Graphics Archive

A few months ago I was designing the UI of Sequel OS. I am not part of the project anymore, but I kept developing the UI in my free time, just when I was feeling a bit creative. Yesterday, in my Gnome 2 article I mentioned that it would be nice if Gnome/GTK+ adopt a new default theme. So, here is my proposal for the project, mockups seen for the first time in public... Update: One more mockup I just (quickly) created just to show to some readers that the theme is clean when used in a normal app. Update2: Vote for the poll inside. Update3: Download the Gnome window manager theme here.

The 10-year history of Object Desktop. It's about 50 pages long and has lots of screenshots and also neat insights and OS history and how skinning grew more important over the years.

Found a couple interesting links over at NooFace, a site dedicated to user interfaces. First, Microsoft Research is plugging away at one of the growing dilemmas in computing: so much data, so little time. XTend is a next generation product which uses a powerful Relational File System to deliver the world's first "Save With" oriented interface. And speaking of Knowledge Management (where XTend can be useful), you can read this recent interview over at TheIdeaBasket with the CEO of YellowPen, Inc.

Unfortunately, these days people seem to not be able to keep... any 'secret'. Longhorn 4015 has leaked and Neowin has aquired some tailor-made screenshots showing off a few of the new features taking shape in what is becoming known as Milestone 5. Also, Apple-X.net claims to have the first leaked screenshots of of MacOSX Panther 10.3, clearly showing the "piles". UPDATE: Gsurface writes: "A quick look at what's new in the new 4015 build. To my surprise, it was actually an upgrade rather than the full version. Luckily, I still had my Longhorn 4008 installed on my D:\ drive. Continue to read with tons of screenshots here."

I can't take anymore comments like "Debian/Gentoo/OpenBSD/etc. are not good/user-friendly because they lack a graphical installer." Searching the web, I couldn't find a comprehensive site describing the good and the bad about graphical installers for various OSes throughout the years, so in this article I hope to debunk a few of the myths on the basis of my own personal and professional experience.

Lots of talk and comments about our recent feature article "The Definitive Desktop Environment Comparison" recently (new OSNews comment # record). But what do the readers of this site think? Which is your favorite DE? Update: The poll is down.

So many operating systems and so many graphical desktop environments... This article is a comparison of the UI and usability of several Desktop Environments (DEs), that have been widely used, admired and reviled: Windows XP Luna, BeOS 6 (Dano/Zeta), Mac OS X Aqua and Unix's KDE and Gnome. Read on which one got our best score on our long term test and usage.

OSNews reader Jess Tipton was very kind to design really nice OSNews background images for various resolutions. Please download only the file that corresponds to your monitor's resolution (so we can save some bandwidth) from here. Also, please note that users who use older versions of Windows, will need to save these images as .bmp files before they can use them. Additionally, let's not forget that OSNews always is in search of people who would like to publish their articles on this site.

Most of you probably remember the Moho competition we ran about a month ago. After that article, our friends over at PCLinuxOnline ran a story asking Lost Marble to port Moho to Linux. While the popular cartoon-making application runs fine under WINE, Lost Marble actually did the full port with the help of GTK+ 2.0. The (small) company recently released version 4.0.2 for Windows, MacOS9/X and now, for Red Hat Linux 8.0. They are looking for feedback, bug reports and they would like to know if their port actually works on other distros additionally to Red Hat 8.0. Here is a screenshot under Red Hat 8.

Jef Raskin, who helped design Apple's classic user interface, is working on a new system, THE, that could be a big improvement. BusinessWeek features an article introducing the technology. Jef also replied to our forums here and here a month ago, explaining his system.

One of the most important visual parts of any operating system is of course, the fonts. Many times users on the net have argued about bad quality fonts used (installed by default) on alternative OSes. For the companies or individuals who would like to resolve such issues and create original and high quality fonts for their OSes (and not just for OSes), I would like to introduce them to FontLab 4.5.1.

"The purpose of this series of documents is to introduce, and explain how to build a functioning rewindable desktop. Later, in Part III, we'll get into why you'd want to build one in the first place. For now, its all theory, lacking even a single scrap of code to demonstrate a proof-of-concept model. However, that's not to say it can't be done. Below, you will find (as best as I'm able to describe) the blueprints of how a rewindable desktop can be made. Its surely not the only way, but its the best way I know how to do it after much thought." Read the article at LinuxAndMain.

My good friend Thijs Stalenhoef (from the BeOS/BeNews days) sent me a link to the NooFace web site, which is "in search of the Post-PC Interface". There are a lot of interesting articles to find there, so make sure you have a look at their archives as well.

"In Vernor Vinge’s sci-fi novel A fire upon the deep, he presents the idea of “software archeology”. Vinge’s future has software engineers spending large amounts of time digging through layers of decades-old code in a computer system — like layers of dirt and rubbish in real-world archeology — to find out how, or why, something works." Good stuff over there from UI designer Matthew "mpt" Thomas.