The theory behind the GUI

hi,
there are several books out there about useable interfaces.

each operating system/window manager has it's own guidelines.

another one called "the humane interface" by jeff raskin (used by macs).
amazon has it here

an interface guideline for gnome. gnome looks nice but it's becoming more and more like windows. i like gnome more than kde. but kde i think is more advanced and smaller.

eclipse has a very very nice interface. guidelines are here here

also, for some reason, a be's website still exists http://www.beatjapan.org/mirror/www.be.com/index.html. some can scavange a few remains from there. the date is 1998

i think APP/Interface team may profit from reading a couple of books or articles about guis while building the gui.

i hope my suggestion helps.

Large grey concrete buildings might be effective and resource effective, but would you want to live in one? ;)

I've always, well atleast for my first ten years in computing, been a fan of extreme minimalism and utilism. However, with my constant decline in computer interest so has my desire for effectivity decreased. I know my computer has alot of processing power and ram to spare, so while not use a small percentage of to make things a little prettier?

Ofcourse it should be an option for the user to decide, but something isn't worthless because it's only decoration. Doesn't have to be like Windows Vista (moving a window uses 30% cpu on my Athlon 165 btw) but appearance does matter!

thanks to firefox, the biggest thing is tabs. perhaps soon we'll see email with tabs, word processor with tabs. This is the next step from the Be concept of grouping. It's better because with multiple windows and tabs, I can group things by task. For example, I can have a window with all the haiku sites in tabs, window with all my firefox tabs, etc.

So with workspaces, deskbar grouping and tab gouping we have enough hierarchy for all kinds of things. This would allow me to keep track of a lot of websites, a lot of email-a lot of everything at the same time!

totally agree.."you're smart enough than to have us baby you. make things simple but not idiotic." just like that.. make thigs be useful and productive NOT be stupid

Not quite.

As for My Computer being babying, it may not be the metaphor you prefer for your computer, but it does not mean that it is babying. In anycase, with regards to your comment about the big icons, simplicity is not a lack of visually pleasing elements, it is ensuring that those elements operate correctly, productively, and pleasingly. Using a computer should not be like reading a flyer from a Microsoft Publisher '97 template. Like all things, interfaces should not be assembled backwards from function to form, they should be consciously designed with the principles of form and function in a harmony that creates a productive and pleasant experience for the end user. There are cases, where big icons do that. There are cases, in my opinion, where big icons could be appropriate for Haiku.

The mentality I'm against is the idea that all you need to do is 5 things represented by 5 big icons on the desktop. It gives the illusion that things are all easy and simple. But then if you want to do more than that, it becomes very hard.

For example, Gnome looks very simple but if you want to configure the UI you go to a config file. If you like the apps in ubuntu you're fine but if you want to download something else that's not part of the package, it becomes very very complicated.

So I guess what i'm trying to say is I have no real problem with big icons but don't make the apparent simplicity a facade over a very bizarre foundation

I want ease of use to go all the way down to the command line and the API's.

True simplicity isn't a façade.

i agree with dark wyrm..hes right...but in reality the users and developers meet around halfway..because users try to use the os..and the developers try to program it..both get lazy and both try to find the easy way out..its just human nature...right? but if developers would try harder..definitely an os would be more usable..it depends on usser feedback too! so its more organic.

I would certainly agree. Regardless of the code under the hood, the actual GUI of a program needs to be as simple and helpful as possible. I'd say that the reasons why there are so many complicated programs is lazy programmers, poor design procedures, or a combination of both. Design should come first and then the code, not the other way around, which is the common case.

Not all of the fault of bad BeOS apps lies with the developers, though. BeOS doesn't have nearly the features that, say, OS X or Windows have, but it has enough to make lots of regular programs possible. The burden falls on the developer to make up for what the OS doesn't provide. For some kinds of programs, this isn't a big deal. For others, though, a BeOS developer has more work to do than developers for other OSes. Rich text editing (complete with tables and pictures) comes to mind, for example.

The OS should do more so that users don't have to work so hard. It shouldn't make advanced actions more complex just because most people don't use them. We want it to be easy to really take advantage of the computer and not be stuck at one maximized window at a time.

The UI should be ergonomic. It shouldn't distract you from what you are doing but it shouldn't be dull. Jumping on the latest 'in' style just looks dated after a while.

I've actually "asked tog" about the global menus on large monitors. he says his studies show they take less time overall even taking into account bring the cursor back to the app. he also said that pie menus could work to replace regular context menus even at the edge of the screen.

maybe we should take a look at next style vertical menus? You can move them around and tear parts off

My idea is to just have one word in the upper left corner "Menu" and when you move your mouse to it, it would pop up a vertical menu. This would save more space than the mac menu and especially the windows/beos approach which has menus for every window on the desktop.

or maybe give a choice between mac, next, beos/windows and my minimalist idea. After all, we give a choice of scrollbars.

if I have app A and B open and using A, on windows i can see B's menu so I know right away what to click on in B. With a mac, b's menu is a surprise before you switch to it. So right now it doesn't look good for mac and all I have is tog's word that his studies show it's faster.

I use tiny menu in firefox though it makes fitt's even worse. it saves screen space since all the other buttons are on the same row. I wouldn't like it for other apps because I'm very familiar with firefox as I use it all the time.

I wonder what you think about the Office 2007 ribbon? I saw 2 problems right away: it throws off any hope for a consistent Windows UI as you still need menus for all the other apps.

Also, it looks like it was designed for use of a single window that's always maximized instead of multiple windows. I think a floating or docked palette would make more sense and probably would make it easier to do the same action on multiple open documents such as search and replace.

of course if we did that, microsoft would have to change everything once again and that would be pretty funny. :)

Well, in the The Chronicles of Shell Replacement (Part I and Part II) by Mike Holland, he claims

CLICK HERE and here to get just two ideas. :O

In other words, involving SharpE devs/artists could be useful !
(and a C/C++ port of #E would be great too)

>>Forward Agency

In progress we (always) trust.

yay.

Austin B.