Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 1st Jan 2013 18:19 UTC
I tend to believe that the best interfaces have already been made. Behaviourally, CDE is the best and most consistent interface ever made. It looked like ass, but it always did exactly as you told it to, and it never did anything unexpected. When it comes to looks, however, the gold standard comes from an entirely different corner - Apple's Platinum and QNX' PhotonUI. Between all the transparency, flat-because-it's-hip, and stitched leather violence of the past few years, one specific KDE theme stood alone in bringing the best of '90s UI design into the 21st century, and updating it to give everything else a run for its money. This is an ode to Christoph Feck's Skulpture.
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Member since:2011-04-11
Behaviourally, CDE is the best and most consistent interface ever made.
Most consistent? Probably. As you said, CDE will never do things byitself. Best? Probably not, if you take intuitiveness into account.
We had a couple of Blade 1500's and Ultra 25's in the lab (before switching to Debian PCs) and I could never find out how to restore an iconified window when a maximized window was on the foreground. I did several silly things, like drag the maximized window a bit to the right, or iconify everything. I guess there must be some keyboard combination that shows a list of all windows, but it's not something you can guess (intuitive = easy to guess). In an intuitive GUI, you can guess where things go when you minimize them, and how to restore them.
Other unintuitive things in CDE include having to double click on the dash to close the window (how can you guess that?), the fact you can have some "pre-iconified" windows that are there from the beginning of the session, thus resembling icons, but dissapear if you open and close them (thus not acting like icons), and a lack of obvious way to customize the dock.
Worst GUIs in my opinion: CDE, Gnome 3 and Unity
Best window manager: Windows 7
Best app launcher: Gnome 2 (everything is arranged in 3 menus, which can contain submenus. Neat).
Edited 2013-01-02 00:23 UTC
Member since:2005-08-17
Member since:2010-01-11
Best? Probably not, if you take intuitiveness into account. We had a couple of Blade 1500's and Ultra 25's in the lab (before switching to Debian PCs) and I could never find out how to restore an iconified window when a maximized window was on the foreground. I did several silly things, like drag the maximized window a bit to the right, or iconify everything. I guess there must be some keyboard combination that shows a list of all windows, but it's not something you can guess (intuitive = easy to guess). In an intuitive GUI, you can guess where things go when you minimize them, and how to restore them.
The window is fullscreen because you, the user, told the window to be fullscreen. If you want to access part of the desktop to see other windows you have two options: either resize / move the fullscreen window or use the standard (and I mean REALLY OLD standard) key combination Alt + Tab.
When you press the "iconify to the desktop" button you know exactly where the window is going: it's being iconified and placed on the desktop.
You restore iconified icons by activating them with a double click, like you do any other icon.
Other unintuitive things in CDE include having to double click on the dash to close the window (how can you guess that?)
A single click on the dash will load a menu with a very intuitive button in it that says "Close". Alternatively, as you mentioned, you can double click the upper left corner of the window to close it, just like you can in every version of Microsoft Windows from version 3.1 to 7.
the fact you can have some "pre-iconified" windows that are there from the beginning of the session, thus resembling icons, but dissapear if you open and close them (thus not acting like icons)
I assume you mean iconified windows that you, the user, placed on your desktop. They don't just "disappear". You restored them to full sized windows and then closed them.
and a lack of obvious way to customize the dock.
I agree. Every so often I re-learn how to configure the dock and my response is always the same: "That was neat and kind of harder than it should have been".
Best window manager: Windows 7
I hate any window manager that uses a task bar. I find task bars to be one of the worst inventions for user interfaces. They waste space with a tiny representation of every window I have open. I don't need a tiny version of every window since I already have the full version of every window right in front of me.
Strangely, I love the (somewhat unique) task bar in the Haiku user interface, maybe because it's so incredibly compact.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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2009-06-30
The UI theme/style can't change the way applications are written. KDE applications (more than pure Qt ones) come with loads of GUI widgets. All these MDIs, nested tabs, movable docks and toolbars look as if the authors felt obliged to demonstrate all the bells and whistles Qt and kdelibs come with.
As for the styles, I found the basic Qt styles (cleanlooks, polyester) the most pleasant and usable. Plasma is a different story, let me know if you see anything of matching quality.