

Reinventing the desktop (part 2): I heard you like lists - edw519
http://brianwill.net/blog/2009/08/03/reinventing-the-desktop-part-2-i-heard-you-like-lists-now-in-text-form/

======
nomoresecrets
"I should note that this isn’t terribly radical, and in fact, it isn’t all
that different from the direction Gnome and KDE have been heading."

Given that he just seems to be proposing the Vista-style Start menu (which I
think is a good thing) is not that radical, no.

Alan Cooper covered most of this in his book, "About Face", but Cooper noticed
the important things which seem to have gone missed (well, it is Cooper's job,
after all).

For instance, getting rid of the menu altogether is probably a mistake. Cooper
pointed out that the menu is the pedagogical interface. i.e. the way people
learn how to use programs, and what programs can do, is to go through the
menus and find stuff. Just by looking through menus is a good way to get a
feel for what a program can and can't do (one of the reasons why you should
only grey/disable menu items, and not sub-menus).

The way a lot of users actually use the program once they've learned it is
with toolbars, shortcut keys, direct manipulation, etc. Some people still use
menus all the time, and most people will use menus for the features they don't
use often.

The Office ribbon is a smart evolution of the UI - you can still explore the
ribbon to find out how to do stuff, but that stuff is generally more available
than hidden away on a menu.

Presenting people with either an empty box that they have to type a search
into, or a massive pane of everything the user can do (seemingly what he
suggests with his Paint reworking), doesn't seem like a great idea. By this I
mean that it takes away the user's ability to learn a program as easily.

------
daleharvey
I fully agree

have you looked at gnome-do? its the gnome answer to spotlight / quicksilver,
you invoke it, start typing and it lists matches in a somewhat similiar
manner.

The current release in ubuntu is somewhat patchy, but I really hope they work
hard on it and enable it by default in the next release, its an awesomely
useful application that has at times replaced

1\. the menu bars completely,

2\. a lot of trivial stuff done in the shell (copying / findings files)

3\. the awesomebar for firefox

4\. navigational controls (alt+tab for window focus)

~~~
_pi
This works for smaller amounts of data, but hierarchies are still needed to
sort very large amounts of data that have to be accessed at any time. Yes
indexing/searching/filtering is an option but when you have 1GB of pure text,
searching "the company" is gonna get you several hundred hits. Google excels
at this because they've created ways to dynamically optimize their results via
user input. However no one is gonna do that for your private docs.

Personally krunner like gnome-do is useful but not for searching my files,
because it gives no context. Someone needs to create a good kde app/plugin for
context able searching through strigi.

~~~
daleharvey
this is quite like how I would like to search

press s + SPACE / TAB, then start typing, it matches on 1. directories, 2.
google autocomplete results,

if I pick a directory, then I tab to enter a phrase to search for, if its
google, then the search is performed.

------
jasongullickson
Overall I enjoyed (and agreed with) the points here, however I have three
reservations:

The first is that the big-filtered-list depends on jumping from the mouse to
the keyboard and back (if I'm mistaken, the means of using the keyboard
exclusively are not obvious enough). This is an expensive jump and should be
avoided in most common cases.

The second is that you usually don't know what you are looking for (otherwise
you wouldn't have to look, you would just "know" where it is). In this case,
textural filtering doesn't help you (although the meta-description idea for
searching programs addresses this in the application launching context).

My third reservation has to do with the concept of "most recently used". This
implies that the list's contents (or at least their order) is dynamic in
nature and this is very destructive to the ability to memorize the location of
commands. There is a temporary advantage to the unaccustomed user, but for
most "desktop" applications this user is the minority (hopefully) and moving
things around punishes the daily user.

Again I want to re-state that I think there are allot of good ideas here and
implemented as-is would result in a vastly improved user experience, but I
believe with a few of these issues addressed it could improve the current
state without introducing new problems.

~~~
jerf
"The first is that the big-filtered-list depends on jumping from the mouse to
the keyboard and back (if I'm mistaken, the means of using the keyboard
exclusively are not obvious enough)."

Well, the obvious one is to permit the cursor controls to work in the filtered
list, which is trivial and reasonably intuitive. See also the Awesomebar,
where left & right move around in the text box but up and down actually move
the focus. There are other possibilities, but probably none that good.

"This implies that the list's contents (or at least their order) is dynamic in
nature and this is very destructive to the ability to memorize the location of
commands."

A valid point, but part of the idea here is to toss out the entire "memorize
the location of commands" in the first place, I think. Build a system whereby
users swiftly get taught keyboard shortcuts (even if they are "[command key],
w, e, b, DOWN, DOWN, enter" in some cases) and the need to have locations
memorized goes away.

Personally, I'm unconvinced the "location memorization" is of such great value
we need to contort the rest of the interface in order to not throw it away.

~~~
jasongullickson
_"Personally, I'm unconvinced the "location memorization" is of such great
value we need to contort the rest of the interface in order to not throw it
away."_

I might agree for general-purpose computing however professional operators
with traditionally "workstation" tasks (CAD/CAM, video editing, forms
processing, etc.) would strongly disagree. For these individuals, much time
has been invested in the physical memorization of commands, allowing them to
issue the commands as if they were any other trained function of the body
(catching a ball, for example). Having to stop and think about operating the
software causes a mental "page fault", removing their focus from the work and
wasting time.

I don't want to get off-topic, but many professionals have expressed dismay
with the move from workstation computers to PC's for this reason.

~~~
jerf
There's probably an approach we can take based on this that retains the
location-friendliness without reverting back to old menus.

Then again, I'd say, for any existing system built for experts... just keep
the current UI! There's no chance this is ever going to be _mandated_, after
all.

------
rbanffy
In two words (and one link), "Gnome shell"

[http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=gnome%20spaces&oe=...](http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=gnome%20spaces&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv#q=gnome+shell&hl=en&emb=0&client=firefox-a)

------
sorbits
There is an interview (2003) with the author of Launchbar (which does
something like the article describes) where he explains how the concept
evolved:
[http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/developer/2003/09/25/innov...](http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/developer/2003/09/25/innovators.html)

From the interview:

 _»I realized that I spent a considerable amount of time with task-switching
activities — searching for the very same applications, documents, files and
folders on my hard disk again and again. The better those items were organized
in hierarchical structures such as folders and subfolders, the more time it
took to reveal these items.«_

 _[…]_

 _»The very first "prototype" was not even an application. It all began with
dozens of little shell scripts and a tiny Terminal window. Each of the scripts
had a very short one- or two-letter name and just opened one specific
application or document. The Terminal window was placed in one of the screen
corners, allowing us to bring it to the front quickly using the mouse. When we
wanted to launch Interface Builder, for instance, we just had to click that
screen corner, enter "IB"«_

The idea was later taken to the extreme by Quicksilver:
<http://www.blacktree.com/> — the author of which now does Google’s Quick
Search Box: [http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-google-
qui...](http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-google-quick-search-
box.html)

------
stcredzero
Having all of your apps located in a big zoomable space has many of the
advantages of a list. Also, if the desktop space is large enough, why not just
have the application window sitting in there?

I think many of the metaphors of computers could be collapsed into just two or
three large zoomable spaces. Have a desktop with your apps and documents,
which would behave somewhat like the current OS X dock. It would have more
representational real estate -- namely the whole screen. Actually, it would be
even larger, since it is zoomable. Like the dock/desktop, it represents your
current "working set." But to put an item back, you'd just have to right-click
and select "put back." Bringing an item to your desktop wouldn't move it, so
much as give it a visible alias there. There would also be a larger zoomable
space which would just contain everything. Perhaps you could have an indexing
scheme with the apps along the left edge, with their associated documents
trailing out to the right in order of decreasing recency. The "Finder" app
would have everything associated with it, of course.

~~~
derefr
I really liked the original idea of Windows 3.1's desktop; it was simply ahead
of its time. Under 3.1, an icon _is_ a window, and vice-versa. Instead of
"minimizing" a window, you "iconify" it. In a zoomable interface, the icon
would simply be a mipmap—that is, at a small resolution (16x16) it would be
artwork, but at a large enough scale it would be the window itself, fully
manipulable. Every representation of a saved file would simply be the window
displaying the file as it was when it was open. In that way, it would be a lot
more like a Squeak image, or an emulator save-state. Actually, since there
would be no difference between "minimizing" and "closing" a document (both
"sleep" the document image, and then suspend/serialize it to disk, and both
create an icon), it has distinct similarities to the iPhone OS.

~~~
stcredzero
Right. This would get the user out of the business of "saving" their work.
When you've just written stuff down on a notepad, you don't have to "save" it.
It's just there. Computer apps should be like that.

------
DanielStraight
Most of what he says is right on, but that reworked Paint.NET menu is just
insane. There is nothing even remotely usable about it. It looks like someone
threw dynamite in a widget factory.

------
GeneralMaximus
As far as searching menus is concerned, OS X already has this. Hit Command + ?
(that's Command + Shift + /) to bring up the search field in the Help menu and
start searching.

------
sp332
Looks like Enso <http://humanized.com/enso/launcher/fingertips.php> , which is
no longer actively maintained but is pretty much complete. Actually, a bunch
of the developers were absorbed into Mozilla to do Ubiquity, which has a
similar UI for web commands and is in early beta
<https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/>.

------
TheSOB88
For Windows, Launchy is a great program that allows you to do the search
filtering thing for your programs.

<http://www.launchy.net/>

~~~
johndoe77
I would have to agree, Launchy is a great tool and I can't live without it.
Add in the putty-launchy plugin and your ssh life just got easier.

<http://code.google.com/p/putty-launchy-plugin/>

------
onreact-com
Yeah, lists are by far the best way to organize large amounts of information
in a way that the human eye and brain can deal with it.

Windows is still based on Windows 95 hierarchical menus. Btw. I never use
those Windows menus unless the system forces me to.

~~~
xtho
Just for the record, the Windows Vista start menu does this list thingy too.
But you can still choose to have hiararchical menus à la w95 if you want to.

~~~
trezor
Same for all searches as well. Documents, actions, programs, email, websites,
etc etc.

If you have indexing enabled (client-side for local data and server-side for
network shares) it can scour trough gigabytes of data in no speed.

It's obvious that he that said that "Windows is still based on Windows 95
hierarchical menus" haven't really used Windows the last 5 years.

~~~
onreact-com
I'm using Windows the last 15 years. I just deactivated most of the annoying
Vista bling bling.

