THE GUI SHOULD BE BETTER

[Ross Scott]

1 hour ago, Grey Tide said:

  

Quoting myself as a repost with pictures.

Yeah, this is a good point actually, since I was bringing up 2 different aspects of the GUI, design AND looks.  Even if things are just as inefficient as regular windows, if it LOOKS the way you want it to, you're simply going to be happier using a computer longer (or I would be if it was a design I liked).  It's definitely a form AND function problem, more power to you if you can nail down the "form" part for yourself.

[Collapsar77]

2 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

Yeah, this is a good point actually, since I was bringing up 2 different aspects of the GUI, design AND looks.  Even if things are just as inefficient as regular windows, if it LOOKS the way you want it to, you're simply going to be happier using a computer longer (or I would be if it was a design I liked).  It's definitely a form AND function problem, more power to you if you can nail down the "form" part for yourself.

Well--- okay, switching gears to aesthetics, have you seen some of the custom desktops people put together for themselves using RainMeter as a basis? Genuinely have no idea what your aesthetic preferences are exactly, but it can serve a pretty wide range of tastes. You might already be using it, to be fair, you've got a CPU, RAM and drive-space monitors and it's kinda the go-to for those things in my mind.

I've been playing around with it a bit on this Win 10 system myself, and I'm kinda into it so far. Can't recall if someone else in here mentioned it or I just remembered it from the last time I worked seriously at modding my desktop GUI. But as some of the examples on DeviantArt show, you can REALLY push it, just make the computer a feast for the eyes.

... the, um, downside is that if you want to customize anything in a way that the creator of the skin didn't explicitly design it to be customized, you need to jump into a config file that is all-but-code. OTOH, that's just for the setup. It's very much a GUI after that. Also bear in mind that even I, an almost complete code neophyte, who can't stand to use the console, can actually puzzle out RainMeter script.

Mentioning it if hasn't been mentioned, amplifying it if it has. I don't want to re-read the whole forum to figure it out.

[Seanthered]

I was thinking about this today. Microsoft should sell different GUIs. They could even let you try before you buy, but they should have a quick button to change back to the standard Windows GUI quickly. In workplaces, some employees might like all kinds of different GUIs, but then the next person who needs to use that computer should be able to switch GUIs quickly as needed.

[BTGBullseye]

On 6/16/2020 at 5:40 AM, Tom said:

I'm going to go out on a limb here, since your computer sits centrally and you didn't mention a pen or pencil anywhere

You apparently didn't read very carefully...

On 6/16/2020 at 2:56 AM, BTGBullseye said:

a note pad and pen

 

[Delicieuxz]

For anyone wanting to continue using Windows 7 for a few more years, it's reportedly possible to enable security updates in Windows 7 until 2023 on, I think, any Windows 7 installation.

 

 

[Tom]

9 hours ago, BTGBullseye said:

You apparently didn't read very carefully...

 

My sincere apologies.  I can assure you that I did, carefully and repeatedly, but somehow missed it every time.  My brain gets very literally stuck in a loop sometimes, and if it missed something the first time around, it'll generally miss it on every subsequent pass as well.  It's as frustrating to me as it is to you, I promise.

[0x13f]

I made a quick and dirty interactive proof of concept based on the weapon wheel-like idea from the video.

www.hydrateyourself.moe/pages/weaponwheelgui

 

Here's a showcase video

(Can't figure out how to embed YouTube videos)

 

[Galo]

hey man, i found out about Gnome PI, it literaly do what you wants

https://schneegans.github.io/gnome-pie.html

its for linuxs, pretty good man

 

screen shot bellow for a customized version of linux mint

 

[Galo]

some more stuff o my linux gui

Linux Mint + Gnome Pie + Ubuntu-Touch desktop theme

[patientclam]

I've hesitated coming into this conversation, even when I first saw the video, because this conversation had already become really long and complecated. I haven't read everything, so I don't know where the conversation has progressed, but please hear me out!

 

Forums like these aren't really built for discussion on complex topics. Information gets buried, subjects get lost, and it get difficult to pull anything useful out of the discourse in the future.

 

I humbly ask that we try to start a discussion on Kialo, as all of the work everyone puts into this will be easy for anyone to access. Check out one of my favorite discussions on better voting systems for the U.S. to get an idea for how the site works.

I would be happy to start discussions for you all, I just need to know what questions we're trying to answer. For example, a few I could think of are:

• What is the best OS for a customised GUI?
• What GUI features are the most important for efficiency?
• What is the best way to make Windows 10 look better?

Please let me know what would be most helpful.

[Tom]

Looking at all these pretty pictures, I've no idea why it didn't occur to me to attach a picture to my own post before!

God I miss this thing.

 EDIT: Earlier post where I mentioned it.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Tom (see edit history)

[BTGBullseye]

10 hours ago, Tom said:

My sincere apologies.  I can assure you that I did, carefully and repeatedly, but somehow missed it every time.  My brain gets very literally stuck in a loop sometimes, and if it missed something the first time around, it'll generally miss it on every subsequent pass as well.  It's as frustrating to me as it is to you, I promise.

Don't worry, I very rarely take offense, and never over something that could just be a simple mistake.

[Ross Scott]

On 6/18/2020 at 3:39 AM, Collapsar77 said:

Well--- okay, switching gears to aesthetics, have you seen some of the custom desktops people put together for themselves using RainMeter as a basis?

My main issue with Rainmeter is that it's all on the bottom z-order wise.  So if I have a maximized window, most of those options are gone until I show the desktop again (at least that's my understanding of it).  Alternately, if they showed up on top of Windows, I don't know how you would get the GUI elements to hide themselves for full screen applications. I think it will still be good for some things though, but I look at it from the perspective of both how nice it looks and how practical it's going to be for long term usage.  It of course depends on the person's preferences however.

11 hours ago, Isaiah said:

The perfect solution to both Ross's all buttons mouse concept and keyboard / mouse switching issue: KeyMouse

While that wouldn't work for me personally due to my freakish typing style, this is exactly the kind of outside-the-box thinking I'm trying to encourage.

 

15 hours ago, 0x13f said:

I made a quick and dirty interactive proof of concept based on the weapon wheel-like idea from the video.

www.hydrateyourself.moe/pages/weaponwheelgui

That's awesome as a proof of concept.  Some thoughts that come to mind:

-While faster, the instantaneous nature of it can be a bit jarring, this could be the sort of situation where extremely fading or morphing might make the transition nicer for the user.  That, or removing the wheel background since that throws up a lot of white against the background, whereas just seeing icons pop in and out might be less of a "shock" visually.  Alternately, if somebody wanted to go max eye-candy mode, the second layer of icons could start appearing out-of-focus underneath the selection as you got closer to it with the mouse cursor, coming into focus as you fly over the selection (and fading / blurring out the former layer).  That would take more work though and I don't even know if it would look better, just a thought I had.

-I think the key for something like this would be to have it heavily customizable, with just a suggested template people could modify.  People could choose how many selections on the wheel, skin it, have different wheels trigger via different hotkeys or mouse buttons, etc.

-For your final destination, I notice if you fly past it, it becomes unselected, I would have it stay selected as long as you're in the corrected direction to allow for maximum sloppiness from the user.

-It might be better to just have a button to bring it up, but after you've pressed it, it's no longer needed (or press another button to cancel it)

 

Anyway, don't think I'm trashing it, it's neat seeing it in operation.

15 hours ago, Galo said:

hey man, i found out about Gnome PI, it literaly do what you wants

 

It looks close, but I couldn't tell from the options if it does quite what I was talking about.  Is it possible to trigger the next menu simply by dragging the mouse to it, or does it require you to click on it?  That makes a substantial difference speed-wise.  I wasn't sure if that's what "Turbo mode" was or not.  I can try and test it out when I have more time.

[testman]

50 minutes ago, Ross Scott said:

Is it possible to trigger the next menu simply by dragging the mouse to it, or does it require you to click on it?

I tested it out quickly and it seems that it requires you to click.
Turbo mode is just "keep menu open only while I am holding shortcut keys pressed", so it closes instantly when you release the keys.
But whole project is free and open source. I'm sure that if some of us went to tinker with it, we could make it behave similarly to the interface draft that you made.

[Si_14]

17 hours ago, 0x13f said:

I made a quick and dirty interactive proof of concept based on the weapon wheel-like idea from the video.

www.hydrateyourself.moe/pages/weaponwheelgui

That's great demo! I can implement it as windows program if somebody interested.

[Collapsar77]

19 hours ago, 0x13f said:

I made a quick and dirty interactive proof of concept based on the weapon wheel-like idea from the video.

www.hydrateyourself.moe/pages/weaponwheelgui

 

Here's a showcase video

(Can't figure out how to embed YouTube videos)

 

That rocks! That is so good. I actually like how this feels a lot better than I thought I would. There's only one thing that would SLIGHTLY improve it, but whether it makes sense to implement depends on the longer-term use plans.

I do find myself overshooting the icons and that slows me down a bit. I wonder if it's possible to highlight an icon based on the position of the mouse relative to the center of the wheel rather than based on whether I'm actually over an icon? EG, if I overshoot the top icon but am still in the triangle of space above it, I select it?

Of course, if you plan eventually to have several tiers of icons stacked on top of one another, that isn't such a good idea.

[Isaiah]

On 6/17/2020 at 6:02 PM, Ross Scott said:

No, I think you're misunderstanding me.  Ideally, I want accuracy to barely matter...  In other words, the GUI adapts to my movement and intentions, not the other way around.  I don't see what's contradictory about this... This is also why I got excited about mouse gestures.  It opens up a wide world of possibilities where accuracy isn't important.

 

This helps me understand your actual objectives a lot better but it's also completely unrelated to the issues I was trying to point out.

Quote

I think you see what I said as contradictory, because you're looking at this in terms of hitting a target of a certain size across a certain distance.  I'm talking about the potential of targets where distance and size are irrelevant.  In other words, Fitt's law doesn't even apply for that kind of manipulation.  It transcends it!

 

Now for more conventional GUI menus where that's simply not an option, I want what's fastest and feels best.  That's where that Fitt's law thing people are talking about come into play.  Tiny targets take longer to hit.  Targets far away take longer to hit.  You want everything semi-big and close-by, which is probably why I thought of that pie menu system.

Think I understand the reason for these seeming contradictions and inconsistencies now. It's due to the fact you're mixing up two entirely different issues:

 

• Loosing your current workflow when upgrading from Windows 7 to 10.
• Developing the most efficient GUI possible, regardless of OS.

 

All my suggested solutions were solely aimed at helping you migrate to Windows 10 with as little change to your CURRENT workflow as possible. They had nothing to do with your IDEAL dream GUI that doesn't exist yet. That's an entirely different subject. However, when I pointed out a feature of Windows 10 that works exactly like, or very similar to, your CURRENT setup, you either dismissed it as not IDEAL or bragged that you've already had that feature long before Windows did. All of which is beside the point and makes it seem like you just have a personal vendetta with Microsoft (no big surprise, ha!).

 

Your latest response mixes these two issues together even more, which makes it feel pretty incoherent. And all of this makes trying to help you solve the issues you have RIGHT NOW very frustrating because the goalpost keeps switching. Now I know you're not doing any of this on purpose, but that's exactly why I'm trying to make you aware of it! Because I really am trying to help you.

 

Quote

many comments seemed focused on me not providing solutions.  From my perspective, it's a little insane that's on my shoulders to begin with, but I plan to slowly figure out something for myself in the absence of other ideas.  I'll detail what I plan to have / what I think could be better in a followup later on, but it's a little disappointing seeing how narrow the range of ideas have been.

The problem here is that you're actually putting the burden of finding GUI "enlightenment" on the shoulders of everyone except yourself. The video could be summarized as "This all sucks and could be way better but I'm not an expert so I want you to show me how to fix it".  No offense but this is the easiest criticism anyone can make about literally anything because it doesn't require any real proof or effort from the person making it. So it's not surprising at all to have people ask for some kind of tangible course of action since you're making such a bold claim.

Edited June 20, 2020 by Isaiah (see edit history)

[Emmes]

Hi there. I'm not much of an expert on GUIs either, but it's something I've thought about more often recently, so I'm gonna chime in a bit.

 

On the subject of Browsers, I mostly jumped ship from Firefox when they broke most of their extensions a few years ago. I'm using Vivaldi nowadays, which is being developed by former Opera people. I'm mentioning this because of an old gripe I have with the UI of most browsers (and Vivaldi is not perfect in that regard, just better than others I've tried): most websites have quite a lot of dead space to left and right of their content. This is not necessarily a bad thing, I'm guessing it is like this for compatibility reasons. Yet all browsers I'm aware of put the majority of their UI on the top and bottom of the website by default, decreasing how much content is visible at any time, while the left and right of the screen go unused. (I suppose that is less of a problem if you are browsing windowed, but I do most of my browsing full screen.) Vivaldi at least lets me put the tab bar on the left, freeing up some of that sparse vertical space and making use of the huge amount of horizontal space (you can also turn off the tab close button, and it supports mouse gestures out of the box).

Ideally I'd want something like an old RTS, where everything is to the left of the main view, but I don't think that exists yet.

 

That wheel interface you proposed looks very interesting and I'm amazed someone whipped up a proof of concept already. I could see myself using that.

Edited June 19, 2020 by Emmes (see edit history)

[Ross Scott]

20 hours ago, Isaiah said:

This helps me understand your actual objectives a lot better but it's also completely unrelated to the issues I was trying to point out.

I'm not really looking to get into an argument about this, but you're accusing me of being contradictory, which I don't appreciate unless it's accurate (like what I said on memorization, fair enough).  So please, specify with no uncertainty, what did I say regarding targets where I'm being contradictory?  I want easy to hit targets with low travel time.

 

Quote

Think I understand the reason for these seeming contradictions and inconsistencies now. It's due to the fact you're mixing up two entirely different issues:

 

• Loosing your current workflow when upgrading from Windows 7 to 10.
• Developing the most efficient GUI possible, regardless of OS.

Sorry if I wasn't clear here.  I'm not seeking to keep my current workflow.  I want something BETTER.  Moving from 7 to 10 is the catalyst.  10 struck me as shutting down more options, since it's hostile to custom shells, and updates will wreck some 3rd party programs with no consideration for customization. 

 

As for being incoherent, I can be guilty on that one.  GUIs are very complex, I'm juggling dozens of thoughts on this in my head, so sometimes it doesn't always come out clearly, even though there actually is merit behind the thought.

 

Quote

 

However, when I pointed out a feature of Windows 10 that works exactly like, or very similar to, your CURRENT setup, you either dismissed it as not IDEAL or bragged that you've already had that feature long before Windows did.

2 responses to this:

1. Something that has the same functionality as what I have now, but is LESS efficient, I see as a downgrade.  The suggestions I saw you mentioning all struck me as accomplishing the same goal, but in ways that take more time.  It's more than just whether it can do what I was doing.  It's about whether it can do what I need as well or even BETTER than what I had before.  If somebody wants a new convertible because their old one has damage, and there is a new convertible available, but it only tops out at 45mph, they're not going to see that as a good answer.

 

2. As for bragging about having an option a lot earlier, I could have been mixing up my responses to other comments I saw, I forget.  Some people have pointed out that me using old software is ludicrous, whereas when I set this up, the options I wanted simply didn't exist by standard means, so I went with what did work, and didn't always keep up with what changed, often because new OS's would wreck options.  Part of that is me being behind the curve, but when I see how old software was sometimes ahead in some ways to what's even available NOW, it makes me frustrated with the entire situation.  In other words, look at it like this:

Old software:

-Could do functions A, B, and C

New software:

-Can do functions, A and B.  Does function A even better than the old software, does function B more poorly.  Can't even do function C.

 

 

Quote

 

The problem here is that you're actually putting the burden of finding GUI "enlightenment" on the shoulders of everyone except yourself. The video could be summarized as "This all sucks and could be way better but I'm not an expert so I want you to show me how to fix it".  No offense but this is the easiest criticism anyone can make about literally anything because it doesn't require any real proof or effort from the person making it. So it's not surprising at all to have people ask for some kind of tangible course of action since you're making such a bold claim.

Listen, you say you're trying to help me, but you're either concern trolling now, or you're unaware of your own bias on this to say something like that.  Yes, I'm not an expert, and yes I'm seeking help from others.  But insinuating I provided no proof or effort on this topic?  Why do think the video was so long?  Here's what I did do:

 

-I showed my existing desktop and a few optimizations it had, even though I recognize it's very flawed

-I showed time trials how launching frequently used programs was faster in my method than the Windows default

-I proposed a pie menu system for rapidly launching software

-I recognized the potential of a custom keypad that's ergonomically designed for hotkey deployment

-I found research demonstrating that flat themes are objectively slower for users.

-I proposed mouse gestures as a way of doing things more rapidly and suggested some fundamentals for coming up with styles

-I gave a list of programs that I think are taking us in the right direction for customization as a starting point, suggesting possible implementations

-Demonstrated objective advantages for not having a close button in web browsers.

-Gave specific changes that should be made to an existing pie menu launcher for maximum efficiency

 

Think what you want, but if you watched my video and then say I'm making the easiest criticism possible and making no effort for trying to advance the GUI, then that's a troll move, whether you mean it that way or not.

 

Edited June 20, 2020 by Ross Scott (see edit history)

[Mairoufin]

Perfection.