Graphics Archive

Beginning in 2006, Microsoft says it will ship with its operating system and other software products six brand new typefaces created especially for extended on-screen reading.

Since usability seems to be a major topic on the OSNews forums, I think time has come to clarify some common misconceptions. Usability is not about selecting the fanciest Theme from kde-look.org, it's not about 'Reading the F*** Manual', it's not about having all application share the same looks, it's not about nice front-ends to obscure command line programs, it's not about newbie-friendliness, it's not about apt-get install foobar and it's not about setup.exe.

Here's an article in Technology Research News about interfaces that allow direct gestural interaction with virtual objects contained in volumetric displays, in which output occupies a volume of space, like a crystal ball.

Jef Raskin, co-creator of the Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface, has received a $2 million dollar boost to his Humane Environment project (now know as RCHI). You can download an early version from the projects website, and Raskin hopes to finish the project within 18 months. Will this be a paradigm shift in user interfaces?

The Inkscape Team is pleased to deliver its newest version, 0.40. The development cycle has been particularly long and intense this time, but we feel it's our best release yet.

Zoom Quilt is a collaborative art project based on Macromedia Flash that illustrates what a 3D Zooming User Interface (ZUI) might look and feel like.

Over the last few weeks there were a lot of articles and discussions about how to manage a project well. From commercial success to user support nearly every subject was set on proof. However, after I've read the comments to the articles my conclusion was very plain: some minds will never change!

InterfaceLIFT, a source for freeware icons for both Mac OS X and Windows has launched a new section of its web site devoted to developers. The new stock icons collection makes it easier for programmers to find high-quality, royalty-free interface icons that are designed specifically for use in software and web site projects.

With pro features like 16-bit per channel support, camera RAW and the healing brush, Adobe announced Photoshop Elements 3.0 today. Digital photo users in particular now have the choice of this powerful application that has little competition in its range, be it the free Gimp or the similarly priced PaintShopPro. Picture Window Pro is the only photo application that can outfeature Elements (and depending on the case, even Photoshop itself sometimes). Picture Window Pro is one of the favorite applications of photography professionals and it's at the same price range as Elements, 90 USD.

This Fall the widget wars will move into high gear. The battle for the desktop is about to begin. And with Longhorn's XAML technology lurking in the distance (and Apple's Dashboard), widgets are likely to deliver a whole new era of desktop customization. Read the article here, by the CEO of Stardock, Brad Wardell.

I thought some users might be interested in the editorial I wrote on my blog about Icon Based Menus. A new idea for freshing on the menu system since MacOS 1984. The same site includes more UI articles.

Last week the GNOME project released the second edition of their Human Interface Guidelines (HIG 2.0). The HIG is an effort to push a more consistent look and feel on the GNOME desktop, and it's worthwhile reading for other projects as well.

The Human-Computer Interaction Lab.University of Maryland, has released new versions of the Piccolo framework for Java and .NET and came up with a new web site.

The classic graphical user interface was well suited to an early Macintosh with 128kB of RAM that ran a few applications and about 50 files, "but it doesn’t scale", says usability design specialist Don Norman. With those few tasks the GUI was a boon. "You didn’t have to remember anything, because you could see everything. Now making everything visible doesn’t work. The space gets too crowded." As a logical consequence of this, the all-purpose computer should become obsolete, he says.