Speed, Speed, Speed, Slow down and think

BeOS has good aestethics, whatever your macloving mind thinks; Bash and Hey give all the scriptability needed, effects just suck - physically suck and suck CPU power...

well, about effect, i specially like the LoonCraz Tracker for that (PhOS). It scales when close or Minimize/maximise it. It's a small thing, not hungry in power ... could be added as an option(like zSnake in Zeta), so you would be free to use it or not.

Heh... rest assured. bogomipz.

Haiku R1 is not going to have any lame eyecandy, as far as I've understood. And I'm sure R2 will have the possibility to run without all those "fancy" CPU-consuming and user-annoying habits :P

Exactly what makes me scream in windoze :evil:

At least none of these animations should be default behaviour.
The default should be NOT to animate, and require the user to put it ON before any such cpu-sucking and work-slowing eek'ies starts to mess it up ;)

All ugly, pointless, CPU sucking crap

Go use Linux. Not a suggestion, an order. You want a slow, ugly, CPU sucking, eyecandy peice of shite, go use Linux.

Agreed.
An OS doesn't need to look "pretty". You do not (I hope) stare at the OS GUI, watching how files get thrown in the bin, and how applications jump around for entertainment...
Unless I forgot something, an OS needs functionality, security, stability, speed, and must be easy to use -- an OS does not need to look "cool" to be a good OS. I think it would be wise to leave all eye candy for the things that will run on the OS, like games and whatnot.

Also, adding support for features such as those described above sounds like added complexity. I personally think that complexity should be avoided whenever possible -- would it be a good idea to release a different build for people who want the eye candy, as a different edition of Haiku? “Haiku Standard Edition” and “Haiku EyeCandy Edition”. :D

Utterly ridiculous. You're all talking from the perspective that effects == poor performance when you're all quite aware that the reason Windows (for example) slows down when performing effects is due to bad coding within the o/s. You want a 'media o/s' which, by dint of its name, is aimed at the 'cooler' (i.e. mac) end of the market. You don't give people nice eye candy, they'll respond by not using Haiku.

Could we not have an o/s that is intelligent? For example, it will know how many CPUs the computer its running on has, what speed they are, how much memory it has, etc. It can then enable extra eye-candy features based on the end power available. Of course, the user will have final vetoe over which effects they want, but at least they'll be available.

For example: I have R5 running on a Pentium II 350MHz single cpu machine so, naturally, I'd rather not have Mac-style effects going on. However, I also have a Pentium 4 PC that supports hyper-threading, it has two 120GB hard-disks in it, and 1GB of RAM. I would like to install Haiku on it and have nice eye-candy effects. You may say 'let someone write it as an additional component' - well, yes, that's fair enough - in response I would say 'make sure there are suitable hooks into the api to allow someone to do this'.

C'mon guys - it's not 1998 anymore, the PC hardware world has moved on significantly, it's about time your thinking caught up with it.

For the record, I run Windows XP on the P4 machine I mentioned above, with themeing enabled (uxtheme patched) and I notice _zero_ slow down on it.

There should be some optional effects, just dont overdo it. BTW, wouldnt an engine like Apple's quartz extream help reduce CPU usage from effects and transparentsies?

There is something to be said for eye candy.

It's not just candy. If properly used they are good visual cues.

Any good UI must have visual cues.

I figure if I don't like it, I'll roll my own. That'll be the day.

I find that when using something as different as BeOS is, all previous conceptions about graphics and such are swept out of the window and I start with a clean slate. I find that I learn new methods and tools so much faster if I take the quirks as is, and the (supposed) lack of an element fails to bother me.

Glitz and glamour aren't important when the lights go out.

Haiku must follow in MacOS X's footsteps... every version runs faster and works better than the previous version, even on the same hardware.

In other words, I expect Haiku R1 to run like greased lightning on my 400MHz Celeron and R2 to double that performance. :-)

Luposian

Sometimes BeOS is so fast I didn't even notice I deleted something. It cases like this I think it would be usefull to use a decent little animation, just to improve the feedback of the GUI.

The user think oh, I did this and the system responded to my actions.

The nr. 1 thing I hate about windows is that sometimes I *don't know* what is going on (unresponsive).

I'm testing Zeta now (not really working with it yet which indicates that there *are* problems).

1st I noticed is the new Gui-style or whatever you call it which I find pretty good in contrairy to others. *BUT* one thing I sorely miss; *sliding tabs*. Wtf was YT thinking? This is one feature I really use.

I looked at their mediaplayer and I was surpised that the top menu or whatever (someone please enlighten me about the terms) you know 'File' 'Edit' etc. didn't look as being clickable bewteen all those buttons. I know it looks normal like old BeOS and Windows but still it looked odd with all the roundness of the buttons. But this is minor.

Major is the old R5 style mixed up with the new Zeta R1 style, bleh. And other things like fonts being not being properly displayed on buttons and in windows, being partly covered etc.

+ what happened to that Mount menu which freezes when you click or slide by it with the mouse? Terrible.

etc etc. ; )

Duh I know all that. It is that I accidentally press delete and don't notice. I know how to deal with it but it happens a lot with desktop icons.

Not only for the newbe a little animation, with 'no' slow down of course, would be welcomed by me. Who else?

Agreed. We don't need smoke and stuff when we delete files. That would be horrible.

Another thing that will kill the BeOS feel is glowing, blinking buttons, scrollbars and so on.

There is a reason why we like BeOS, isn't it? At least for me it's because its pretty, simple and fast. I can run it fast on my old computer, and I can run it faster on my new one. Nothing is better than that. Windows coming up instantly, good clipping and such is much more important than all that ugly, childish effects. I don't think there is a general problem that you don't know what's going on just because there is something to let you know you've just deleted something.

Things like fading menus are really annoying, but most people like to play around with skins, icons, and wallpapers. If we don't allow for some eyecandy, people will just develop hacks like the uxtheme.dll crack on Windows.

Using activation follows mouse and focus follow mouse doesn't really change anything.

The error here is hitting the del-key without being aware of it. You do not accidentally hit the del-key, and under no circumstances do you do the same error twice.

I can agree with some sort of warning.
That's fair enough. Like a messagebox, asking you whether or not to delete the file(s), or to empty the trashcan.

But all these fancy neat animations? Noooooo.... puhleaaaase...

About the CLI: The CLI still develops, and CLI is superior in many ways to GUI. The only reason why we need a GUI is because people don't want to learn ;) (unfortunately, since using CLI a lot makes you better in regard to not hit buttons accidentally :twisted: )

Mr Rookie? :? I suppose that's me, but the name is Mr.Jones :wink:

I didn't say anything about GUI not being handy, nor did I say that CLI should replace GUI.

However, in terms of speed nothing beats CLI. It is however virtually impossible to learn a different CLI interface in 12 different applications.

But you don't need a GUI, not even for graphics. Most CAD applications are based on a CLI with a graphical representation of what your commands do. That's a combination of CLI and GUI.

Drawing a line from midpoint of one object to midpoint of another object in AutoCAD, is done fastest this way:

l [space] m [space] (click on first object) m [space] (click on second object) <-- as you can see, it's a combination of CLI and GUI. And that's actually a combination of both worlds. It's not the easist way to do it for a newbit, but it sure is the fastest.

A GUI is handy - not for graphics or text or anything - but for solving tasks in a intuitive way, especially for newbies. Very few people has a chance to do anything if they are forced to use CLI only. That's why we're using the desktop metaphor :wink:

And of course, a small sound could be used for deleting a file. But that's standard in all Desktops Environments today :)

(Just remember to make the sound short and different than all other sounds, using the same sound for all system events is bad).

Ohh... I don't know. A sound on per default doesn't seem so bad to me, as long as it is really short, and can be turned off. Perhaps one should have to decide this during installation, or first time run.

Good point. It seems to me neither are good, turn everything on is the Linux method IMHO and everything off the windows method.

As always it's about reasonable thinking.

I suggest having a little 'settings' button on each dialog, menu, etc. so you can set several settings without having to dig in a big settings program. My problem usually seems to be where to find the corresponding setting. For example in windows the most idiotic thing is the 'don't ask again' (to save passwordse etc.) because the first time you don't want to be annoyed you turn it off to be later annoyed to find it somewhere and to turn it on again, you get what I mean?

Like I said Petter, I little button showing a tool like on http://www.tuxmachines.org/gallery/albums/minislack11/settings.jpg (to the left of Xfce settings manager) on each and every window, menu, dialog etc. which should bring up a settings menu which is *only* for that particular window, dialog, menu etc. Context sensetive!

An example; when you right click in tracker you have a little menu, some items I might use others not. In windows those little menu's have grown and grown and have now so many options that they become too feature-rich and thus miss their original goal which is 'have a little menu for the most used things".

A settins-tool button could open a little settings menu for setting up this right-clicked-menu. The user could move menu-items like 'copy to' , 'fax this' or 'properties' up or down to reflect his most needed actions.

This would be really cool to have in Haiku R2 and up : )

Well, I don't think "Don't ask again" is crap - the problem is that it's virtually impossible to find the proper settings, sometimes they're hidden in said application, some times in one of several "Properties" in the Control Panel, or a third place or a fourth place or worse.

"Don't ask again" can be quite good, when use the right way. That's how it's done with my firewall (e.g. Let this application contact www.something.whatever at port 80 and don't ask again (actually: remember this setting)).

And all which is required to find that application's settings within the firewall-interface is to doubleclick on the icon in the Notification Area (systray in Windows).

Well, I'd say a Gnome-like approach would be better. Sane defaults, which you don't want to change, and if you want to change them it's easy to do so. However, the sounds don't have to be as dull as the Gnome sounds. Nor do the configuration have to look the same. It's only the approach with sane defaults, I care about (though the Gnome HIG contains many good ideas in regard to usability).

Ha! Obviously Gnome can, Be could...

Maybe we should define* 'eye-candy' more, like ec animation, ec 3D-like buttons, ec gradients etc.

I am for very little animation, 3D for buttons, 3D/gradient for surface / knob -like feeling of moveable items (scrollbars, buttons, menu's?,...)

Who else?