to make my CPU catch fire nor in a bland caricature so flat that it makes my eyes bleed.

Also as an aside: isometric icons are awesome no matter what. They form a perfect ground between 3d and 2d that is intuitive and visually appealing.

http://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/deskbar.html

(If you are not talking about this, then I have no clue what you are on about)

To me that sounds like eye-candy that does not help in my use of the UI in anyway.

In what functional way does any of that improve the the interface?

Earl Colby Pottinger

The capability still exists (to have different decorators) however... none of the other decorators have been ported/updated to the new stack and tile system... so that is why there aren't any more than the default one.

You can change colors and such though...

It does. It really does. A drop-shadow properly designed draws the eye and tells you which window is active before you have time to think about it. It only saves a tenth of a second, but multiply it by a thousand time per day. Animations, IF properly designed, tell you what is happening inside your computer on a visceral level.

The trick here is in that phase "if properly designed". Consider the Apple iPhone. Why is that thing still selling by the shipload when there are more powerful, more functional Android phones available? Because the iphone was designed both as hardware and software. Apple used every trick known to neuropsychology to make the thing work as seamlessly as possible. Steve Jobs created the original Macintosh because he once took a calligraphy course at Stanford. He wanted to be able to reproduce that kind of beauty electronically.They will agonise for months over whether to make that drop shadow 9 or 10 pixels thick.

By comparison, the skins that Samsung, HTC etc hastily throw over Android are clunky and ugly. If you want to see Android really shine you need to buy one labelled Nexus, with a bare Android installation. Of course Android phones have fans too. Some people care more for price, personalisation and raw performance than for design, and that's OK.

So, if you are going to redesign the Haiku UI, you will need a designer. Not a programmer, a designer: these skill sets rarely overlap. Just throwing random decorations and animations onto the UI will result in an unusable mess, guaranteed. Yes, that means relinquishing control to a Fine Arts graduate. The designer designs, and you are just the grunt in engineering who implements. ;-)

I don't know who designed the original BeOS UI, but the stark simplicity of it remains attractive to me in Haiku today. And S&T was implemented the right way. If you like it, use it. If you don't, just ignore it - you'll never know it was there.

ah, since you put it that way, i'm all for it. brief animations, such as to show where minimized windows have "gone" to or even the transition between workspaces can be quick enough not to get in anyone's way, informative enough to explain the gui better and more reliably than words would and can be turned off. even win2k did all that (minus workspace transitions, since it didn't have workspaces). these are good ideas. just don't take away my flat contrasty colors and sharp rectangles plz, i need those

Agreed, actually. I was just using that as an example.

Also, I think that this should be done on an "On or Off" basis. You either use the eye candy the way God and the Haiku dev team gave it to you, or you turn it off, with Off being the default. Rather that than letting users tinker endlessly and finding creative new ways to screw up their systems. That is more the Haiku Way(tm), I think.

The idea of using web tech in Haiku itself, beyond the browser, could be taken a lot further if someone was willing to run with it.

If Haiku was remade to be consumable as a website, both locally and remotely, if redesigned as a kind of middleware for running Haiku web applications (called haikus?) this could:

• free it from the present consensus against theming
• free it from the constraints of its C++ API
• free it from limitations of the app_server (drawing primitives?)
• free it from the conventions of its desktop environment (Tracker, Deskbar, Twitcher, etc)
• mitigate the lack of drivers, if consumed from another computer
• allow accessing one's Haiku environment from one's phone
• eventually free Haiku from dependencies on its own kernel and filesystem
• make multiuser more interesting (to experiment with)
• sidestep C++ API integration for script langauges, offering web-based GUI
• allow apps to mix different programming languages
• allow apps to offer services, data to each other

All in all, this would help break Haiku out of its current pigeon hole. It might not be Haiku anymore, but it would be more interesting, to me at least. BeOS fans learned to love the post-BeBox BeOS. "It's dark in the box." Perhaps Haiku fans can learn to love a post-Haiku Haiku, if its spirit, core values, sensibilities, and ease of use remain.

To be clear, for a transitional period of time (years, most likely), the present Haiku would be the premier host platform for its web personality. Haiku weblets would be shown as regular windows when run locally. Remote web consumers would only see the haiku weblets, and weblet windows would be managed by a pluggable window manager, similar to X in concept, tailored to a web user experience when used remotely.

If you want to start a project like that, go ahead. Just don't call it Haiku. This new project would not even resemble Haiku.

I guess in R2 and beyond the web-app enabled Haiku will do great. In terms of look & feel, I will always stand by the Classic UI for desktops, although some kind of additional / alternative html5/js Neo shell wouldn't hurt either if it's developed by a dedicated team of excellent coders and usability experts. On somewhat modern machines OpenGL-accelerated Desktop is good idea too. Look at OS X for example, not hell of a lot visual effects, but very smooth and snappy. I could only imagine lighting fast Haiku taking advandage of all the modern hardware.

skyos looks toylike in the worst way.

i don't know that folks in these threads have actually seen and appreciated what this gui does. aside from windows being constantly responsive and providing always instant feedback as a thing apart from the applications running inside of them, there's also a dynamic tiling system -- have you seen the demo or tried it? so much of what's being suggested is a big step back from what we've already got. while something like dropshadows and simple animations on minimizing and workspace switching would show respectively which windows are active and where windows have gone when minimized (a simple disappearance of a window signifies closure) would be helpful, there is a reason for these tabs (which, btw, have been partly adopted by every major operating system and web browser), for these high-contrast colors, for this windowing system.

SKYOS is the poster child of how NOT to run an OS development.

Redesign hell, we don't even have a 1.0 yet, nor a beta. And we need apps more than a redesign. The current design is great, but could use some skins or choice of colors later! And SkyOS is butt ugly . . . You do realize this is a desktop OS right!

Hear, hear.
Regular drop shadows and a customizable theming engine. That's the only eyecandy I need.
I like the way Window Maker on *nix has a button in the settings for turning on superfluous animations (min/max/close etc).