Administrivia: Copied from TraditionalGUIGroup
I think the TraditionalGUIGroup needs sub-levels, to focus on different aspects of our traditional GUI. My suggestion would be a group for every aspect, including groups for: icons, window handling (how to minimize/maximize/close/edit properties), color scheme (backgrounds, window coloring), fonts, components (buttons, scrollbars, text fields, what they look like, how they behave), taskbar-like component?, standardized shortcuts (Ctrl-C == copy, etc), etc.
I'm not sure how best to break it up, so maybe someone with more GUI experience has some ideas.
I do have a couple of ideas that just popped into my head, so I thought I'd jot them down here until we get more specific group headings:
- Just like Windows uses .bmp as "default image format," SGI's use .rgb's, Macs probably use something else, etc... We should consider supporting the internet standards as our default format: GIF, JPG, and PNG (up and coming format). Icons should be acceptable in any of these formats. (At first I was thinking all icons should be .gifs, but that would limit icon colors to 256 colors... I hate to say it, but maybe that is "enough"? (I'm reminded of Bill Gates -- "640K is enough ram for anybody!")).
(Added by WaynePierce -- The PNG web site says that it won't support animations. There's another PNG style of format I think it was called MNG. They will have different extensions, and functions.)
- Continuing along that GIF line of thought, icon animations should be supported via GIF 89a animations, since GIF animation is already supported in Java, it makes sense.
- The background of the desktop should be able to have an applet embedded into it somehow. Just like Microsoft has "ActiveDesktop" to embed ActiveX into Windows desktops, we could make our desktop come alive with secure java applets! Live stock feeds, chat rooms, whatever.
- Along the same lines of the applet background, screensavers should be applets (perhaps a subclass: ScreenSaverApplet). If the applet doesn't allow itself to be expanded to the full screen dimensions, it would just be centered in the middle of the screen, with the surrounding color being the applet background color (or a new ScreenSaverApplet parameter if specified: screen_saver_color?).
- As far as minimizing/maximizing/closing windows is concerned. I think we need to come up with something that works better than the standard "tiny buttons in the right corner" thing that is present in Windows, X, Macintosh, etc. My problem with them is they are hard to get to, and they are not intuitive enough for new users. I don't have any immediate ideas, but I do think their position should be configurable by the end user. I do like Windows use of the mini-icon in the upper left corner to identify the program easily.
- Right mouse button? How could it best be utilized? Pop-up windows? I love being able to copy and paste with the middle mouse button on my SGI. Maybe we could incorporate something like that.
That's all I can think of right now. Wiki is really cool!
-- MasonZhwiti (12/2/97)
......just some ramblings,
I think at first we should find out who in this group has experience with each 'traditional' GUI, that way we can determine what we like and dislike about them (myself... I have a lot of exp with Win 3.x and Win 95, little with XWindows and no Mac exp.). Once that is done we will at least have a general idea of what we can do to improve them.
One thing that I HATE about Win 95, when you minimize something it goes to the taskbar (ok, this is fine)...but the only way to bring it back up is to move down there and click on it. I like one of the XWindows I once used, you just right clicked on the background and selected the 'running tasks' it opened to all the open applications, and you chose the one you wanted.
Isn't JPEG a registered format? If so we would have to get their permission to use it, I know that the Free Software Foundation (http://www.gnu.org) had some problems with that; so they don't use them on their web site or apps.
( A comment by MarkusPeter : GIF images have problems associated with them, not JPEG. The problem is, that the compression algorithm used by GIFs is patented )
--Wayne Pierce wayne.pierce@usa.net (flame mail welcome...)
I have experience on SGI's version of X (I believe it was called WindowMagic). The rest of the time I've used DOS, Win 3.1, Win95, and WinNT 4 (which is what I use all of the time now). I have used Macs a little when I was forced to in school (that's all they had). I only used SGI's X for about a year, but it had some nifty features (don't know if these are specific to SGI's version of X or not):
- Middle mouse button would paste whatever text was currently selected (i.e. text selected with the left mouse button).
- A window was activated only when the mouse cursor was over it. This was both annoying and nice. I liked being able to have a window mostly obscured behind other windows, but still be active so that I could type to it without bringing it above other windows. I definitely think this should be a feature that can be turned on or off in the standard JOS GUI.
- The icons for files were dynamic. Most would perform some 2 frame animation (and a click) to signal they had been double-clicked.
- The programs associated with files were not usually chosen by the file extension, but rather by what was contained within the file. I think it used the magic header and a lookup table to generate this, falling back on the extension if it didn't have any info on the magic number for a file (usually the first 4 bytes of a file). This was NICE. I liked this a lot.
- You could right click an icon on the desktop, select something like "Show parent directory" and the parent directory would appear on the desktop with a dynamic line drawn between it and the icon. As you drag anything around, the line would follow as expected. (This part is kind of hazy -- there was more to this feature.)
There were more cool things, but I'll have to go turn on my indy to remember them better...
A couple things that annoy me about some GUIs:
- SGI's applications did not have a standard for keyboard shortcuts. Some programs used Alt-C for copy, some used Ctrl-C. This was EXTREMELY ANNOYING as I could never keep it straight for which program I was working in. Standardized shortcuts are a must! (I think that's probably obvious, but maybe we should compile a list of StandardShortCuts).
- I find the minimize/maximize/close buttons in the right corner of most modern GUI windows too hard to use. I've aimed for the maximize button and hit the close or minimize button too many times to remember! Perhaps we should rethink this, even give the user a choice of our new style or the old style...
- Probably more that I just can't think of at the moment.
I like the way modern Windows displays the current name/icon of a program in the taskbar. For example, the CD player shows the current track and time while playing. Eudora shows the correct icons for new mail, mail in queue, no new mail, etc.
I love the clock/sound control in the taskbar... to the point where it annoys me on any GUI that doesn't have it (at least the clock). This was very annoying on the SGI.
What does everyone think about the way shortcuts are represented? I mean, on Windows a shortcut is underlined. I believe SGI handles this differently (italicized? -- sort of hard to read). I always thought making the shortcut letter bold would be best. With some fonts it is hard to tell which character is underlined.
As for JPEG: isn't a problem -- it's GIF. The GNU project said they cannot use GIFs on their website because of "legal problems." This could pose a real problem, so we may want to investigate if it really is a legal problem, and if so, look more closely at JPEG and PNG.
-- MasonZhwiti
Hi folks, I am new out here and so would like to contribute as much as possible to the GUI and
experimental GUI for JOS. I have been into GUI design so far and also into desigining 'ERGONOMICAL
GUI' for applications. Some one please reply back to me how do I get started. (nshetty@hcla.com)
NagendraRSetty
(MasonZhwiti moved Nagendra's text down here, since I didn't really think it was applicable to this page, least of all the top of the page which should be reserved for IanDavis' words and the breakdown of this group into subgroups ... IMHO. Note: Nagendra -- just jump right in!)
-- MasonZhwiti
Re: sudden explosion of discussion here
It's good. Anyway, SGI's MagicWindows (their X hack) has some nice features, like the animations (as above) and some other cute widgets.
As far as which people know which GUIs, I'm familiar with nearly every thing except Amiga and OS/2 past v3. Have at glance at, and dust the cobwebs off UserInterfaceIntroduction . Post there or somewhere which systems you aren't familiar with, and I (we?) 'll try and explain things. I'm putting the specific widget comments in their own pages.
Oh, and if we use a non-object graphics format at all, I see it being PNG. JPEG is free with copyright notification, but lossy. Gif is just ugly. Bitmaps are huge and uneccesary for decoration...
Yeah, PNG is good. I'm just concerned about the size... isn't it proportionately larger for small graphics? (Or is it large graphics... can't remember).
Also, GIF can be definitely be ugly, but I think we definitely will want animated icons and such in the standard gui, so the question is how do we do them? PNG doesn't support animations I don't think.
I agree about JPG... great for photos, not for icons and widgets.
We also might want to start coming up with ideas for the standard widgets we know will exist... button, scrollbar, textbox, etc....
I will check out the UserInterfaceIntroduction section if you check out the BrainStorms section for my idea on the 'JOS bot'.... :)
-- MasonZhwiti
(WaynePierce copied the IRC Bot to the ExperimentalGUIGroup page 12/7/97)
Urgh. PNG is supposed to support animations, and better than gif89. They may not have gotten around to it yet, though...I haven't heard anthing either way.
Back to TraditionalGUIGroup
Back to UserInterfaceGroup
|
Content of these pages are owned and copyrighted by the poster.
|
|
Hosted by:
|
|