Graphics Archive

Organize Your Desktop Like a Real Desktop

Guest post by weildish 2008-12-12 Graphics 19 Comments

Though this technology isn't incredibly new (the video is dated June of 2006, and OSNews has covered it before), it's still not publicly available; however, it'll supposedly have a beta out for subscribers to test someday. Branded "BumpTop," this new interface builds off of the idea of organization done on traditional desktops-- I mean the wooden, metal, or glass ones. People naturally organize papers and other items into piles that make sense to their own ways of thinking. This kind of organization is limited on operating systems today, but BumpTop makes an old idea new by turning your virtual desktop a little more real.

HP and Arizona State Show Off Flexible, Indestructable Displays

Submitted by weildish 2008-12-09 Graphics 4 Comments

HP and the Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State recently demoed a new technology we thought was only possible in Minority Report. Dubbed flexible displays, these modern miracles not only may one day be used in netbooks, smartphones, and other mobile and compact devices (perhaps even digital paper), but are supposedly indestructible, use 90% less resources to manufacture, and basically sip electricity when compared to today's standard display technologies.

Adobe Advances Flash with New AIR, Cloud, Flex Solutions

Thom Holwerda 2008-11-17 Graphics 8 Comments

At its annual MAX user conference, Adobe puts on the dog and serves up new tooling and other support for Flash. Adobe introduces Flex Builder Gumbo, Flash Catalyst â€“ formerly known as Thermo, the availability of Adobe AIR 1.5 and a pre-release of the 64-bit Linux version of Adobe Flash Player 10. Adobe also opens up its cloud initiative, known as Cocomo, as a public beta.

Could Zoomable User Interfaces Be the Future?

Submitted by Dirk Sievert 2008-11-02 Graphics 15 Comments

Oliver Hamann released a new version of his futuristic user environment called Eagle Mode. But the most interesting news is probably his project philosophy. There he lists pros and cons for replacing most of today's user interfaces by zoomable user interfaces. But unlike others, he don't want to replace the concept of desktop windows.

pt. X: the Window

Thom Holwerda 2008-10-07 Graphics 11 Comments

This is the tenth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. Fitting for this rounded number, part X will detail the window.

GIMP 2.6.0 Released

Eugenia Loli 2008-10-01 Graphics 101 Comments

The GIMP Project has released GIMP 2.6.0. Among some UI-based changes and additional fixes, it comes the long promised integration of the GEGL library. The promise of 16 bit per-pixel non-destructive editing goes back to 2002, but it's at last here. This means that GIMP is now ready for prosumer (and in some cases even professional) photographer's usage, and this can only be big news and a big win for the F/OSS movement. GEGL will also help in future releases with proper support of CMYK. UPDATE: I guess things are not as good as the release notes want us to think. GEGL was turned "on" in the Color menu as per instructions, but I still got a no-support message for high depth TIFF pictures. If GIMP can't read existing 16bpp pictures, the feature I earlier gave them so much credit for, is useless.

pt. IX: the Menu

Thom Holwerda 2008-09-14 Graphics 11 Comments

This is the ninth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms . On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part IX, we are going to talk about the menu.

Patent: Application-Specific Windows Colourisation

Thom Holwerda 2008-09-08 Graphics 19 Comments

The US patent might be a bit daft, especially when it comes to software, but it does offer some interesting insights into what crazy things the big companies might be working on for future products. One such patent emerged today: Microsoft applied in 2005 (and was granted in 2008) a patent which describes how different windows may be coloured differently, or that they may have different transparency settings. This sounds a bit weird, but it may actually prove to be quite useful.

The Amazing Artwork of Fedora 10

Submitted by computerishcat 2008-09-07 Graphics 31 Comments

Now that the second deadline for Fedora 10 themes has been reached, the remaining theme proposals have matured and gotten much, much better. At this point, it is clear that no matter what theme is chosen, Fedora 10 will look great. Still, all themes are not equal. These are some of the best, though.

pt. VIII: Tabs

Thom Holwerda 2008-08-16 Graphics 35 Comments

This is the eighth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms . On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part VIII, we focus on the tab.

Why Free Software Has Poor Usability, and How to Improve It

Submitted by Hakime 2008-08-04 Graphics 95 Comments

"The best open source applications and operating systems are more usable now than they were then. But this is largely from slow incremental improvements, and low-level competition between projects and distributors. Major problems with the design process itself remain largely unfixed." Personal Note: I am not sure how many people feel that Free Software has poor usability. As far as the desktop environment, I find most of linux window managers to be the more user-friendly than Windows and OS X.

360Desktop: Unlimited Desktop Space and More

amjith 2008-07-10 Graphics 21 Comments

360Desktop is a software that extends the Windows desktop into a panaromic desktop, with unlimited space. In addition, "it allows users to easily grab their favorite web content from across the web, and put it right on their expanded desktop". Demo of 360Desktop in action.

Three-Finger Your Linux Laptop and Pinch it too

David Adams 2008-07-02 Graphics 7 Comments

Not as sick as you might think. Building on the output of the synclient program, the Perl code presented here allows you to assign specific application functions to "Three-Finger Swipe," as well as open- and close-pinch gestures on your Linux laptop. So if you've been wanting your Linux device to act more like your iPhone, here's a start.

Windows UI Taskforce: Your Help Wanted

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-01 Graphics 65 Comments

As I already explained in the first Usability Terms article, consistency goes a long way in ensuring a pleasurable user experience in graphical user interfaces. While some user interfaces appear to be more graphically consistent than others, Windows has always appeared to be worse than most others - probably because it carries with it stuff that dates back to the 16bit era. IStartedSomething agrees with this, and started the Windows UI TaskForce.

Multitouch, New Taskbar in Motion

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-28 Graphics 41 Comments

Yesterday, during the opening hours of the D6 conference, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher jointly interviewed Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. While the interview dealt mostly with the past, Yahoo, and a bit of Vista, by far the most interesting part was the first ever public appearance of Vista's successor: Windows 7. Earlier today, the team behind D6 posted a video of the demonstration, which was conducted by Microsoft's Julie Larson-Green. From a graphical user interface point of view, there were some interesting things in there.

Anatomy of Linux Flash File Systems

David Adams 2008-05-22 Graphics 4 Comments

You'll find flash file systems used in personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellphones, MP3 players, digital cameras, USB flash drives (UFDs), and even laptop computers. This article looks at a couple of the read-only file systems and also reviews the various read/write file systems available today and how they work. Explore what the flash devices are all about and the challenges that they introduce.

Using Unified Separators and Containers to Draw a GUI

Guest post by vermaden 2008-05-21 Graphics 43 Comments

How would I describe today's GUIs? A mess. -- A mess that grew as new features were needed, with lack of proper design, with a desire to keep backward compatibility, and with tools from the past trying to achieve future needs. I propose a new design philosophy for GUIs. We'll call it Vermaden's GUI. Note: This is the latest entry in our 2008 article contest.

The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces

Submitted by Eugenia Loli 2008-05-15 Graphics 12 Comments

Read Write Web has an interesting article on the concept of the contextual user interface. A contextual user interface - as the name implies - is an interface which adapts to the current wishes of its users, the context. The interface will change according to the actions the user takes; present a set of minimal options, and show other options as the user goes along. While the article makes some good points, it also contains some generalisations that I find rather debatable.

Grape: a New Desktop

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-13 Graphics 60 Comments

Rethinking the desktop metaphor, or even improving it in any significant way, is a daunting task, and few dare to take the risk. The end result is that the desktop metaphor that we use today barely changed over the years - which is quite unique for the computing industry, as normally, things change very rapidly.

The Popup Scrollbar Concept

Submitted by Thorsten Wilms 2008-05-10 Graphics 37 Comments

As you may remember from our series on common usability terms, I have a lot of interest in graphical user interface concepts. In addition, I applaud anyone trying to improve existing concepts, people that try to think beyond set conventions to come up with an improved version of that concept, or a new concept altogether. Thorsten Wilms took on the well-established concept of the scrollbar, and came up with a few interesting tweaks.