Posted by signa11 11 hours ago
(link timestamped to 29min, where the demo starts.)
As a software develop I have numerous web browser windows with tabs, numerous IDE instances with tabs, numerous terminal windows (I avoid tabs but other people love 'em), Slack, Outlook and a few other things. I really want a system-scope panoptic view of all this stuff and a system that has a strong statistical tendency to put the next thing I'm interested in my face and not the opposite tendency which has been the dominant paradigm since GNU emacs and is just as bad in current IDEs.
What I do find is really lacking is UX inside of many foss apps. So many of them feel like windows xp programs with toolbars that look like junk drawers.
I want boring consistency.
And especially when it’s multiple layers of toolbars like a 2006 Internet Explorer.
Over the last decade we have seen programs like libreoffice and gimp not really do anything while others like Blender have had massive overhauls pushing the frontier of UI.
And that brings me to books, which haven’t changed all that much in 700 years.
And the desktop metaphor hasn’t changed much either, probably because it’s metaphor for how we do things in the real world: on a desktop with documents and pencils, organized how we want them.
I don’t want my desktop to change in fact all the attempts have largely failed because they don’t model how we as humans work in real life, with a bit of friction and a dash of chaos.
EDIT: the few places I welcomed changes are: (1) snapping windows; (2) well integrated search. Where we can improve I think is multi modalities. For example, “open my taxes document, please” and an AI opens it for me, then I presume to place it myself.
So, my thought is that the paradigm holds and will stand the test of time. Where it will change is: imagine you’re a business exec from the 1950’s and you have workers fetching documents for you, organizing things, and bringing the important parts back. For those important parts, we’ll use the traditional metaphor or some derivation thereof.
So, it will graduate from “desktop” to “office space”. AI agents will occupy their own cubicles. And you’ll be the boss in the corner office with a good view.
I used an actual NeXT workstation for 8 months as my only desktop in the mid 1990s and it was the most integrated and best GUI I’ve ever used.
True revolution in UX will come from making customisation accessible, so everyone can decide what's best for them without losing their minds in endless customisation rabbit holes or having to rely on big and clumsy organizations.
I actually agree about customization, but that's only part of it, and seems to be pretty orthogonal to what the article is talking about. You can only customize to features that are actually implemented by the system, and coming up with those seems like the harder problem.
...like it was back in the days when Windows actually had a very customisable UI[1], and then the "skinnable" UIs of the early 2000s (most of which were extremely gaudy, but then again, maybe that was what the majority of the population wanted.) Now it has devolved into little more than this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/experience/perso...
[1] and one of the included color schemes was indeed crazy, but a good demonstration of what was available: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247605
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/windows/windows-3-1-include...
The only change to the CLI since I first learned it over 40 years ago is that it's gotten bigger and clearer and most desktops allow me to have multiple CLIs I can switch between.
A graphical user experience is all about how to limit what I can do in an effort to make it easier to learn. Imagine a hammer designed for ease of use by a beginning carpenter: remove the dangerous claw and nasty thumb-crushing head and replace the handle in case you hold it wrong and you end up with a nice oven mitt. The chattering classes on social media can coo over its colours and textures. Meanwhile actual carpenters smirk, hitch up their trousers (or, often, not) and switch on their nail gun.
So go ahead and build your bike shed with a box a nails and a pair of taupe quilted cotton hammers with a pattern of garden vegetables stamped on the back.
1. Carpenters are often women who like wearing skirts at work 2. Many carpenters are Scottish and prefer to dress traditionally 3. Carpentry is incredibly progressive career where many men wear skirts to work 4. Carpenters regardless of gender like to work nude
No, wait, I get it now 5. Carpenters let their trousers hang, resulting in the cleavage of their buttocks showing when they reach over.
Damn, I was getting exited over male carpenters wearing skirts to work.
Watch some videos of top-ranking aim trainer players so see how high the human skill ceiling is for mouse control, and look at the hardware they're using.
In rare cases, even the "CLI native" tasks are easier to do in GUI, like for example sifting through a really big log dumps with long lines, or configuring a really long configuration file, or editing a giant nested JSON.
People use computers for other stuff than coding. And for most of those workflows a command line doesn't serve.
Scott is a very good presenter, and he clearly thinks about this stuff a lot. I really liked the demo for moving windows to the sides of the screen, since it's kind of how I use the alt-tab interface -- look at the preview for the window/app I'm looking for then tab to it or click on it. Having a visual overview of all currently open windows could be useful to me. (It might actually get me to close things I'm not currently working on! Although my dozens and dozens of browser tabs tell a different story...)