Graphics Archive

Computer graphics have long been dominated by bitmapped images. However, the free software community has taken an innovative lead by adopting scalable graphic formats on its desktops. Inthis article I cover the history and rise of scalable graphics on the desktop from my angle - as a proponent of its use in the GNOME platform. This article mostly focuses on SVG's progress from a GNOME point of view, both because GNOME has progressed the furthest and because I am most knowledgable with GNOME's efforts. I will however mention major landmarks in other projects where appropriate.

This site is dedicated to the preservation of GUI systems. Would be great if readers with access to older versions or other systems could enrich the collection.

I've made a document based on an idea I had that might be good for some desktop innovation too. I've made some diagrams and screenshots to illustrate it, have a look here.

This essay describes the surprising results of a brief trial with a group of new computer users about the relative ease of the command line interface versus the GUIs now omnipresent in computer interfaces. It comes from practical experience I have of teaching computing to complete beginners or newbies as computer power-users often term them.

"Windowing environments are in their third decade, and they still do little more than open and close. There's no reason windows can't be more sophisticated", Daryl Blakeslee writes on NewsForge.

Quality rant by Eric Raymond on the topic of bad user interface design in open source software, making some good points. The editorial was inspired by ESR's experience with CUPS.

Mad Penguin put up an article with some mockups about a Slackware packager front-end. On other interface news, gTask is a daemon and client library that allows programs to communicate the progress of certain long running operations (e.g. downloading files, printing, etc) to the daemon. Various user interfaces can report on the progress of these tasks to the user. The project created after inspiration of an OSNews article. On yet another interface article, here is what Roberto Alsina wrote regarding the relationship between free software writers and UI designers.

Yesterday we reported on NBOR's Blackspace/Dyoun followed Assosiated Press' reports. Blackspace is a new way of doing things in computing. The free NBOR player was made available for download last night and it included a number of pre-recorded demos of what Blackspace can do. Based on these demos, here is what we think about the product.

A few hundred thousand lines of computer code could revolutionise the way people interact with computers, say its unlikely inventor and his backers. Denny Jaeger, a musician and composer who spent the past decade developing the software, will unveil it January 15, when people will be able to download a scaled-down version for free. The public can then decide whether Jaeger is a trailblazing whiz - or a grandiose flop.

Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) are a new concept to many who now have the task of doing everything it takes to develop a VoiceXML application. This (old but interesting) article describes the difference between the VUI and the long-familiar GUI.

DesktopX is a program that lets you design your own desktop by adding "objects" that can do pretty much anything you might imagine for it. Version 2.0 has just been released and it's a radical re-design that has focused on improving the functionality, performance, and memory use of it. If you don't have DesktopX, you can download it on its own here or get it as part of Object Desktop.

"An inductive, or task-based, user interface is one that is based on "tasks" rather than applications (as in OS X) or documents (as in Windows 95/Office 95, sort of; Microsoft backed off of this concept pretty quickly as the benefits of a task-oriented UI became more obvious). Here's an example. Let's say you want to print a digital photo." Read the article at WinSuperSite.

Skinning does not really receive the appreciation it deserves. After posting my comparison article about LiteStep and Talisman, I was astonished to (still) hear people say that skinning and theming is useless. They literally said:

Amy Reynolds offers her perspective on the current state of skinning (or thememing as it is also called) one's operating system. As a professional user interface designer, Amy has concerns that the very existance of themes and skins does a dis-service to an operating system or platform. Amy also offers her insight for a hotly debated topic that has been making the rounds on the KDE mailing list which asks, "How configurable should the KDE desktop be?" She characteristically says "I applaud Gnome for having taken the high rode in this case."