The meta problem with all this desktop UX design discussion is that it's not actually very problem driven.
Many of us solve our UI problems and we land into our own happy minima.
Many of the UX "solutions" are either invented problems or not my problems or worse, grinding some anti-me agenda.
Like many, a lot of my UX improvements have been to simplify the UI. Tiling, with just a few windows per virtual desktop in herbstluftwm: kitty, emacs, browser and some rare transient application (usually PDF or image viewer).
The idea in the screen shot horrifies me. Why would I buy an expensive high pixel monitor just to use only 10% of it to display a single window? Why would I want to waste CPU to animate the migration of a full window to a single button icon (another example given)?
These UI "innovations" are great for movie props but do they actually help in reality? Not that I see. The "stagnation" of UI to me is more a plateau. Anything truly new must be driven by new "I", no input/output channels between user and computer.
The one interesting idea I saw in the article was Lifestreams. I think storage and recall is something that needs improvement and new ideas because for me that is a problem. I produce and consume too much info while recalling it is hard and while also I often do not produce or consume info that I wish I had.
Again, it's the I/O that drives the progress.
>Many of the UX "solutions" are either invented problems or not my problems or worse, grinding some anti-me agenda.
>These UI "innovations" are great for movie props but do they actually help in reality? Not that I see.
Scott Jenson specifically mentioned in this talk that he doesn't view open source devs as programmers who couldn't care less about needs of non-power users, but this is exactly that sort of a tone deaf response, and a really narrow perspective.
Most actually novel things in Linux desktops since the ~late 2000s target the extreme power users. They have near-zero discoverability, terrible defaults, building substantial skills and constant practice and maintenance are required to use it for rather routine operations, etc. I mean I also used to configure my WM by programming it in Lua (because it expected the users to know it and I do), I also use emacs for quarter a century, I use Nix to set up my entire desktop, but I'm not saying everything else is useless and carries "anti-me agenda".
Your animation example is really telling, most users are like "where did my window go??" without it, I'm talking from the first-hand experience of watching young people trying to use a computer. The CPU argument is simply inane and 100% irrelevant for the modern hardware, I'd understand if it was distracting for you (and me too), but wasting CPU is a silly hill to die on. Power user interfaces that make simple things hard is the primary reason most young people outside of a really narrow group are not tech-savvy and look at desktops as obsolete ancient tech.
There are arguments that it's impossible to target both power users and any others, but these are all simply wrong. Both target groups are totally compatible, you can look at Microsoft's ribbon or superbar as an example of such an interface. In the worst case you introduce a simple binary setting if you don't want the cues, don't tell me it offends you somehow please.
(That said, it's funny to hear SJ mentioning his work on Finder, because that's probably the worst non-power-user file manager in existence.)
> (That said, it funny to hear SJ mentioning his work on Finder, because that's probably the worst non-power-user file manager in existence.)
I’ve seen similar sentiments echoed many times but I’ve never really understood them. After enabling the status and path bars and setting window search default to the current directory, I don’t find the Finder any worse than the typical Linux file manager and in some ways prefer it to Windows Explorer.
frumiousirc · · focus · HN ↗
Many of us solve our UI problems and we land into our own happy minima.
Many of the UX "solutions" are either invented problems or not my problems or worse, grinding some anti-me agenda.
Like many, a lot of my UX improvements have been to simplify the UI. Tiling, with just a few windows per virtual desktop in herbstluftwm: kitty, emacs, browser and some rare transient application (usually PDF or image viewer).
The idea in the screen shot horrifies me. Why would I buy an expensive high pixel monitor just to use only 10% of it to display a single window? Why would I want to waste CPU to animate the migration of a full window to a single button icon (another example given)?
These UI "innovations" are great for movie props but do they actually help in reality? Not that I see. The "stagnation" of UI to me is more a plateau. Anything truly new must be driven by new "I", no input/output channels between user and computer.
The one interesting idea I saw in the article was Lifestreams. I think storage and recall is something that needs improvement and new ideas because for me that is a problem. I produce and consume too much info while recalling it is hard and while also I often do not produce or consume info that I wish I had.
Again, it's the I/O that drives the progress.
orbital-decay · · focus · HN ↗
>These UI "innovations" are great for movie props but do they actually help in reality? Not that I see.
Scott Jenson specifically mentioned in this talk that he doesn't view open source devs as programmers who couldn't care less about needs of non-power users, but this is exactly that sort of a tone deaf response, and a really narrow perspective.
Most actually novel things in Linux desktops since the ~late 2000s target the extreme power users. They have near-zero discoverability, terrible defaults, building substantial skills and constant practice and maintenance are required to use it for rather routine operations, etc. I mean I also used to configure my WM by programming it in Lua (because it expected the users to know it and I do), I also use emacs for quarter a century, I use Nix to set up my entire desktop, but I'm not saying everything else is useless and carries "anti-me agenda".
Your animation example is really telling, most users are like "where did my window go??" without it, I'm talking from the first-hand experience of watching young people trying to use a computer. The CPU argument is simply inane and 100% irrelevant for the modern hardware, I'd understand if it was distracting for you (and me too), but wasting CPU is a silly hill to die on. Power user interfaces that make simple things hard is the primary reason most young people outside of a really narrow group are not tech-savvy and look at desktops as obsolete ancient tech.
There are arguments that it's impossible to target both power users and any others, but these are all simply wrong. Both target groups are totally compatible, you can look at Microsoft's ribbon or superbar as an example of such an interface. In the worst case you introduce a simple binary setting if you don't want the cues, don't tell me it offends you somehow please.
(That said, it's funny to hear SJ mentioning his work on Finder, because that's probably the worst non-power-user file manager in existence.)
cosmic_cheese · · focus · HN ↗
I’ve seen similar sentiments echoed many times but I’ve never really understood them. After enabling the status and path bars and setting window search default to the current directory, I don’t find the Finder any worse than the typical Linux file manager and in some ways prefer it to Windows Explorer.