http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2008, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Sat, 17 May 2008 06:28:02 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/19747/The_Rise_of_Contextual_User_Interfaces/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19747/The_Rise_of_Contextual_User_Interfaces/ Read Write Web has an interesting article on the concept of the contextual user interface. A contextual user interface - as the name implies - is an interface which adapts to the current wishes of its users, the context. The interface will change according to the actions the user takes; present a set of minimal options, and show other options as the user goes along. While the article makes some good points, it also contains some generalisations that I find rather debatable. Thu, 15 May 2008 21:10:34 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 7 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News Eugenia http://www.osnews.com/story/19740/Grape:_a_New_Desktop/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19740/Grape:_a_New_Desktop/ Rethinking the desktop metaphor, or even improving it in any significant way, is a daunting task, and few dare to take the risk. The end result is that the desktop metaphor that we use today barely changed over the years - which is quite unique for the computing industry, as normally, things change very rapidly. Tue, 13 May 2008 18:30:34 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 59 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News http://www.osnews.com/story/19732/The_Popup_Scrollbar_Concept/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19732/The_Popup_Scrollbar_Concept/ As you may remember from our series on common usability terms, I have a lot of interest in graphical user interface concepts. In addition, I applaud anyone trying to improve existing concepts, people that try to think beyond set conventions to come up with an improved version of that concept, or a new concept altogether. Thorsten Wilms took on the well-established concept of the scrollbar, and came up with a few interesting tweaks. Sat, 10 May 2008 21:49:59 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 37 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News Thorsten Wilms http://www.osnews.com/story/19691/Fixing_the_Trash_Can:_Automated_Deletion_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19691/Fixing_the_Trash_Can:_Automated_Deletion_/ The trash can metaphor in computing is as old as the desktop metaphor itself. It was first introduced with the Apple Lisa user interface, and found its way to the Macintosh. Apple patented the whole idea, and sued anyone who tried to use the same name, resulting in other user interfaces implementing the exact same principle but just named differently. Despite its old age, and the fact it barely changed over the decades, many people have issues with the traditional concept. Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:38:33 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 57 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News kiddo http://www.osnews.com/story/19579/Photoshop_Lightroom_and_Adobes_64-bit_Roadmap/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19579/Photoshop_Lightroom_and_Adobes_64-bit_Roadmap/ From John Nack's blog: "In the interest of giving customers guidance as early as possible, we have some news to share on this point: in addition to offering 32-bit-native versions for Mac OS X and 32-bit Windows, just as we do today, we plan to ship the next version of Photoshop as 64-bit-native for Windows 64-bit OSes only." Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:50:37 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 33 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News tupp http://www.osnews.com/story/19444/AMD_780G_Changes_the_Graphics_Game/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19444/AMD_780G_Changes_the_Graphics_Game/ "AMD has done the seemingly impossible - made an integrated graphics part that does not immediately draw ridicule from all sides. It is actually good. The main trick AMD pulled out of the hat is to change the specs on what an IGP (Integrated Graphics Part) is. AMD decided to take a full GPU and put it on the chipset, so what you have is a full Radeon HD24xx (RV620) on board, video acceleration, 3D and all." Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:19:09 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Graphics, User Interfaces 13 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News irbis http://www.osnews.com/story/19430/Rethinking_the_Progress_Bar/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19430/Rethinking_the_Progress_Bar/ "Most software packages employ progress bars to visualize the status of an ongoing process. Users rely on progress bars to verify that an operation is proceeding successfully and to estimate its completion time. Typically, a linear function is applied such that the advancement of a progress bar is directly proportional to the amount of work that has been completed. However, estimating progress can be difficult for complex or multi-stage processes. Varying disk, memory, processor, bandwidth and other factors complicate this further. Consequently, progress bars often exhibit non-linear behaviors, such as acceleration, deceleration, and pauses. Furthermore, humans do not perceive the passage of time in a linear way. This, coupled with the irregular behavior of progress bars, produces a highly variable perception of how long it takes progress bars to complete. An understanding of which behaviors perceptually shorten or lengthen process duration can be used to engineer a progress bar that appears faster, even though the actual duration remains unchanged. This paper describes an experiment that sought to identify patterns in user perception of progress bar behavior." Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:02:37 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 19 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News irbis http://www.osnews.com/story/19426/The_State_of_Skinning:_2007_Edition/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19426/The_State_of_Skinning:_2007_Edition/ StarDock's Brad Wardell has published his yearly 'State of Skinning' article. He concludes: "So there you have it. 2007 was a bit of a sucky year for skinners. Vista was a pain in the ass to get existing things working on. If you want to create cool new stuff on Vista, it's very painful unless you use Windows Presentation Foundation but if you do that, you'll find that your app is incredibly slow until SP1 arrives. And with so many new platforms to choose from, the skinning community is extremely fragmented. And plus, Bill Gates retired which just makes me sad. But 2008 looks much better. The transition to Vista should be completed soon. The software will get polished. More focus will be put on the actual skins. And skinning will likely move from just being mainstream to ubiquitous. So hold onto your hats, this year should be a great ride!" Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:53:03 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 15 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News Island Dog http://www.osnews.com/story/19338/10_Mistakes_in_Icon_Design/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19338/10_Mistakes_in_Icon_Design/ "It is much easier to criticize somebody else's work than to create something cool yourself. But if you apply a systematic approach to criticizing, make a numbered list and prepare illustrations, it will be regarded as a fully-fledged analysis! In my opinion, icon design is undergoing a transitional period. On the one hand, screen resolutions are increasing, hence enhancing icons. On the other hand, we still have good old pixels. Icons sized 16x16 and even smaller are still widely used. And so, here are the most commonly observed mistakes in icon design." Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:53:03 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 30 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News Adam S http://www.osnews.com/story/19304/Why_Cant_Free_Software_GUIs_Be_Empowering_Instead_of_Limiting_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19304/Why_Cant_Free_Software_GUIs_Be_Empowering_Instead_of_Limiting_/ "It's one of the more popular culture wars in the free software community: GUI versus CLI (graphics versus the command-line). Programmers, by selection, inclination, and long experience, understandably are attracted to textual interactions with the computer, but the text interface was imposed originally by technological limitations. The GUI was introduced as a reply to those problems, but has undergone very little evolution from 1973 (when it was invented at Xerox PARC) to today. So why can't we do better than either of these tired old systems?" Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:46:48 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 43 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News irbis http://www.osnews.com/story/19129/Visualising_Fitts_Law/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19129/Visualising_Fitts_Law/ I detailed Fitts' Law not too long ago in one of my usability terms articles (the series will pick up later on, by the way, I am currently too busy with my bachelor's thesis), and this article is a very detailed addition. It is a little old (October 2007), though. "Back in school, I remember that it wasn't until I started taking classes in physics that calculus made any kind of real sense to me. I just need diagrams to function. In that spirit, I thought it would be nice to go over Fitts's Law, a staple in the HCI diet, with a few visuals to explain both the concept and why it's ideas are a bit more complicated than most would have you believe." Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:30:51 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 2 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News Coxy http://www.osnews.com/story/19088/Three_Unforgivable_Usability_Sins/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19088/Three_Unforgivable_Usability_Sins/ "It's hateful when a developer takes a 'shortcut' that saves that individual a couple of minutes, but thereafter causes extra effort from every single user. Awful as they are, these application design errors - all the fault of lazy developers - are entirely too common." Thu, 27 Dec 2007 05:37:59 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia Loli-Queru) Graphics, User Interfaces 51 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News Esther Schindler http://www.osnews.com/story/19021/Adobe_Premiere_Elements_4_and_Photoshop_Elements_6_Bundle/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19021/Adobe_Premiere_Elements_4_and_Photoshop_Elements_6_Bundle/ A few weeks ago Adobe released the Premiere Elements 4 and Photoshop Elements 6.0 applications. The bundle sported a new user interface but also new features. Read on for more for a quick rundown. Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:38:15 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia Loli-Queru) Graphics, User Interfaces 33 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 Feature http://www.osnews.com/story/18974/User_Experience_Of_The_Future/ http://www.osnews.com/story/18974/User_Experience_Of_The_Future/ "Below we present some of the outstanding recent developments in the field of user experience design. Most techniques may seem very futuristic, but they are reality. And in fact, they are extremely impressive. Keep in mind: they can become ubiquitous over the next years." More here. Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:23:33 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia Loli-Queru) Graphics, User Interfaces 23 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 News http://www.osnews.com/story/18969/Common_Usability_Terms_pt._VII:_CDE/ http://www.osnews.com/story/18969/Common_Usability_Terms_pt._VII:_CDE/ This is the seventh article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms [part I | part II | part III | part IV | part V | part VI]. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part VII, as promised in part VI, we focus completely on CDE, the Common Desktop Environment. Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:05:16 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces 58 http://www.osnews.com/topics/47 Feature