Okay, so I just tried ubuntu for the first time. I had never used Linux before. As you can guess I've used Windows pretty much all of my life, and I've had very limited use of Apple computers.
ubuntu came with gnome (hooray). I am wondering if anybody is going to really pay attention to me on this mailing list, since my views are so radical, but I have a few things I want to say, in general, about GUIs. -----Use of Desktop/Windows----- First I would like to talk about Desktops. Desktops are very important in getting to information that you want to get to quickly and easily. Multiple desktops are good for categorizing certain things you want to get to quickly and easily while you are doing different types of activities. PROBLEM: As soon as a user opens an application window, their access to the desktop declines very quickly. There are, of course, solutions to accessing the desktop: resizing, mobility, and minimizing. These solutions, however, create more problems. These are most notable when there are many windows being accessed at once. Using these solutions modify the state of the data that you are viewing. The importance of that state is very dynamic. However, it would be best to assume that that state is of the utmost importance. It would also be best to assume that accessing the information on the desktop is of the utmost importance. We have been seeing, more and more often, people desiring less windows. AIM now has one window that contains every IM conversation. More clients are coming out that integrate different IM services into one. Web browsers have now incorporated tabs in favor of the use of multiple windows. In short, people are fed up with how inefficient the use of windows are. A good goal to have would be to optimize the navigation through the large amount of information that is stored on your computer. I don't just mean folder trees, I mean even viewing the information in an application. My least favorite experience with trying ubuntu was trying to browse through all of the preferences. Every last thing that controlled the visual experience and display of information was a separate choice on a drop-down menu, that each opened a new window. For first time users, I imagine this can be very very frustrating. There is a lot of information that the user wants to manipulate to his or her own preferences, but excessive navigation to do so. I hope this can be changed. Now for my radical idea. I'm going to shorten this up by assuming that the pros and cons and the reasons of use of different GUI elements are known. Using tabs/frames to a desktop environment rather than windows. This would be a step to optimize the navigation between different applications by a user. Frames are most optimal for multitasking and tabs are most optimal for navigating between tasks. I would love being able to use tabs to navigate between different applications. I would also love being able to use frames while using multiple applications at the same time. The implementation of tabs would probably be much easier than the implementation of frames in regards to mobility. Let's imagine this. Open a window Create a frame for AIM buddy list in that window Open a tab for Firefox in that window Open a tab for Thunderbird in that window Receive an IM, opens a new window, but that window is linked to the application window, so if Ia user minimizes the application window, it will also minimize the IM. Open a tab for a text editor Copy IM text into text editor Does anyone like this idea in rough? There are definitely implementations of ideas that have a similar goal, but not quite like this one. The goal of this would just be to minimize the use of windows because they're annoying. _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
