
The GUI should be a lot better [video] - worble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AItTqnTsVjA
======
whywhywhywhy
I'd be up for an hour long rant about GUIs but you can't just handwave away
the differences between Windows 95 and upwards.

95 was focused on a spatial metaphor like old school MacOS and 98 started the
switch to a browser metaphor.

"Why do we have lists of tiny icons to click on instead of hiding big ones
until we need them"

It's called putting the parts on the floor, it's why Lego is intuitive.

~~~
xellisx
I know that in 95 you can vertical select icons, but in 98 it becomes like
text selection.

------
flr03
It's a rant of 1h 17mins. The video is funny but it's very centered on the
author's usage of Windows UI, which is obviously very specific.

When you ship a product like Windows you have to be very mainstream, you can
offer options to customise the UI, fair enough, but honestly the best option
is to be dead boring. Maybe once in while you can bring in a new UX concept.
Thinking out of the box and trying to reinvent the wheel like they did in 8
doesn't work.

I'm not trying to defend Windows, I think it's been going downhill in term of
UI since 7 but not for the reasons he mentioned.

~~~
agumonkey
These were my first thoughts too, he's ignoring the kilotons (megatons even)
of constraints of a company like Microsoft and its flagship have to navigate
around. He's also so far above the average user's understanding of things.
Most of my neighbors are not at ease when I tell them to `right-click`

------
AlbertoGP
The video is long and centered on the Windows shell, but lots of it is
applicable to the other platforms. It’s exactly what I’m interested in and I’m
thoroughly enjoying it:

“ _Hi! One of the things I like about the Internet is the long tail, which
means everybody has specific interests that won’t appeal to most people, but
for the people who_ are _interested, it really delivers!_ ”

[...]

” _Plus what a wonderful choice I’m being given! Choosing between a more
secure system, or being able to use my GUI the way I want to!_ ”

“ _Yeah, I get it! I’m a freak and I’m the only person who’s doing this!_ ”

” _But riddle me this: why do_ security updates _need to screw with the_
graphics _like this‽_ ”

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
GUIs interest me so I'm recording this but his slowly delivered, hectoring
tone isn't going to make this easy.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
After 20 minutes of being shouted at, I got his opinion on icons on the
desktop, that he likes "nice looking icons" (icons aren't about nice but
recognisability). He wants a one-click wallpaper changer. He likes pretty art.
MS UIs are going to crap[0]. I wasn't going to watch more.

He says upfront he's not an expert and he's not. I thought it was close to
worthless. YMMV.

[0] true but unhelpful

~~~
AlbertoGP
> _He says upfront he 's not an expert and he's not. I thought it was close to
> worthless. YMMV._

I see what you mean. In my case it’s useful because I went into it expecting
not answers, but questions, and that’s what I got.

> _After 20 minutes of being shouted at,_

:-D For me it felt as if I was sitting next to him, both yelling at the TV.

------
jphoward
One thing that surprises me (and may be the source for some of his
frustrations) is how much for a power user he uses the mouse. This isn't a
criticism, just an observation.

He, fairly, criticises how long it takes for the filename to show up when he
hovers over an icon on the task bar. However, I think the vast majority of
people at his level would use Alt+Tab which immediately brings up not only
larger icons for active applications to swap between, but the filename above.

~~~
Jaruzel
If you have a lot of apps open, Alt-Tab no longer shows them all, you have to
repeatedly keep bashing Tab to get the window to scroll down to the hidden
ones - there's no scroll bar and mousewheel doesn't work. For this reason,
I've completely stopped using Alt-tab on Windows 10.

Win+Tab is the 'replacement' but is slower and riddled with bugs - one
annoying one is that some times it doesn't show the preview of half the apps.
Also, the order of the windows is always changing, so you waste time scanning
for the app you just used.

You can also type Win+<num> where <num> is 1-9 and that number icon activates
from the taskbar. Which is great if you have 10 sticky icons down there, but
if like me you don't 'stick' icons to the taskbar, it not as fast (muscle
memory etc) or as useful as it could be.

I totally agree with the first part of his video (the main Windows 10 rant).
Each iteration of Windows makes it slower for the power user. When the Year of
the Linux Desktop is finally upon us, I guess I'll eventually switch. ;)

~~~
peterkos
Yeah. I've always wondered why MS puts the window previews there when the
Timeline view and multi-desktop view shows the window contents. macOS imo does
a much better job: Mission Control is for all graphical work. For power users,
Alt+tab is apps only, no previews, and then once you're in an app, you can
Cmd+` to cycle through each window. Or, set a gesture to 3-finger-swipe down
and see all the windows that belong to a specific app.

------
teddyh
Remember the gorilla arm.

[http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/gorilla-
arm.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html)

------
dredmorbius
Long. Much better at high speed (I went 2x). "Gee-Yoo-Eye" rather than
"gooey". But quite good in its criticisms, observations, and possible moves
foreward.

Overly dismissive of CLI, but I'll excuse that.

~~~
voxelghost
Long time no see, you old spacecat. I'll refer you to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface)

>The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes
referred to as chrome or GUI (pronounced gooey).[11][12]

It is also Gif not Jif or Gee I eff. :-p

~~~
kumarharsh
The founder of GIF said JIF, who are you to debate him?

~~~
whywhywhywhy
It's Graphics Interchange Format not "Jaffics" Interchange Format.

~~~
uryga
[you're probably joking, but in case you're not...]

people also pronounce "GAN" (Generative Adversarial Network) with a hard G
even though Generative is a soft G (J).

and how do you pronounce "MUA" (Mail User Agent)? I'd go with moo-ah, even
though it's not a Mail Oozer Ahgent :)

------
kalium-xyz
The changing UIs are essentially a marketing sceme, not having to retrain how
to use a UI is almost always significantly better. Mobile UIs on the other
hand have really improved in the last decade.

When I first moved to Japan I was appalled by all the old GUIs used everywhere
and the never renewing systems (still using fax for example), now I think that
changing styles every few years without good reason should be a crime.

------
alfonsodev
To have a great GUI, beyond looking nice and getting out of the way, it must
be intuitive, and for that you need a metaphor that works, but the moment you
use one you are also constrained, it's a very hard problem IMO.

I like in the video is touching on Science fition interfaces, I found this
video[1] you might ejoy, the author Chris Noessel has a google talk[2] about
intefacing with AI in different ways and touches on interaction design, I'm
trying to learn more about this.

There was a link posted on HN that I can't find anymore, it was about better
UI metaphors dropping breadcrumbs to traceback your path when you navigate
across different sites and some 3D desktops with piles of documents ... I know
is vague description, if annyone knows that link, please share :)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SRmmwK-
CLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SRmmwK-CLs)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cciGZ3BsLwA&t=1973s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cciGZ3BsLwA&t=1973s)

~~~
tomxor
> To have a great GUI, beyond looking nice and getting out of the way, it must
> be intuitive, and for that you need a metaphor that works.

I don't buy that there is "good" GUI design in any absolute sense. "intuitive"
is thrown around with too little thought in GUI discussion even though it is
ambiguous.

When disassembling the meaning of intuition is turns into familiarity - but
there is a whole spectrum of familiarity. At the most fundamental there is
_innate_ familiarity e.g direction, which is why arrow keys and cursor input
are innateley intuitive. At the other end of the spectrum we have high level
design mimicry or historical use, skeumoprhism, e.g the floppy disk save icon,
checkboxes, 3D relief in UI elements as a reference to physical input devices.

This is why "good" and "efficient" GUI design is also highly subjective, not
because we don't all share a history that can be tapped for familiarity,
surfacing conventions which are hard to escape - but because it's possible to
be more efficient, more effective if we abandon those short term shortcuts and
only hold onto the innate intuitions.

For example I use a tiling window manager, I get to define my own shortcuts -
all of them. I find it intuitive to alt+arrow-key to change window focus, and
shift+alt+arrow-key to move a window - this comprises innate intuition +
artificial almost contextless fabrication - i.e no normal user would be able
to figure it out without reading a manual or defining it for themselves.

This would also not generally be considered good GUI design, because it's not
discoverable by people who are already familiar with historical GUIs, you have
to put in effort to learn it - as would an alien using windows UI. and yet it
is more efficient...

In summary, "good" GUI design for the masses is highly constrained and
dictated by history, not ability to conjure up good metaphors.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> I don't buy that there is "good" GUI design in any absolute sense.
> "intuitive" is thrown around with too little thought in GUI discussion even
> though it is ambiguous.

Long ago, in the primitive time of the 1980s, people actually did studies to
show what worked and what didn't in GUI design. Almost all the lessons learned
from those studies have been thrown away and replaced by... I don't even know.
Gut feeling? Ease of implementation? Prettiness? Certainly not usability
studies.

~~~
dredmorbius
References?

------
mikewarot
The idea of hiding all the icons when not on the screen surprised me... I've
been using computers since 1979, and never thought of doing that. I do like
his point about the increasingly small and easy to miss targets that GUIs have
been forcing on us... especially now that my laptop has a 1920x1080 display
and a crappy NO BUTTON touch pad. (more than 1/2 of the time I get a right-
click instead of left-click!)

If I could somehow activate a menu with maximum 8 choices in each keyboard
direction (that are NOT subject to automatic moving around, so that a given
motion is repeatable)... and cascade that as many levels deep as required....
I could get a lot more done, a lot faster.

It was worth the watch time, thanks!

~~~
frosted-flakes
Re: touchpad buttons, I recommend enabling two-finger tap for right click, and
disabling bottom-right tap for right click.

------
toyg
I nearly threw up as soon as he revealed his win-gnome frankendesktop. This is
NOT what was supposed to happen.

------
myoffe
Watched about 20 minutes. Maybe there's a point hidden somewhere in between
his rantings, buts it's quite hard to grasp it. He moves back and forth
between actual criticism of the Windows UI and just stuff that he personally
likes as an advanced user.

I agree that Windows is far from perfect (I'm mostly a Mac user) but IMO the
biggest issue is complexity. For tech savvy users all these are non issues,
but for my Mom it would be impossible.

OTOH she can operate an iPhone just fine.

~~~
SllX
Lessons from the video: Simple things should be simple, complex things should
be possible.

Fitt’s law is a good guidepost for efficient GUI design.

Don’t break backwards compatibility.

The GUI should immediately show the information the user demands when he
commands it to.

Unnecessary UI elements should be hide-able.

Mouse gestures are underutilized and should be standardized.

The UI shouldn’t interfere with the user’s tasks; hitting the Windows key
shouldn’t kill your game.

GUI is actually pronounced “Gee-you-eye” and not “gooey”.

Steve Jobs was actually GUI Hitler and Microsoft killed baby GUI Jesus.

~~~
stronglikedan
> GUI is actually pronounced “Gee-you-eye” and not “gooey”.

I always thought acronyms were pronounced phonetically whenever possible, like
NASA, SCUBA, etc.

Even if that's not the case, "gooey" has become ubiquitous enough to be the
colloquial pronunciation.

~~~
frosted-flakes
I have always spelled it out in my head, and the first time I heard someone
say it I was utterly confused as to what they meant. To me, if I were to try
to pronounce it, it would sound like "guy", as in the first syllable of
"guide". Unlike Nasa or scuba, there's no universally obvious pronunciation
for GUI—and thus I think it should be spelled out.

------
peterkos
Hey, this guy sounds like the Freeman's Mind guy...

> goes into channel

Hey, this _is_ the Freeman's Mind guy!

------
simonh
I can't believe I actually watched all of that. No regrets.

------
jeroenhd
While there are loads of valid criticisms here, a lot of time is wasted on
complaining that Windows broke the weird, buggy shell customisation tools and
modules that the author uses.

Some of the problems ("why are these resources in DLLs and not files") are
there because if Microsoft changes them, loads of programs break for many more
people. As opposed to the people behind many shell customisation tools, other
programs do use the APIs that were intended to be used by developers and
Microsoft actually tries to keep compatibility with those above some kind of
quick launch menu some guy customised back in the XP days.

I think this guy would be excellently at home on Linux, although he picked
some of the more fancy distros as examples in his video. His Windows setup
reminds me of LXDE and XFCE. The dock, the floating panels, everything can be
replicated and practically guaranteed to work despite updates. Now, program
compatibility for stuff like video editors is an entirely different subject so
I don't expect this person to switch, but as far as GUI problems go, Linux is
the best place to solve them to prove your point.

There's one problem though, and that's that nobody cares about you and your
long tail. Linux people used to be all about this stuff and that's why Linux
was always considered arcane and unusable. Linux shell developers used to
develop a lot of their software for themselves and their usage patterns
instead of for others, making their only usable for people with the same
expectations. Because of the lack of a unified GUI, there will never be
centralised settings for the entire system, there's always long text files. If
you are in the long tail, pick up Arch and go ham. But please, for the love of
God, leave the GUI for normal people alone.

I used to do tech support over the phone, which most commonly consisted of
getting people to launch Teamviewer and fixing whatever problem they had.
Every fancy, smart, helpful feature that some whizzkid installed to help their
parents made it completely impossible to help those people. They don't know
what a start button is, they can't describe their screen to you, there's no
standard buttons, labels or anything to help people, manuals are suddenly all
wrong ("I've got the start menu open but I don't see control panel" because
the shell renamed it to "settings") and auto hiding task bars made people
think their computer was broken.

There's improvements to be made, but most people require simplicity over
customisability. Custom icons break software, break expectations and often
break metaphors. Custom task bars break old, buggy business software that
hundreds of thousands of people rely on. Hell, I've seen some tools break
because I decreased the width of window borders by a few pixels. Every
customisability option needs to be tested for functionality and compatibility
and developers' time is much better spent at making features normal people
care about.

You want a perfect shell no matter the cost? Build one. The shell launch API
is there in Windows, changing most system icons is supported through the
registry. Window theming for most of the OS can still be used through the
Windows 2000 theming system. Even more is possible by passing certain system
messages to windows of other programs like explorer. You'll break stuff, but
you'll break them just the way you like it. Don't expect anyone to build a GUI
for you if you know your requirements don't matter for the vast majority of
people.

~~~
dredmorbius
_I used to do tech support over the phone..._

Oddly enough, a domain in which CLI can really shine.

"Open a terminal" (give the hotkey sequence if necessary). "Type ..." (say or
spell commands).

If all else fails, SSH in directly.

Yes, remote desktop offers somewhat similar capabilities, but with far higher
bandwidth requirements.

------
robertheadley
I watched half of it. Will most likely finish soon. I like the guys passion. I
had some experience trying to run litestep in the past and I was really into
things like windows blinds for a while. Looking at his setup, it looks
infuriating,but if it works for him, that is what is important.

------
bibelo
I checked LiteStep. For something that wants to improve the GRAPHICAL user
interface, their website is ugly

\+ the only date available on the site is 2012. Is it maintained?

~~~
Macuyiko
No, I was a heavy LiteStep user during its prime Windows XP days, but even
then it was a brittle, badly developed and hard to set up thing. Development
has stalled once Vista and 7 came along.

------
fareesh
Loved all the Space Quest games

Have there been any remastered editions created by the community that are
worth the experience?

------
kindly_fo
Too much talking. The idea of eliminating double click seems reasonable. The
main problem is speed. Windows became very slow and big.

~~~
flr03
It's interesting but there have been an option in Windows to open folders /
files with one click since XP at least.

~~~
noisem4ker
I think Web-style navigation was introduced as an option in Windows 98, along
with Active Desktop. Back then, Microsoft envisioned merging local file system
and web browsing in Explorer, a direction they later reversed when the
IE/Windows lawsuit hit.

