Collaborative Desktop UI Design

[theotherdave]

Customizing is usually window manager stuff, so it kinda fits.. besides, this is an interesting thread and I rarely venture out of the *nix section :p

[dduardo]

Hitchhiker427, the object-relational model would solve your qualm. Let's say you have a case where an application does open multiple tabs within a group. For example, you have photoshop with the following tabs in a group single: palette, layers, drawing space and brushes. Now let's say your creating a picture in photoshop that is in the impressionism style, but in order to get the right mood you want to compare your image with paintings done by the masters of impressionism. So what you do it go to your search box and type "impressionism". A dropdown will appear and you'll see an image section. You can then drag the whole image section to your workspace and it will create a group that has a bunch of tabs with image previews. Now in order to compare your image with the other images, what you do is drag the drawing space from your photoshop group into the image preview group. The UI will then ask you if you want to move or copy the tab. If you copy the tab the group will simply inherit the tab key, just as an object-relational database would do. It does not start a new instance of photoshop. When you do go back to your photoshop group and edit the picture some more, when you go to the image preview group the image will always be in sync with the other group.

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PrimoTurbo, most people won't have 30 active tabs at the same time. There is a difference between active and inactive. Active mode will actually show the application while inactive doesn't. Think of an inactive application as minimized in the task bar. The user is not directly interfacing with it, so it doesn't need to be in view. It is also known from Microsoft UI research that most people have at most 4-5 applications running in the taskbar.

Also, if the screen is too small and can't handle showing 30 tabs in a row, then the tabs will either get smaller or they simply go onto the next line or pushed onto another workspace. Depending on the user's preference.

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Mark, I guess it could go into the graphics design corner. The ideas presented here would definitely get more exposure. Some people are just scared of *nix. Why don't you move it but leave a redirect here.

The orignal reason why I put the thread here was because the ideas would most likely be brought into practice by open source developers rather than Microsoft or Apple. I also want to encouage open source developers to develop apps that look less like microsoft/apple and have a more unique identity.

Edited January 29, 2006 by dduardo

[PrimoTurbo]

You also need some type of a close button for all your tabs.

[PrimoTurbo]

I think there is a solution, if you have something like this you will be able to view all the folders you want and their contents and you wont need forward/back button or even tabs.

This is just a quick mspaint example, but you get the idea.

[Joni_78]

I like this dock idea that Apple has, I installed dock about two months ago in Windows and removed taskbar and startmenu completely from use. I haven't yet needed those or discovered any faults in it. I think I never will use those again, this makes desktop very easy to use and also it's clean. Minimized programs are are shown only with alt/tab. Dunno maybe this is weird but works for me :)

Click for fullsize.

[theotherdave]

I'm liking a lot of the concepts that I'm seeing seeing here. I think I'll just pull together some of the concepts I like most and add my own thoughts.

I like the concept of a fullscreen window manger (like ratpoison, ion etc), but frame and tab manipulation needs to be easier (ie done with the mouse). Ways of tab and frame manipulation with the keyboard should be in the default configuration, and all the bindings should be easy to change.

At this point it's worth noting that customisation is crucial. A nice GUI for customising isn't everything (although would be desirable for a less technically oriented audiance), but config files should be simple and easy to edit. XML is pretty self explanatory and would be a suitable choice for structuring configs.

I know that the ideas above would introduce several ways of going about window management tasks, but most users would just adapt to using the what they were more comfortable with (ie stick to just mouse or just keyboard bindings) and assign the redundant bindings to other things (eg launching apps) or just not use them, but this is why customisation needs to be simple and intuitive.

For the tabbar, I would propose three distinive tiers (levels) of tabs. The top level would be the workspace. Think seperate apps into project or subject etc. The next level would be Individual apps within that workspace (self explanatory).

The bottom level of tabs would be for different windows of the same app. Eg you might be working on several different documents (eg open office), using an app that has several windows open at once (think the gimp) or artificially grouped windows (eg grouping all your xterms into one 'multi-window app').

To maximise working space, only one tier of the tabbar would be visible at once (perhaps have an optional button / keybinding to place them temporarily into view, eg to move items from one workspace to another, one group to another etc) and you would move through the tiers by (for example) mousewheeling over the tabbar itself. The proposed keybinding for navigation through the tabbars and their contents would be Alt up/down to change level and Alt left/right to change item. Although I've proposed default bindings that are a combination of what I use already and standard bindings for some wm's, the idea would be for them all to be easily changed.

The default behaviour when selecting a workspace would be to tile the windows on the workspace so that they were all visible at once. Selecting an individual app on that workspace would fullscreen the app in question. Sloppy focus would be used to change input focus between apps without actually fullscreening the new app. Selecting a bottom-level window would bring that window to the fore of the group (but leave it's fullscreened / framed status unchanged).

ddurado, I like your idea of context specific menus (eg the select text menu), but I think it would involve writing new apps with this approch in mind. You might be able to achieve some limited functionality via the wm for this feature (ie a menu to open up selection in a text editor, or do a google search on selected text).

A notification area of some sort would be a nice idea too. By this I mean a clock, perhaps a system tray, and a space to have some scripts running. For example, I use torsmo and a script to display what is playing on my music player (thanks rezza =D), as well as the last person to sign into msn.

Hope these ideas might inspire someone..

[n30w1n]

When will everyone realize that the reason there haven't been any changes to UI is because there haven't been any changes in how people interact with their computer. You still use a keyboard and a mouse. Only when a new input device comes along -- that is equally cheap to make and easy to use -- will we see some truly new UIs for your computer.

[ichi]

When will everyone realize that the reason there haven't been any changes to UI is because there haven't been any changes in how people interact with their computer. You still use a keyboard and a mouse. Only when a new input device comes along -- that is equally cheap to make and easy to use -- will we see some truly new UIs for your computer.

But that doesn't mean that the current mainstream UI concept is optimal for the current input devices. I mean, maybe it is, but on the other hand maybe someone can come up with something better.

People running MSDOS back in the day also used keyboard + mouse.

[theotherdave]

Bah, the edit button seems to have dissapeared, but I think my concept of "framed mode" needs expanding.

Framed mode would be where the screen was split up into frames (like ion / ratpoison) and displaying multiple windows. Essentially the opposite to "fullscreen mode".

The way I see this being handled is very much like how ion handles it. (Ion actually handles this very well, but it's handeling of transients and panels is terrible).

Pressing a hotkey, or alternatively a button on the tabbar (or even a right-click context menu on the workspaces tab) would split the workspace (or current frame) vertically or horizontally into two frames. The mouse could then be used to resize the split. Applications could then be dragged into the new frame, or new applications started in it as desired.