OSNews reader Don Cox writes: “Dock system for the new AmigaOS is shown here. The author is Stefan Robl, who also has an interesting Coldfire-based hardware project. Would users of Mac OS X like to compare this Amiga dock with the Mac one?” Our Take: The Dock for AmigaOS4 sounds good, but it does not look good. While it is said to be customizable, the defaults matter. I hope the author lose the background image for the dock, and instead deliver something professional-looking, refined and clean for the final version of the OS. Some alpha around the icons wouldn’t hurt either.
Enhanced Dock System for AmigaOS Shown
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
AmiDock really made OS3.9’s Workbench wildly more usable, and it’s good to see the functionality being enhanced.
OS3.9’s as well as AmiDock’s default settings also look like crap, but can be changed very easily.
On most platforms, default settings are important because many people aren’t power users who tweak their OS’es constantly.
This is mostly not the case for Amigans of whom, many are power users. I’ve never seen an Amiga user who settles with the default settings for their Workbench, being used to have a ton of extra tools and patches installed to add extra functionality. Workbench in it’s default form is irritating and doesn’t have that much functionality other than basic file handling functions.
I’m pretty sure that OS4 power users will want to reconfigure a lot of things as soon as the OS is installed.
Still I’m eager to see what changes Workbench itself has gone through.
This isn’t the default look of AmiDock for AmigaOS4.
Also note that you only see the new Dock running on top of a slightly altered AmigaOS 3.9 GUI instead of a standard AmigaOS 4.0 GUI.
Here are some examples of how the earlier version of AmiDock included with AmigaOS 3.9 can be customized.
http://www.gfxbase.com/wbshots/shots/stefkos.jpg
http://www.gfxbase.com/wbshots/shots/roni.png
http://www.gfxbase.com/wbshots/shots/captura.jpg
To get a rough idea of what AmigaOS4 will look like by default, you need to have a look at all the screenshots and read all the comments and take into account that the certain art for AmigaOS4 isn’t revealed yet.
Also note that AmigaOS is an extremely modular operating system which means for instance that 3rd parties can easily create alternative application launches. AmiDock is very easily removed from your system if you would prefer an alternative.
I think that doing a hardwood look on something is very hard. Most of the time it turns out looking like tacky funiture. It is also very hard to “go” with anything else.
This is all the more reason to want one.
You are not alone
Most MacOSX users would like to get rid of the dock if possible. The Register even have a bounty for one of the Apple developers to accidently delete all Dock source code from the face of the planet – and I agree with them. The Taskbar/Deskbar provides more visual information at a glance than what the Dock does.
This new Amiga dock is interesting but like Eugenia said, it needs refinement. It has some good ideas, such as icon customization and different sizes/placement.
And yes, though I personally like the Dock in Mac OS X, I would be happy if it were gone as well.
I see the AmigaOS 4 GUI and I salivate. I tee the taskbar/dock/whatever and I salivate. Trust me… the two things that have me wetting my pants with anticipation are the following:
1) Panzer Dragoon Orta for Xbox (remember the Panzer Dragoon series for the Sega Saturn? Well, this is probably gonna look 100x better!)
2) AmigaOne w/ AmigaOS 4
All I want is good hardware support and some decent, purchasable apps, like a word processor, database, defrag program, .MOD file player/creator, etc.
Not too much to ask for, methinks.
Jared
Why are people discussing the MacOS X dock?
As far as I can tell the AmigaOS dock looks very little like the MacOS X dock, from the screens I looked at.
AmigaOS used to have docks a long time ago,
even fake wood paneling.
http://home.zonnet.nl/olaf.van.es/amiga/screen.gif
The dock is in the right corner.
And look at the clean lines of the default interface 🙂
That dock is the epitome of minimalistic. O.o
seriously, can that user interface get any uglier? that’s revolting.
Looks great!
> The Taskbar/Deskbar provides more visual information at
> a glance than what the Dock does.
Having used lots of different application launchers for AmigaOS I can honestly say that I greatly prefer AmiDock or Toolmanager style Docks.
My second choice would be to use customized Tool menus only (for right click popup menus or top title bar menus). IMO most of the functionality provided by Taskbars can beter be located on the Desktop, in minimizable Docks or within the title bar/menu. For instance things like clock, open applications (iconized/open applications icons), free memory, etc.
But as we are all individuals with our own different taste, it is a cool thing that with AmigaOS you can delete these toolmanagers without much trouble and use an alternative instead.
I fully agree. Monoculture will kill new idea’s. In the end people will kill the monoculture. I have seen it while driving thru the DDR in the 70’s . 90 % Trabant cars in an awfull blueish colour.
I personally like the Dock… not at first, but afyer I got use to it and found it’s strength’s I can say it’s my favorite. The ‘taskbar’ in Windows is okay, but can get cluttered easily and with it’s auto-hide functionality being less than stellar (it’s too jumpy and off timed) that it just drives me nuts… helk the Office Bar was driving me batty at work lastnight, okay I could have disabled it, but someone else probably would have complained about it!
helk the Office Bar was driving me batty at work lastnight, okay I could have disabled it, but someone else probably would have complained about it!
(I’m using my memory here) Right click on the Office icon on the far left/top of the bar. Right click on it and deselect “Auto Hide”. When you are done, select it again. If you don’t want it at all, select “Exit” from the menu, then when you are done, press Start > programs > Microsoft Office Tools > Office Shortcutbar (the names of the folders and shortcuts may be different, but about the same). Enjoy.
Besides, for me, i hate OS X’s Dock autohide, it is too slow to come out (the need for the animation?). So I think it is personal perferences. Download TweakUI, you probably could change the animation settings for autohide.
>>(I’m using my memory here) Right click on the Office icon on the far left/top of the bar. Right click on it and deselect “Auto Hide”. When you are done, select it again. If you don’t want it at all, select “Exit” from the menu, then when you are done, press Start > programs > Microsoft Office Tools > Office Shortcutbar (the names of the folders and shortcuts may be different, but about the same). Enjoy.<<
Oh trust me, I know all that, but I would forget to enable the thing again and somebody at work would make some big deal out of it and send emails around and such (you know email tag). So I left it alone. I don’t use the Windows PCs really that often to go batty over it, but lastnight I was doing a project on Windows, so it was an all-nighter so to speak!
>>Besides, for me, i hate OS X’s Dock autohide, it is too slow to come out (the need for the animation?). So I think it is personal perferences.<< Actually I like that sorta slowness, it doesn’t pop out at you like the taskbar does (in autohide mode), but it’s like me not liking XPs slow Start Menu side scrolling, though this feature can be disabled for the less eye candyless Win95 like scroll! I’t all personal preference. When I first got OS X I also hated the Dock, but at that time I was still sceptical about adopting OS X, I was going to stick with OS 9, but the Unix under the hood sold me on it!
When I first got OS X I also hated the Dock, but at that time I was still sceptical about adopting OS X, I was going to stick with OS 9, but the Unix under the hood sold me on it!
So you didn’t fall in love with OS X “features” (or rather, “quirks”), you got used to them. I feel in love with XP as soon as I started using it. I feel in love with KDE 1.x when I first use it. I didn’t fall in love with KDE 2.0, because it started crashing before I could. KDE 2.1 made me fall in love again. Same with GNOME 2.0 and Mac OS 9 (KDE 3.0 doesn’t count, UI is about the same as 2.x).
Before the topic drops more and more off topic, let’s take it to private email
The dark grey is the passion killer for me. Like Nora Batty’s stockings.
some graphic designers! I have yet to see an Amiga screenshot that looks like the OS was made within the past 10 years. No matter how great the architecture is, very few people will use it if it looks this bad.
-G
>some graphic designers! I have yet to see an Amiga >screenshot that looks like the OS was made within the past >10 years. No matter how great the architecture is, very few >people will use it if it looks this bad.
I plan on using it because they are making it so a user can make things look however they want. I think before anyone bad mouths developer screenshots, they should wait until the finished product. They should also wait until the users get their hands on it and make there own customizations and post screenshots. The screenshots released from developers (not gfx artists) so far have been to show functionality, and not targeting the visual side. I would expect once things are released, users will create some great looking themes, skins, icons, etc.
I just don’t want users turning off people to the Amiga just because they have to voice their negativity about un-finished software. Wait until it is finished and the users get their hands on it and make their own adjustments, before making a final decision. At that time if things are still that bad, then I definitely will accept your opinions.
thats no dock, it’s a wharf!
i’m afraid AmigaOS is looking uglier than ever, i saw some nice screenshots of it a while back but these look dreadfull.
I was not really discussing the themes. I’m sure it will be themeable and some users will come up with some decent designs, but they can’t hide the fact that the font and graphics engines still suck.
-G
You haven’t read my comment earlier, did you? You need to understand that you are looking at a slightly personalized AmigaOS 3.x GUI instead of an AmigaOS 4.0 one.
The screenshots are focussed at demonstrating the functionality of the Dock not the programmers artistic skills.
I fully agree that defaults do matter however and I am sure the AmigaOS4 team will come up with an artisticly decent looking default OS design. But for me personally, the provided customization freedom, modular design of AmigaOS, Screens and other other unique features are endlessly more important.
Look guys! These are just a coders screenshots, where the programmer show’s the features. Nothing more. Ugly? Yes, because he isn’t a designer, just a pure coder. I hope AINC get a good designer to set a good lokin’ settings before they are going to release it.
“I was not really discussing the themes. I’m sure it will be themeable and some users will come up with some
decent designs, but they can’t hide the fact that the font and
graphics engines still suck.
”
The font engine for OS 4 hasn’t been shown yet. It will probably be
based on or resemble Freetype.
Users will modify the look of the Workbench to suit themselves. Very
likely most will look terrible, but so long as the user is happy, who
cares?
Remember that in AmigaOS you don’t spend much time on the Workbench
screen, you are mostly using programs, each of which has its own
screen. The purpose of an OS is to run programs, not to make pretty
launcher screens.
What I really want to know is how the functions of this new dock
compare to those of the famous Mac OS X dock. Surely there must be
somebody here who has used OS X?
Some of the feature in this thing sound great. I like the idea of active content too. I can see people falling in love with that, for the functonality and the pretty effect
.
With MOL also supporting MacOSX10.2 now, and several Linux distributions being supported on the A1 now, its looking more viable to get an AmigaOne!!!
I used to use different method for launching apps in AmigaOS, left out icons (just the shell), toolmanager (common apps), workbench (infrequently used apps), custom tools (sas/c development) and of course the shell itself for when you just had to get down and dirty 🙂
Default tools are good, but as has been mentioned, most users will soon have customised there system *lots*. That’s why the Amiga was a power users machine, if it didn’t look or behave the way you wanted you could usually change it so it did.
Here are some new screenshots of various AmigaOS4 modules which were being presented by one of AmigaOS4.0 betatesters at the recent Alchemie 2 Expo in France.
Don’t miss these out!!
http://onevision.free.fr/OS4Status.jpg
http://onevision.free.fr/OS4Menus.jpg
http://onevision.free.fr/OS4Intuition.jpg
http://onevision.free.fr/OS4GUIPrefs.jpg
André Siegel, I thought higher of you than this. Being a MorphOS supporter should IMO not imply being an AmigaOS4 troll/basher by default as well…
Those are just screenshots from Elwood’s 68k/AGA chipset (1992 graphics) powered Amiga, which he uses to betatest some of the AmigaOS4 components. He does not even have a graphics card let alone will he be able to run AmigaOS4 without buying a PPC accelerator first.
Elwood should be applauded for his efforts as a betatester, instead of his efforts being abused for flamebait by MorphOS supporters.
@ Mike Bouma
“Being a MorphOS supporter should IMO not imply being an AmigaOS4 troll/basher by default as well…”
Well, I don’t consider myself as an AmigaOS4.0 troll per se. In fact, I am glad there is finally a little healthy competition in the Amiga market…
But there is just no fun if your competitor doesn’t even TRY to make its product look good by any standard…
Of course, it is nice to see private persons such as Elwood supporting their preferred platform in whatever form they can. However, as a COMPANY, Hyperion should have made sure that AmigaOS4.0 is presented in an adequate way, even though nobody of Hyperion’s staff was able to come to France themselves. The fact that Elwood has no GFX board, doesn’t prevent him from presenting various IFF pictures of a fully fledged AmigaOS4.0 desktop. So why didn’t Hyperion send him any? Even some Work-In-Progress pictures would have been better than simply showing off various tools running in an environment which looks almost exactly as the now _10-years-old_ AmigaOS3.1.
That’s like Microsoft demonstrating their new MediaPlayer on a Win3.1 machine with 16 colour icons… Forget about functionality, this is absolutely pathetic!
Again, it makes no fun to win against an opponent which makes no attempt to beat you… It’s like taking candy from a baby! So… pleeaasse… at least TRY to produce a decent looking OS, Hyperion.
I can’t agree more with Eugenia on this one. The default look for AmigaOS needs to look clean, refined and professional. All of the screenshots I’ve seen so far have none of these qualities. The fact that you can customize the look doesn’t enter in to it. You can do that on most platforms these days and still most normal use the default or if they don’t like it will use something else.
AmigaOS has an uphill battle for mindshare to fight to begin with and these kinds of ugly looking UIs aren’t helping.
> In fact, I am glad there is finally a little healthy
> competition in the Amiga market…
Yes, we currently have many excellent projects going on within the “Amiga” community, that’s for sure.
I just hope that the hostility from certain MorphOS supporting individuals against other Amiga alternative solutions would finally calm down a little.
IMO there’s enough room in the world for all of our projects! IMO instead of convicing people that alternative solutions will suck we should concentrate on telling people why (a) certain solution(s) is/are good.
> But there is just no fun if your competitor doesn’t even
> TRY to make its product look good by any standard..
You completely forget that a couple of months ago the MorphOS team was only demonstrating MorphOS with an AmigaOS 2.0 (1990) style user interface themselves. Just like with MorphOS there are graphic artists developing art for AmigaOS4.
> The fact that Elwood has no GFX board, doesn’t prevent
> him from presenting various IFF pictures of a fully
> fledged AmigaOS4.0 desktop.
Many pictures are publicly available already. Not everything is finished yet, did you attack bPlan for not showing all the eye-candy a couple of months ago?
> Again, it makes no fun to win against an opponent which
> makes no attempt to beat you… It’s like taking candy
> from a baby!
Aren’t you being a little premature here, with currently no PEGASOS or MorphOS available for ordinary consumers?
> So… pleeaasse… at least TRY to produce a decent
> looking OS, Hyperion.
I’m sure it will look decent just like MorphOS does now. But IMO the provided features, efficiency and functionality is far more important than just eye-candy. If you only want eye-candy then why not stick with solely MacOS X or even classic AmigaOS? As MacOS X doesn’t look bad by default either.
@ Mike Bouma
>> But there is just no fun if your competitor doesn’t even
>> TRY to make its product look good by any standard..
> You completely forget that a couple of months ago the
> MorphOS team was only demonstrating MorphOS with an
> AmigaOS 2.0 (1990) style user interface themselves. Just
> like with MorphOS there are graphic artists developing
> art for AmigaOS4.
AmigaOS 2.0? Excuse me, but AmigaOS2.0 didn’t have any icons as colourful as Matt Chaput’s Glow Icons. This is too much of an exaggeration… (Moreover, it most certainly didn’t look as bad as the OS4 presentation in France. Even Mr. Ben Hermans admitted on ANN that he didn’t expect OS4 to be presented on some A4k/AGA…)
>> The fact that Elwood has no GFX board, doesn’t prevent
>> him from presenting various IFF pictures of a fully
>> fledged AmigaOS4.0 desktop.
> Many pictures are publicly available already. Not
> everything is finished yet, did you attack bPlan for not
> showing all the eye-candy a couple of months ago?
I’m one of those people who believe that companies should not publish any pictures at all unless they are of decent quality. If bPlan/Thendic had released butt-ugly screenshots with a tiny note such as “only intended to show our software’s functionality”, you can rest assured that I would have criticized them for this… Fortunately, they didn’t
> But IMO the provided features, efficiency and
> functionality is far more important than just eye-candy.
> If you only want eye-candy then why not stick with solely
> MacOS X or even classic AmigaOS? As MacOS X doesn’t look
> bad by default either
I don’t want _either_ functionality _or_ eye-candy. I want BOTH! And countless marketing studies (as well as most comments in this thread) showed that I’m not alone with this attitude…
> AmigaOS 2.0? Excuse me, but AmigaOS2.0 didn’t have any
> icons as colourful as Matt Chaput’s Glow Icons. This is
> too much of an exaggeration…
No, less than a year ago for example the MorphOS team demonstrated their solution by using a *4 color* WB… Note that the default icons and windows used by 2.0/3.0/3.1 looks just about the same.
> (Moreover, it most certainly didn’t look as bad as the
> OS4 presentation in France. Even Mr. Ben Hermans
> admitted on ANN that he didn’t expect OS4 to be
> presented on some A4k/AGA…)
Yes I know, at least interested visitors could see something, instead of seeing nothing at all.
> I want BOTH! And countless marketing studies (as well as
> most comments in this thread) showed that I’m not alone
> with this attitude…
The same here. Just wait until the art is finished. The trouble for Hyperion is that certain people are spreading endless FUD when they show nothing.
If you could convince your buddies to calm down a little with their compaign, things could be alot easier for all of us.
>If you could convince your buddies to calm down a little
>with their compaign, things could be alot easier for all
>of us.
What about the anti-MOS campaign? That seems a great deal more loud and aggressive.
> What about the anti-MOS campaign?
I don’t think many AmigaOS4 supporters try to convince people into thinking MorphOS will be a bad OS, quite to the contrary.
Also the legal issues between Amiga Inc and bPlan cannot be resolved by 3rd party developers or users. IMO if bPlan does indirectly violate AmigaOS copyrights, legal action must be taken against them.
@ Mike Bouma
> No, less than a year ago for example the MorphOS team
> demonstrated their solution by using a *4 color* WB…
Any proof? (Cause I don’t know what you’re talking about.)
> Yes I know, at least interested visitors could see
> something, instead of seeing nothing at all.
Once again, if you don’t have anything worthy of being shown, keep quiet and wait until things look somewhat better. It’s quite simple, really.
>> I want BOTH! And countless marketing studies (as well as
>> most comments in this thread) showed that I’m not alone
>> with this attitude…
> The same here. Just wait until the art is finished. The
> trouble for Hyperion is that certain people are spreading
> endless FUD when they show nothing.
This is utter nonsense. Showing a couple of 68K modules proves nothing. And if these picture are butt-ugly too, it is simply wrong to publish them.
Ben Hermanns said Hyperion had 40.000 unique visitors when they released the first bunch of AmigaOS4.0 screenshots. I fail to see how this could be a success, though. Having read many comments on Windows-centric websites which reported about the pictures, I can tell you that pretty much everyone HATED them… (20% of all comments were made by 5% of the readers who were pure Amiga fanatics and probably have never seen what MacOSX or WinXP looks like… And those were the only people who talked positively about Hyperion’s little “marketing gag”.)
Seriously, those screenshots did probably more harm to the once glory Amiga name than anything else during the past 12-24 months. And I’m telling you this not as someone who’s involved with MorphOS, but as someone who has used Amiga computers for many, many years and obviously knows some more about marketing issues than certain other individuals…
> If you could convince your buddies to calm down a little
> with their compaign, things could be alot easier for all
> of us.
You’re just plain bullshitting here!
@ Mike Bouma
> I don’t think many AmigaOS4 supporters try to convince
> people into thinking MorphOS will be a bad OS, quite to
> the contrary.
You must be… blind, really.
> You must be… blind, really.
This is one of the things I disklike about the MorphOS gang, when you disagree, many of you use abusive language.
And regarding MorphOS running with an uncustomized AmigaOS3.1 GUI on top. I have seen this being demonstrated with my own eyes. Just ask someone at bPlan for confirmation if you don’t believe me.
I can see this discussion ending up into becoming an endless MorphOS/AmigaOS4 flamefest, like many MorphOS supporters like to do on other Amiga related forums, therefor this will be my last reply to you with regard to this subject.
Note that regardless of MorphOS’ weaknesses I like bPlan’s Amiga-like OS.
@ Mike Bouma
> This is one of the things I disklike about the MorphOS
> gang, when you disagree, many of you use abusive language.
Abusive language??? Errm… yeah, right.
> I can see this discussion ending up into becoming an
> endless MorphOS/AmigaOS4 flamefest
As I wrote above, my critiscm had nothing to do with the existance of MorphOS. But then again, I am somehow afraid you only read what you want to read. (See also your “AmigaOS4 supporters never say MorphOS will be a pile of crap” comment.)
>>> I don’t think many AmigaOS4 supporters try to convince people into thinking MorphOS will be a bad OS, quite to the contrary. <<<
> See also your “AmigaOS4 supporters never say MorphOS will be a pile of crap” comment <<
He said many not every.
I would agree with Mike. MorphOS supporters are trolling to almost anything Amiga related on Amiga and non-Amiga forums.
This is very disappointing.
I was hoping to get some intelligent discussion of the relative merits
of the Amiga and Mac docks, not a pointless flame war about MorphOS.
Are there really no Mac OS X users on here?
I can’t afford to buy a Mac just to see how the dock works.
Although I don’t use MacOS on a daily basis I will try to compare the new AmiDock with MacOS X docks.
In general I think MacOS X docks offer some of the best looking eye-candy seen in an OS today. However by using the dock and MacOS applications, the dock starts to feel really clumbsy and unflexable.
Here are the some complaints with regard to MacOS X’s docks:
>> The Dock is big and clumsy
As you can see in the screenshots AmiDock allows the usage of small icons and will automaticly create smaller docks accordingly. Also simple text buttons can be used.
>> Dock objects have no labels
With AmiDock you can choose to use labels or not.
>> Trashcan in the corner
With AmiDock you can choose. Personally I see no use for a trashcan and therefor I am happy AmigaOS gives me the *option* of having no trashcan at all.
>> Hiding the Dock makes things worse
The sudden pop-up of application launchers based on mouse pointer positions can be very irritating. AmiDock allows you to simply minize the Dock and maximize the Dock by clicking on a small button. IMO less irritating when working in areas where the launcher would pop-up.
>> Object annihilation
On the MacOS dock if you drag an object off the dock the related object will be destroyed. With AmiDock nothing will be deleted. This is much more elegant as it will allow far better drag and drop funtionalities with other applications without having to worry about destroying any data.