How will the future operating systems look like? How the user interface, the inner workings, the security policies and the networking will interact? In any case, innovation is the key.
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I think this is a seriously flawed article, for example the following suggestions are obviously backward steps in UI design.
``The solution is to take the idea of the original MacOS even further: not only hide other applications when you activate one, but make all windows maximized instead. That solves the overlapping window problem and does away with the title bar taking precious screen space. ``
``Now you will probably notice that drag and drop is not possible anymore, at least not between applications and also not between windows. That is not practical, because it forms a much more visual way of moving objects than the copy-past way Windows introduced. Therefore, the GI should offer a split-screen mode, in which two windows, can be visible next to eachoter.``
what do you do if you have applications that do not process any documents?
e.g. a calculator and i bet you'll find many more examples...
greets philipp
... with the first post. I think this article is seriously flawed. Maybe it is too radical a change, maybe I lack mental flexibility, but I really think some of the author's ideas as bad. The first one coming to my mind is this:
"Instead, the only thing the user should see are documents. Nothing more and nothing less. When the user clicks a document, it is opened, and when he closes it, the document is closed. What software is used to accomplish this should not be visible in any way."
Hidding which software you are using will be source of confusion... unless you agree to be fed whatever the
OS provider want...
There's other things I don't agree with, or I find outright ridiculous. Example:
"KDE even has the window buttons in exactly the same place as Windows." Conclusion: KDE is mimicking Windows... Well, I am not sying that KDE cannot be made to look like Windows, but still I cannot swallow that easily the comparison: Gnome, KDE == Windows imitation.
I'm not an expert, so I should be modest. This is just my opinion.
Finally, a last word. The GUI presented here look a little bit like a "shell GUI" for X. I'm sorry I don't remember the name, but the idea is that windows do not overlap and that you can split your screen as you feel to accomodate new applications... Do someone remember the name of this GUI?
I agree with m, this is a bit of a joke.
How many people work with every window on their machine maximised? I know I don't, as sometimes it is just impractical, such as WinAmp. Can't imagine using that in full screen mode, even if it supported it.
I think the author of the article is pushing more towards Task Based desktops. And with bigger screens, and something like the Screen Tiles in Longhorn, and KDE/Gnome, would work better. Winamp, downloads and other non-important service based programs on a tile where they can be quickly accessed, while the main program being used is in maximised.
It is Ion:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?IonWindowManager
If I understood it right, in terms of the GUI the author is basically suggesting we take the Mac OS approach to window management, then make every application a seamless part of the OS. Then the user will be able to
(a) work with their desktop more effectively (I've seen lots of examples of the Outlook Express email problem, so that's a good analogy), and
(b) be able to think entirely in terms of tasks, not the current OS + apps = solution model.
Why not a Longhorn style sidebar to hold all the mini-applets that don't rate a full screen window?
@Barlin - Winamp with its media library thingy takes up most of the screen at 1024x768, so I can see it filling the entire screen
Funny that the author thinks up a "new radical approach" to UI and uses techniques that are from the past (full-screen non-windows) and the present (dialog non-windows).
Especially when he then notes that to achieve dnd, there should be two full-screen (ummm...) windows visible at the same time.
The GUI pipes are a good idea, but that's already available by dnd or c&p. All you have to do is make the applications work like that (and that's not operating systems problem anymore).
The general idea in the network section seems to be "replace old protocols with new ones". I don't know what good would come from increasing the number of protocols (yeah yeah, the new one will be better than those old ones, right? and everyone and his brother will use the new one) when there are already too many of them.
The only truly valid point in this article is the document-model.
If I would be impolite, I'd say that this article is crappy, but I'm not.
I agree that every application should be a seamless part of the experience (maybe not the O/S: an important distinction) for example, we will see blurred lines between local and remote windows, as much as local and remote applications, documents, storage, etc: I tend to agree that application per se should be downplayed: future environments are more about tasks, whether those tasks are documents (in a traditional sense) or interactive windows (chat, e.g.) or so on. I think the author of the article has a few valid points, but the points aren't well explained, and too mixed up with other incorrectness. Quite simply, if the audience for this article is the "informed technical person" (I put myself into this category), then there are too many mistakes for it to be a worthy article to read, and if the audience is the "lay technical person" (joe six-pack, e.g.) then the article is deeply misleading.
If someone _really_ wants to write an article about the future of O/S etc: then realistically the only way to do it in the current world is to set up a collaborative system (a wiki, e.g.) that many people can contribute to and refine to have a consensus: in today's world, no single person has the perspective.
Daan,
Thanks for your article. It takes courage to challange the status quo in a public forum.
Kramii.
you've gotta be kidding, there is almost no change suggested by the article. It is still WIMP (windows, icons, menus, and pointers)
Future? Operating system of tomorrow?
My view of the future operating system is a marriage between what can be seen at:
http://www.lcarsdeveloper.com/
and what can be red at:
http://www.seven3.modblog.com/
text rules baby, as long as is used the right way 
This is literaly just tomorrow. Thats all what we have, just nicer, with more eyecandy?
Did the author ever heard of ubiquitous computing? It think when your jacket sleeve sports a personal assistant you stuck with those things? The questions are interfaces and they do not necessarily mean GUI. Heard of Sony Qrio? And you are talking about GUI? Those things need some more ideas for OSes than just some filesystem and widgets.
Mitchell wrote 15 years ago that we stuck with WIMP. And somebody asking for more? Seriously, a very very flawed article, lacking any foundation.
You don't solve the overlapping problem by making everything overlap all the time. You solve it by making it impossible for things to overlap. The problem that overlap solves is depicting an arbitrary amount of window area on a screen of finite dimensions. And unless we use z-axis (overlap), we need to use either a curved plane with adaptive area (non-linear zoom + no overlap), or virtual desktops (replacing overlap by viewport cropping), a combination of those, or something else.
Suppose you go all the way with the document-centric UI. If we take the view that a document == file, we need to cram 200k+ (300k+ on OS X) files on the screen. Which looks like this in a zoomable fs visualizer:
http://fhtr.org/mugen/shots/240kfiles.jpg
Point 1 - virtual Machine.
This is definitely the way to go. You loose performance but gain safety, portability, easier development and much more.
Point 2 - away with overlapping windows
This is a good point too. A taskbar to show which windows exist and an emacs-like splitting (plus d&d) gives 99% of what you need. Anyone working with emacs knows that this is more comfortable than overlapping windows.
Point 3 - simple look
Again true that too many fancy widgets distract you from your work. Platinum uses greys for widgets and one color for text highlight.
Point 4 - only documents
Documents are not enough, sometimes I need to perform "tasks": Duplicate A CD; Synch Files with My Laptop etc.
Point 5 - software is invisible
Software is important. I want to be aware of using Photoshop and not GIMP, Word and not OO etc. especially if I paid for it. And sometimes I want both installed and to be able to choose.
Points 6 - embedding text
This is in my opinion a technical issue. I didn't understand fully what he means but I think there are better solutions.
Point 7 - network model
There is little innovation here, although much is needed in this area.
Well, the always-maximised thing may indeed be easier for non-techies; in my experience, most ordinary unsophisticated users simply don't understand the concept of windows on a screen. Everyone I watch always maximises everything (eg mail composition windows) even though it's pointless and less productive. They simply cannot understand the concept of sizing windows and leaving other things visible on the side etc. So though it's less powerful, the always-maximised model is the one that most Joe-Blows already use!
Your networking sounds a lot like something I'm implementing.
I'm not quite there (public key crypto is slowing my progress).
It is very complex matter, and I'm not sure I'll ever complete it....
OS designers have been using the vm idea for years esp. with WinNT. Here the OS is separated for the H/W through the use of a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and hence porting WinNT to another platform (e.g. the DEC Alpha) was simply a case of porting the HAL.
My conclusion on this article is that it is seriously flawed. The majority of the points raised are old ideas, and some are considered bad practice (e.g. the points raised on UI design).
The reason why lots of users maximise all there windows is probably less to do with overlapping being confusing than with the non optimal way that Microsoft set up there menu as being locked into the top of the window below the title bar. This means that in an unmaximised state the menu can be almost anywhere on the screen, and is therefore harder to learn the position that menu items will always be at (this has been a critism of OS X as the Application menu with it's changing size can shift the position of the other menu items).
It also makes it slower to access as it will almost always be at a distance from the five fastest pixels to aquire (four corners and the one your over at the moment) unlike MacOS that were bound to the top of the screen and so had effectively an infinite area (as it is impossible to overshoot the clickable area of the menu item as that would require you pushing the mouse off the top of the screen), obviously good from the point of veiw of Fitts Law.
I agree that a truly document based interface would be a good idea, preferably one where the "applets" used for editing data can easily be extended and have functionality replaced with plugins and new applets.
The GUI you are looking for is probably 'screen', commonly found in /bin/screen
It's a terminal multiplexer.
On the other side, we have the innovative Mac OS X. It is the user-friendliest computer system on earth, built on UNIX and has OpenGL acceleration of the screen.
If that was so, every living being in the world would be using OS X. However, the reality is that OS X is in fact harder to use for 90% of computer users, (Windows users).
In fact, it is so esoteric to use that 99% of the time, the Mac laboratories over at the University I work at are 99% empty. I run Jaguar on an iMac, and there have been several occassions where I just break down and boot into Windows XP, or switch over to my Linux workstation. And I'm a self proclaimed computer geek.
Usability and familiarity go hand in hand. If you are familiar with a concept, its process becomes usable. Apple's window manager simply sucks! It is absolutely, completely horrendous and just plain retarded. And it is perhaps the fundamental reason why the Mac labs at the University are 99% empty.
When your user doesn't know how to quit, maximize, minimize or shuffle between applications, there is a problem. How about not knowing where to look for applications? Suppose a user wants to see all applications available to the system, what does he or she do?
In windows, they start at the start menu and then logically, proceed to the programs menu. In GNOME, the "applications" menu is glaringly conspicuous. In KDE, the K menu is an instinctive place to check. In Jaguar OS X?
Uhmmm...you search for it in Finder. Or while messing around with the finder menu, they user inspirationally clicks on "Go" then "Applications". How innovative. I don't know if that has changed in Panther, because I haven't bothered to upgrade and probably will not. Admittedly, Aqua looks sexy, pretty, and polished, even more so than any other GUI environment I've laid my eyes upon. But looks don't automatically translate in usability.
It took me months to learn how to use OS X and unlearn many computer habbits. That hardly bodes well for usability, ease of use, and flat learning curves. Even as we speak, I feel a little crippled when I use Jaguar, compared to other OSes. On linux, I can effectively and efficiently use GNOME via keyboard input, no mouse.
On OS X Jaguar, I can't remember how to select links on Safari, using the keyboard, nor do I remember how to minizime, maximize, resize, or move windows via the keyboard. I don't even think you can shade windows in OS X. I think you could in OS 9, but I digress. I don't remember how to expand the apple menu via keyboard, nor do I know a quick way to launch programs that are absent on the task bar. Anyone who uses Linux will acknowledge why I feel crippled in Jaguar.
To the best of my knowledge, I have to use a mouse to do majority of the window management activity in Jaguar. Even cycling through applications is a pain Jaguar. I understand that has been fixed in Panther. But that means shelling out $129 for a silly feature that even 'free' ICEWM provides.
I can go on and on about how Windows and Linux are an other of magnitude more usable than OS X, but it is not necessary. To be usable, Apple need to through away several of their window management philosophies, and present users with ones they are already familiar with. For Christ sake, I can't even maximize windows in OS X. Neither can I set applications to fullscreen mode. I mean, these are necesities.
Enough of my rant, I disagree with you that OS X is the most usable Operating System on earth. I think that title should rightly go to GNOME. It is the most usable environment I've been in. And I'm willing to bet my sister, that Average Joe will have an easier time migrating from Windows to GNOME, than he would from Windows to OS X, or Mac.
Yes, I don't agree with the stereotype, now shoot me.
The user interface should be friendly and practical, both for the newbie as for the experienced computer user. Therefore, no POSIX compatibility is needed and no GNU utilities need to be ported. And why should they? In this modern world, we want to use more than text. We want fonts, webpages, flash animations, music, pictures and movies. The command line is not suitable for them, so a graphical interface (GI) is really necessary.
Where did you get the idea that POSIX compatability means you can't have a GUI? We're ( http://www.syllable.org ) doing fine with POSIX and GNU tools. If you don't supply basic tools, your OS can not function. What will you do without GNU tools such as a compiler and linker? Creating your own tools as well as an OS is going to take a lot of effort; porting non-GNU tools isn't going to reduce your reliance on POSIX or Unix-like standards.
Existing POSIX based code offers most everything you list as "needs". If you want fonts, you want Freetype2. If you want webpages you want Gecko or Khtml. If you want pictures and movies you want FFMpeg and friends. All of those are much easier to port if you have POSIX compatability!
Anyone who says that has not discovered the KDE Configurabillity that it is so famed for!
KDE is the universal operating system! You can make it look like nearly ANY operating system, or invent your own. KDE can look like Windows, MAC, BeOS, CDE, Amiga, QNX, RiscOS and more. Check out the Keramik and Plastik themes, completely revised for KDE 3.2! As for placing Window buttons, right click any window title bar and select Configure Window behavior. You can configure it until your hearts content!
Saying KDE is a Windows clone is just ignorance, and I will come down HARD anyone who says so.
Does Windows have the versitle KDE control center? Panel applets, built in Wallpaper Slideshows (and this was before Mac OS X had it, it was there in version 1 of KDE, in 1999!). SO repeat after me KDE IS NOT A WINDOWS CLONE! In fact, the longhorn beta is copying KDE!
The reason why lots of users maximise all there windows is probably less to do with overlapping being confusing than with the non optimal way that Microsoft set up there menu as being locked into the top of the window below the title bar. This means that in an unmaximised state the menu can be almost anywhere on the screen, and is therefore harder to learn the position that menu items will always be at (this has been a critism of OS X as the Application menu with it's changing size can shift the position of the other menu items).
Menus in Windows are relative to the application to which they pertain. As much as people in the Mac OS world once adored the idea of the fixed menu placement at the top of the screen, it was confusing in a completely different way, because you had to be aware of which window it pertained to, and lead to more mouse movement if you used a larger monitor with resized windows (instead of maximized windows).
I find that the reason most users tend towards maximized windows is because they're running at 800x600 or 640x480 (depending mostly on which OS they're using), and those resolutions often are barely capable of displaying all of the relevant information on the screen at one time. Most of them use these resolutions either because they're the default resolutions or because they find higher resolutions harder to read (because setting font sizes and so forth is not only too complicated for many of them, but is also inconsistent), and the higher resolutions require better accuracy with the mouse in most cases, which can be an issue for many users (that problem could be solved by resolution-independant icon size, but Windows doesn't currently have that built-in).
I, personally, only use maximized windows for applications that convey a great deal of information and, in most cases, can have multiple documents available in the same window area. Most of the time I prefer my documents to be viewed in a window that's taller than it is wide, as this is a more familiar orientation for documents often viewed in print, and, for me, is often easier to read (as the lines don't become jumbled 1000 pixels into the 1600-pixel screen). Additionally, any application I keep maximized tends to become background when I start using other applications, so everything I use is constantly displayed with that one application in the viewing area, which is helpful because often what I'm working on in the foreground is related to what sits in the background.
It also makes it slower to access as it will almost always be at a distance from the five fastest pixels to aquire (four corners and the one your over at the moment) unlike MacOS that were bound to the top of the screen and so had effectively an infinite area (as it is impossible to overshoot the clickable area of the menu item as that would require you pushing the mouse off the top of the screen), obviously good from the point of veiw of Fitts Law.
Unlike MacOS, though, when you have a floating window in Windows with an attached menu you are usually closer to the menu than to any of those 4 other points (though they're easy to get to if you like to toss your mouse across the room or use a trackball like a 5-year-old playing centipede). The idea of attaching menus to the windows is based on the idea that users will commonly be using the mouse in the window in which they are working, and will focus attention on that window. Personally, I'm more keyboard-oriented anyway, so the only reason it matters to me is because I don't need another slice of my screen being used up by something that makes the interface harder for me to use, if not everyone else.
I agree that a truly document based interface would be a good idea, preferably one where the "applets" used for editing data can easily be extended and have functionality replaced with plugins and new applets.
This would be great for people that do nothing on their computers but edit and read documents, but computers are general-purpose things, and moving them towards a document-centric model simply alienates the rest of the user base. On the other hand, making document-centric work easier, and making the operating system behave well in a document-centric user's day-to-day tasks is a good thing. It just needs to be balanced against the general purpose needs of the remainder of the system's users.
you will be going back to the single static partition of memory if the only application that gets used at any one time must have the attention of the user.
there is a reason we left that model back in the dust.... it was inflexible and inefficient.
...if we all stood up and decided to "invent" our own OS. Wooopeee! I don't know about you guys but I seriously think more energy should be focused on improving what we have (good or bad or ugly). Everyone has an opinion and disagrees with others. We don't need 5000 different OSs. I bet future OSs will simplify and become more transperant. They will fundementally work the best way (OS Core) and will only differ cosmetically (Think OSX - UNIX core with any GUI you please). Less people will care about what the underpinnings of the OS are - it will just work. If anything, forget about reinventing the OS and work on designing X server + window managers/environments. The rest should be transperant and irrelevent. VM? Current Linux/BSD porting efforts should be given more credit.
imagine you have two windows, say a maximized Outlook Express and a normal New Message window on top. When you accidentally click the Outlook Express window, it will look like the message you were typing is lost. Of course, it's just hidden behind the window you just clicked, but that is not obvious. The solution is to take the idea of the original MacOS even further: not only hide other applications when you activate one, but make all windows maximized instead
yikes! The problem isn't overlapping windows. The problem is the default click-to-front behavior of the windows. windows should stay put until the user moves them (except for some "emergency" type warning messages.) woot?
If OS X is harder to use for 90% of the computer users (Windows users)? Most of them never used OS X. In fact I believe most of them have never seen a Mac for real.
For the simple reason that it has stimulated much debate over OS design. I for one agree with most of the Authors points.
Most windows should be always maximized as this stops the user spending time fiddling trying to get screen layout right. As for drag and drop between apps, it is useless, Just use cut and paste. In a filesystem environment your filemanager should start with split screen just as smart ones like MC (midnight commander) does, drag and drop should only affect the main app and maybe to items in the taskbar or elsewhere.
Posix has more to do with the programmers than the end users.
Windows should never be lost to the user. This is the #1 UI design mistake today. We need ways to see where the data we are working on is.
And yes not everything is document centric but very few people have trouble with non-document centric apps.
The claim that eye candy just wastes cycles, while true in some cases is not a universal. Drop shadows under menus and windows is a usabity plus as it allows you to determine the window that presently has focus quicker.
The GUI option that allows only one application to be visible at a time is a very poor idea. Very often I find myself (and I expect that other do too) wanting to have multiple things visble. API docs while coding, an email I am responding too, a article being reference in something else I am writing. The list is endless. The current system has enough flexiblity that everyone can find a system that works for them. If all maximized windows works for you, that great it wouldn't work for me.
Replace documents with files and you have a good step.
I want an extremely intergrated enviroment. I want to click (or double click) on an icon and launch the nessacary app(already done)think the embedded viewers in KDE. I click on a text document, and in the same window the text editor opens. I click on a image icon a small menu opens and asks whether I want to view it, or edit the image. Photoshop is already a part of the system. If I select multiple images I can either drag them to another directory or open the entire selection in an slide show. I want tighter intergration of software, while using open standards. That way KDE can open stuff and i can send it to my friend who uses Gnome who changes it and they can send it to a windows user who can change it and send it back.
Microsoft's tight intergration even tighter, with open standards for file formats. That will be a near term OS of the future(20 years)
KDE already has this potential: it's called Kpart though I would prefer to call KomponentWare. Such approach are better suited to pen computer. Apple did it with OpenDoc and Newton, but chicken out when Job took over. The big problen with OpenDoc was that it was very purist and did not allow an evolutionary path to this goal.
On the RiscOS platform there was two alternative technology with would achive the same goal in the long term. Unfortunatly this platform has almost been totally crushed be the big giant of America with anti-competitive practise. They are now hanging on at shoestring.
What this mean that A4 sized pencomputer should of been common by now. It isn't thank to the giant of America. The world computer has stagnated. Japan has realized this along with other asian countries.
Ask 10 people what makes a good UI design and no doubt you'll get 10 different answers.
Some people like all windows to be maximised, other don't. Some people like windows to come to the front when clicked while others find that annoying.
I think what makes a good UI is how flexible and configurable it is. The moment the UI forces the user to do things a certain way it loses potential users.
since when is GUI and apps the same as OS design? when i think of OS design, i think of microkernels and exokernels, page replacement algorithms and tcp/ip stacks. shouldn't this article be called "Designing the GUI and Apps of Tomorrow". everything discussed here can already be implemented on existing kernels that are out there.
KDE already has this potential: it's called Kpart though I would prefer to call KomponentWare. Such approach are better suited to pen computer. Apple did it with OpenDoc and Newton, but chicken out when Job took over. The big problen with OpenDoc was that it was very purist and did not allow an evolutionary path to this goal.
On the RiscOS platform there was two alternative technology with would achive the same goal in the long term. Unfortunatly this platform has almost been totally crushed be the big giant of America with anti-competitive practise. They are now hanging on at shoestring.
What this mean that A4 sized pencomputer should of been common by now. It isn't thank to the giant of America. The world computer has stagnated. Japan has realized this along with other asian countries. Japanise company has tried introduced a more reliable operating system to desktop and portable computer market. What did the GIANT of the USA do? They blocked such development. This clearly p***ed the Japanise corporation of badly. They are now switching over to Linux. The GIANT of the USA are pretty stupid in my opnion.
Put every document in XML, and then the namespace defines the presentation behaviour/software to use eg. svg, html, word(?); then piping documents would be easy, using XPointers or something, remote and local docs could be referenced.
I guess you register different software against each namespace/doctype. So no ms software if you want. 
A VM running multiple browser windows displaying lots of different doc formats -> Mozilla !?!
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Begin Analytical Comment
I think the Main Question here is how to make advanced machines like computers look as simple as a box of cookies (first thing that sprang into my head, just ate one).
The question is not IF it can be done. We've seen before that advanced things can become simple to the user. By putting an automatic gearbox into a car, for instance. But you won't get the same feeling.
It's just what's more important to you, and how fast you're willing to adapt to a new (and simpler) environment. But as said, be very careful when implementing.
Personally, I think that restriction and simplicity lead to creativity, as is proven many times. Give a child a piece of paper and a pencil, and it will start to draw. Give it a full painter's kit, and it will run away. But that's just my opinion.
Anyway, it's good to have a real discussion about this.
End, thank you.
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...reading when the author said, "C++ was a bad fix to C, and Java cleaned everything up". This statement and most that came after were sheer garbage. Is it too much to ask that an author know something about their subject before writing about it? If I'm going to take the time to read three pages of material I'd like some confidence that the people asking for my time do some do some actual, honest research and become educated before establishing a dialog with the rest of us.
"Such approach are better suited to pen computer. Apple did it with OpenDoc and Newton, but chicken out when Job took over."
"The GIANT of the USA are pretty stupid in my opnion."
Perhaps you should get a sufficient handle on the GIANT’s rudimentary grammar and spelling conventions before you offer criticism. You undercut your own argument by demonstrating that development continues regardless of America’s presumed anti-competitive practices.
"Apple's marketshare is small, and in this way they can keep their former customers while they can also attract new ones: their OS is now built on the "proven reliability" of UNIX thanks to it being 30 years old. Apparently, they have not read the Unix-Haters Handbook, from which it seems UNIX was rather unstable even 10 years ago."
?!?!?!?!?!?
Compared to what?
For the simple reason that it has stimulated much debate over OS design. I for one agree with most of the Authors points.
It's much easier to get a lot of discussion out of a bad article than a good one, but at the same time this particular topic on a forum dedicated to operating systems tends to be an attraction for discussion anyway. The article itself is highly flawed, but a point-by-point discussion on a 3-page article is nearly impossible on this forum without submitting a counter-article (due in part to the length limit on posts, and in part to the way posts are displayed).
Most windows should be always maximized as this stops the user spending time fiddling trying to get screen layout right. As for drag and drop between apps, it is useless, Just use cut and paste.
Users that might spend a lot of time fiddling with non-maximized windows would probably be the same users that rely on drag-and-drop. People confused by overlapping windows would probably be equally confused by cut and paste. Most windows have no need to be maximized, and often doing so just causes excess wasted space. Imagine Notepad with a short pre-formatted (with line breaks in the file itself) file open, at 1600x1200, or even 800x600. Even more complex document editors, like Word (or equivalents), tend to waste a lot of space in full-screen mode, because most of the documents they deal with are meant for printing on paper that's longer than it is wide. Web sites often fall into the same trap because they're forced to design around the small resolutions most viewers will have, leading to pages wider than they are long even though the information could be conveyed more clearly and with fewer pages in the other direction (then again, if you can span multiple pages you can get more ad hits).
In a filesystem environment your filemanager should start with split screen just as smart ones like MC (midnight commander) does, drag and drop should only affect the main app and maybe to items in the taskbar or elsewhere.
Why should your file manager be split-screen if you're not going to use drag & drop? The whole idea of split-screen views in file managers is to make drag & drop easier. This is exactly why I don't use split-screen file managers, and only occasionally use directory-view options in file managers (primarily if I'm moving things between directories with similar names in different parts of the hierarchy). If I need a second directory open in the file manager to make movement between directories faster, I should be able to open another file manager window and move between them easily, without worrying about the file manager having too much overhead to open quickly and run side-by-side. The options required in a file manager's menu and toolbars are fairly limited, so the extra screen real estate from a second window should be minimal.
Posix has more to do with the programmers than the end users.
This is true, and people should be reminded that WindowsNT could just as easily be POSIX certified as many UNIX derivatives. With SFU there's a POSIX subsystem in WindowsXP that's perfectly fine for many POSIX-aware apps. It can all be made to look like Windows, or it could be made to look like OS X, and though POSIX does include standards for the UI services, the actual look and feel doesn't matter.
Windows should never be lost to the user. This is the #1 UI design mistake today. We need ways to see where the data we are working on is.
This is the type of problem easily solved at the application level, though. Additionally, much of this behavior is user-dependant. Many people would not like it if they couldn't switch between multiple documents of different types without hassle, or between a document and application windows, simply because some UI designer thought the user shouldn't be allowed to shift focus away from the document they're currently working on.
And yes not everything is document centric but very few people have trouble with non-document centric apps.
People have trouble with all types of apps, the document-centric ones simply tend to have the worst interfaces because the designers are trying to cram features into them while still allowing the user as much space as possible to view the document these features will modify. People using *nix like emacs and vi not because they're simpler than applications like Word, but because they have most of the same features (and more or less in many areas), yet keep most of the interface out of the way (in favour of obscure keyboard commands that scare many users away, in many versions of each editor). Document work is fundamentally not drag & drop, point & click, but instead is done with hands on the keyboard, so of course those that know the keyboard commands for their editors can handle the documents much faster and with less hassle. Still, how many people would be willing to use (or mandate in their company) Word if the interface were simply the document window and every new user had a list of keyboard commands taped to their desk to figure out how to do anything more than simply type?
If people more commonly have problems with document-centric applications (as is implied by saying that people don't have trouble with non-document-centric apps), what benefit is it to make the OS itself document-centric? In many ways, it already is, as it suffers from many of the same problems that are inherent in document-centric applications: they try to pack as many features in as possible while still trying to stay out of the way of whatever application you're trying to focus on. No one has a perfect solution, I don't have an OS no one's ever seen before in my back-pocket that will solve these problems. However, the points need to be made and people need to start thinking about these things in different ways. The arguments are really not very different than they were 10 years ago, and at that time Linux didn't have a GUI worth mentioning, MacOS was unrecognizable to someone first exposed to it with OS X, and Windows was still a DOS application that no one used.
A future computing paradigm like the one described at http://tunes.org/ really looks nice.
"People that don't learn from the past are bound to repeat it". There was almost nothing that was different to what people have tried (and suggested) in the past, yes you can do 90% of applications this way but it is the other 10% that break your model and they are very difficult to implement. Once you have to 'hack' you design to add these in you will find that it would have been simpler not to have constrained the model in the first place but now you are stuck with lots of source that you will have to change.
Most windows should be always maximized as this stops the user spending time fiddling trying to get screen layout right.
That won't work very well with multiple monitors - I hate it when apps maximize across monitors. My dual headed matrox card makes 2 of my monitors (I use 3) act like a single monitor so whenever I maximize an app on either of those two monitors it expands across them - and I hate it when that happens.
Convince Apple to release Aqua/Quartz window manager under the GPL license.
Don't get me wrong. I HATE Mac OSX. The "one menu bar" system drives me bonkers. The entire system is based on the fundamental principal of ONE FEEKING MOUSE BUTTON and the basic interface just isn't intuitive.
But it has serious advantages over all competition in that it's incredibly responsive, has smooth, flawless eye candy, perfect fonts, etc etc. It's already based on FreeBSD and XFree86, so compatibility is not an issue.
It would take a matter of hours for someone to port a working version to Linux. You can even download and boot the Mac kernel and Darwin on i386-based machines, straight from the Apple site. Imagine KDE or Gnome running on the Quartz/Aqua platform. I prefer KDE in terms of customisation and usability, but I can appreciate the concepts behind the Gnome prject, and always keep an eye on development. With the Quartz back-end in place, Gnome especially would be a perfect desktop, and the support in development would simply explode.
An important issue is convincing Apple that this is in their interest. This is the difficult part. My personal opinion is this:- If Linux with Gnome or KDE was as flawlessly responsive as Aqua, then it would make Linux undoubtably the best PC desktop OS. This would not only push the popularity of Linux, but also push innovation in Mac OSX. This in turn would push the G4/G5 processors as a viable alternative to Intel/AMD.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly no expert, and this concept is probably fundamentally flawed in a dozen way. But at the moment, in my head, it's a great idea. I just wish I could sit down and have a one-to-one with Mr Jobs.
This would work well for the new computer user as an introduction to computing.
However, this system seems to me, mean that you are going to loose efficiency in production of comple models, and not even be able to achieve them.
Personally, I like having ovelapping windows, I find I can do it in a neat and efficient way.
VM machine would be too slow, esp. on top of modern systems.
folder navgiation will become difficult, if even possible according to the article. Folder navigation in my view is best done as in OS X with colomn view.
about diff protocols, doesn't worry me, the computer sorts it all out for me.
apps, you need to be able to see your different apps properly, how would something like photoshop work?? tiles on another seperate part of the screen. No thanks. I like modern systems, despite lack of new inovation, becasue it's not necessary. People have got used to that way of working, and to change it all now is a little late, and would slow productivity down for sometime while people got used to the new system.
If the Author likes it so much he should create a copy for himself and present it to the public.
Personally, I think that restriction and simplicity lead to creativity, as is proven many times. Give a child a piece of paper and a pencil, and it will start to draw. Give it a full painter's kit, and it will run away. But that's just my opinion.
I think if you give a child a full painter's kit, then the kid's more likely to make one very large mess instead of running away.
Also, how you restrain the child while still allowing the painter to paint if there's only one set of tools available? ie - makeing the OS simple enough for the novice, while not makeing it difficult for someone with a clue to use the full power available to them.
<rant>One point worth mentioning is that many of the authors points have nothing to do with OS design, but rather with UI/application design. This point always bothers me: much of the debate I have seen between which OS is better are truly user interface and user experience arguments, which in reality have almost nothing to do with the OS at all! What is really being argued are the virtues of an operating environment which is really just a large program running on a host OS. As is seen with KDE and Gnome, the operating environment can run on different host operating systems. The only people who really 'use' an OS are programmers who are interacting with that OS's system call interface, and dealing with the foibles of that OS's design and implementation. The rest is UI and application design.</rant>
On to the article:
I think an example of the 'everything is a document' idea is the Gobe Productive office suite. It has a single unified document format for the word processor, spreadsheet, drawing, and presentation software such that essentially one user interface and document format is used to handle them all, and parts of each type of document can easily be dragged and dropped onto each other. It is a good idea, though as others have pointed out, not do-able across all application domains.
VM's and fully distributed designs are where true OS design is headed in my opinion. I think MacOS X is a good example of how the VM idea may work. Currently OS X can run native OS X apps, and OS 9 apps through a module-like OS 9 support environment. This concept could be expanded to include support environments to run applications natively compiled for a larger number of other platforms. Perhaps we will end up seeing a single small kernel (perhaps stored in a ROM) with a group of software VMs. The kernel will be responsible for loading the proper VM based on what type of application is being launched.
A distributed framework would allow different networked devices to be used (hopefully transparently) to access your data, as long as the appropriate VM is available for that device.
These are very general ideas, but I think this is the way things will go.
Brennan
It's already based on FreeBSD and XFree86, so compatibility is not an issue.
Quartz isn't based on XFree86, it's based on DisplayPDF which is a descendant of DisplayPostscript from NeXT. While Apple do ship an X Server (which, I believe, is based on XFree86) , it sits on top of DisplayPDF.
Imagine KDE or Gnome running on the Quartz/Aqua platform.
Why imagine when you can already do it:
http://primates.ximian.com/~aaron/doing/evo-osx.html for gnome and evolution and http://kde.opendarwin.org/ for KDE. Note that the GNOME stuff requires Fink and X, while the KDE stuff is native (though I think a Fink/X Window based KDE is also available). A native GTK on OS/X project can be found here: http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net/
"Wait. Read that again, and think for yourself: how much innovation has there been and will there be? Let's start with Gnome and KDE. They are mainly copying the user interface of Windows. Yes, Gnome places the application menu on the top of the screen instead of the bottom, and KDE has invented KIO. But almost everything else is plain copying. KDE even has the window buttons in exactly the same place as Windows. There is a reason for this. A quite simple one, actually. Most people today work with Windows, and when they make a desktop environment that behaves radically different, they are afraid they scare people so that they continue to use Windows."
KDE and GNOME are the most popular (!) DE's and WM's. If you want an innovative DE/WM you'd better not take the popular or the popular's default settings which is exactly what you chose to conclude from.
Instead, try to change the default settings. The default settings are meant for people who are new. And most new people are comming from MS Windows 9x/NT. You don't want to scare them, do you? KDE is more like Windows than GNOME is, imo -- which is why i believe KDE is more popular.
Want an innovative DE/WM? Try for example Enlightenment and see how innovative the various versions, themes, and features are.
Enlightenment doesn't exist to "take over the world" either which is what you can note when you know it is BSD licensed or when you read from the authors (ie. Raster, Pixelmonkey, etc)
If you want to se ean innovation, you'll have to look futher than you nose long is and prepare to move away from the status quo/popular. Mostly, the chances that the innovation will become popular are slim... which correlates with why it isn't popular, why you perhaps didn't knew about it.
Quartz isn't based on XFree86, it's based on DisplayPDF which is a descendant of DisplayPostscript from NeXT. While Apple do ship an X Server (which, I believe, is based on XFree86) , it sits on top of DisplayPDF.
I knew Quartz has something to do with PDF, which I found quite confusing, but interesting. But I didn't know XFree was secondary. Is that what gives OSX its smoothness? I always wondered why there was such a huge gap in feel between Linux & Mac OSX GUI's. Like I say, I'm no expert.
Why imagine when you can already do it:
I've never seen these projects before, and although they are interesting, my point here was to port the existing graphical backend & GUI to the i386 platform, through GPL. That's where 90% of the market share is, after all, and I think, in the long run, it would be beneficial to Apple. Plus I don't have a Mac, and crave a major update to XFree (or whatever makes Macs so responsive).
For all its faults, Windows is definately more intuitive and responsive than KDE or Gnome, and it's the main reason the majority of i386-based users are stuck with M$. I feel until this is resolved, Linux will remain a hobbyists toy when it comes to home users desktops.
In saying that, I also have strong feeling over package management (which sucks on all platforms that I have experience with). But it looks like there is a lot more creativity going into that now (compared to recent years).
... translates to
The widgets themself
;o)
Cheers!
STIBS
First I would like to congratulate the author on a good effort to come up with an alternative solution to some aspects of computing that have troubled him, and which might lead to some better systems for some people.
However, I can't help but agree with many other comments here.. this is not really very innovative. It is taking some old ideas and throwing them around in different ways. I really don't see very much that is new or different. It's more like a rearranging of furniture than a completely new building.
I think the author grasps some of the basic issues in computing today - for example the unification of individual computers over a network, making the user interface easier, etc... but I don't really see a central core or reasoning or philosophy behind these decisions. It's kind of just a bunch of pieces thrown together without a whole lot of coherent reason. I don't see an underlying thread of consistency. I think the ideas here will have to be developed further and in more detail because at the moment this radical new model isn't so radical.
Since this author focusses a lot on what is practical I am thinking they are a practical kind of a person, perhaps a Taurus, Virgo or Capricorn, astrologically speaking. Such people are now always able to come up with something new and original, it's part of their style.. but I DO very much appreciate the focus on practicality and down-to-earth simplicity in this article, so thumbs up for that!
A good future os is going to need rather a lot more refinement and VISION, but this is a good step.
Brennan, I agree with your point... a lot of discussion is about user interfaces and applications rather than operating systems. But here is the point... every user is subjective and not everyone has a DEEP understanding of what an operating system is. They figure it's the way they use the computer.... what image or face the computer shows to them as part of the way they interface with it. Yes, we know that there are lower levels and things going on behind the scenes but for a lot of users, an operating system is considered the same thing as the user's understanding of how the computer works, and if all they've ever done is use applications with a limited knowledge of how they really work, as might be the case here, it's no surprise that they'd be thinking on a level of applications and user interfaces rather than behind the scenes technology. I guess it raises an interesting question of what, the user, an operating system really is. Furthermore, I think an operating system should be transparent to the user, so maybe this author actually has a good point about focussing on what the user experiences rather than on what goes on in the background. Wouldn't a good operating system be one that does not require that the user know about how it does what it does? Isn't that what makes a good interface? Isn't the interface the operating system, to the average user? A lot of us know that an OS is a lot more detailed than that, and in that sense this article does fall short, or at least appear to, but maybe in the author's naievety he actually has the right focus?
Just another two cents... must be ranking up the coins now.
Since this author focusses a lot on what is practical I am thinking they are a practical kind of a person, perhaps a Taurus, Virgo or Capricorn, astrologically speaking.
http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=astrology
:oP
I knew Quartz has something to do with PDF, which I found quite confusing, but interesting. But I didn't know XFree was secondary. Is that what gives OSX its smoothness?
Yep, X is in there only to provide backward compatability with graphical UNIX apps (and, I suppose, to tempt *NIX users over to the Mac). The Server sits on top and uses Quartz (ie DisplayPDF) to draw the X apps on screen. DisplayPDF is what gives OS/X it's smoothness.
my point here was to port the existing graphical backend & GUI to the i386 platform, through GPL
Probably the easiest way to achieve this "GPL'd OS/X" nirvana would be to use GNUstep (a clone of the NextStep/Cocoa API) on top of Linux and to revive GNU DisplayGhostcript (a long dead clone of DisplayPostscript). While GNUstep has had some life breathed back into it (probably helped by people wanting to port OS/X software to other *nixes - it had languished for quite awhile) I don't think there are enough people with the itch (at least for now) to revive DisplayGhostscript.
As someone else pointed out, the title of the article should have been Future Desktop Concepts - not Designing the Operating System of Tomorrow. I thought this article was going to be about microkernels vs monolithic, and other technical operating system concepts. Not a gui design advocacy.
As far as maximized windows, I like my windows maximized and then I just alt-tab through them, but I wouldn't want to force this on anybody. I run at 1600x1200 too. I tend to organize my windows into different workspace too, so I don't have to alt-tab through too many windows.
I don't think there are enough people with the itch (at least for now) to revive DisplayGhostscript.
I forgot to add - DisplayGhostscript sits on top of X instead of drawing directly (like Quartz does), so you wouldn't get much benefit from reviving it unless it's rewriten to draw to the screen directly.
It's certainley a cool idea, even if it's not realistic. By sheer coincidence, there's a big post on Slashdot just came up about the X.org development team, the breakaway from XFree86, and promises of a "new level" of Xserver technology.
IMO they need to move very quickly, or this won't be the "Year Of The Desktop" for Linux. If Linus genuinely has home desktop aspirations for Linux, then he has to seriously urge devolpers into intense and fast work on Xserver or its alternatives.
I still believe that in Quartz/Aqua, Apple has the power in its hands to steal a large chunk of the Windows market. It's even rumoured (and I stress rumoured) that Apple have a working i386 version of OSX.
Think of it this way:- It's much easier to seduce the Linux user to Apple products if they are the driving force behind open-source GUI development. And it's much easier to seduce Windows users to Linux if Linux has a world-beating GUI. The way I see it, Apple has the home computing world in its lap, and doesn't even seem know it.
Also, I failed to mention the XFCE4 window manager. Although in a basic stage of development compared to the likes of Gnome & KDE, I found playing with this little front-end to be an absolute joy, in terms of it's lightning speed, smooth look and total simplicity. It needs a whole lot of development, but it's an excellent step in the right direction for Linux. Not something I would use full time, but something to watch, all the same.
A window manager that fits the bill is called ratpoison.
I think this article is totally ridiculous. It basically says: New users expect [situation A] so let's cater to new users across the board and call it innovation. Back to reality, those of us who use computers everyday are not only used to and comfortable with the current interface similarities, but we also are more productive with these interfaces.
On the comparison of KDE/GNOME to Windows. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that all three are quite different. Each project makes their own UI decisions based on input from its userbase (except maybe Windows). The most notable thing about KDE specifically is that it can morph to practically any behavior that you might want. GNOME shares much of its UI design with that of MacOS. They may not look the same (those are called widgets), but they act the same in many ways and have thought out virtually every UI design decision down to should OK be on the right or on the left of cancel.
I think some real innovation is happening on the desktop in a few areas. Sun's Java desktop is showing a new way of thinking, though it is severly limited in practicality thus far. Sphere3d for WindowsXP shows promise but needs some serious UI work before the benefits outweigh the badUI tax that it has. Finally MS is taking a different tach. They are scarcely changing the shell at all, but boosting and integrating applications in a way that will provide endless complexities for IT staff around the world. The end result of the MS's work looks good when it works, but I shutter to think what it will be like when it doesn't. Let me paraphrase and reapply Bjarne Stroustrup: With [WinXP] it was easy to shoot yourself in the foot, with [Longhorn] it will be more difficult to shoot yourself, but when you do, it will take your whole leg with it.
I am a total newbie, but even I recognise that the document model is outdated when talking about future OS designs.
I would have thought that Task-based OS's would be the way forward, so you are neither thinking about applications ('what program do I use?') or documents ('what file do I open?') and instead you simply think "what do I want to achieve?" and then employ whatever task-based tools are required to make that happen.
C++ was a bad fix to C, and Java cleaned everything up.
I'm sorry, I can hardly contain my laughter.
... just about user UI, mostly GUI - windows, etc.
IMHO though GUI could (and probably should) be a part of an OS, it is not GUI that defines an OS.
If anyone interested about some innovations in OS - look at Plan9 - and it _is_ pretty old!
Also IMHO appearance of Linux effectively killed all OS innovations - last 10 years everyone seems busy with just coping/porting into linux the whole win/unix mess as it was by mid-to-end-90s.
Sirs:
I agree that there is NO need for overlapping windows.
The Apple Newton Message Pad had very few ooverlapping windows, but was still able to function.
HOW? by having a place on screen to store clippings. Too bad they never saw the true significance of it, nor the next step in functionality.
"what do you do if you have applications that do not process any documents?"
You have them process data. ( and shove the results in the temp save area )
For those that do not process any data ( like screen savers and games ), you dont need to care about these anyway.
Sounds like the author unknowningly fell in love with OpenDoc(tm).
Most people on this forum are throwing the baby out with the bath-water.
GOOD POINTS:
1) data pipes for GUI: abstract production/consumption of data
2) KDE, GNOME, and co. aren't inovative (gasp!)
3) eliminate over-lapping windows: this extra power is not worth the confusion for most users IMHO
4) VM
5) interfaces should be more data-centric: users care more about their data than their apps
DUBIOUS POINTS:
1) I'm not sold on an entirely doc-centric interface
JUST PLAIN WRONG (or VERY funny):
1) C++ was a bad fix to C, and Java cleaned everything up: this is wrong on so many levels of a abstraction (hehe)
To be fair, Daan did not claim that is ideas were orig. This is only his vision for his ideal future OS.
Still, he presents a nice synthesis of ideas, some of which are still not perfected in any OS today.
oh pls linux for desktop is more A X server.
its not enough for apple reduces their hardware price, os x on x86? dream on. by the time apple releases osx for x86. its no match for windows or linux.
In every great revolution, to have the conservative right and the radical left. What will result from these ideologies and the way things work now will not be this particular GUI model, but a reevaluation from the ground up of our current GUI systems. The next generation GUI will be VERY different from the Windows/KDE/GNOME models we have now, but not that different.
The next answer will come from the person who decides to build this GUI, point out the character flaws and the general uncomfortabilities and decides to build on it with the ideas already in use.
It's already know that ergonomically, the Windows GUI sucks. As he said in the article, it's almost as if they INTENDED to break all the rules. The close, min, max buttons are on the exact opposite corner of the screen as the menu/quick launch. As my mouse is normally at the top right corner anyways, from the layout of the windows, I've moved my menu to the top of a right aligned docklet, but most people don't know how to do that in KDE, let alone Windows. All of my utilities are on a bottom aligned docklet since I read top to bottom, it's just in good flow for my eyes. There is no doubt that desktop icons need to be done away with, for boot speed purposes. But something tells me the masses WILL NOT be comfortable with that.
I think the document-model is decent. Have file associations so that the icon for the document shows what application is going to be used by default, but still allow double clicking to open it in another application.
Let me say that I would not use such a GUI, simply because I know how to manipulate blackbox/kde. But most users don't.
I think that his concept on the config applets is very valid.
I've read a lot of bad reviews on 3d desktop (which technically z-indexing is 3d emulation), but perhaps a window rolodex of some kind. A portion of the window is visible behind the other windows, click on a title bar and the window is moved to the front and all the others shift back one to fill the hole.
Just a thought.
Hasta
oh pls linux for desktop is more A X server.
its not enough for apple reduces their hardware price, os x on x86? dream on. by the time apple releases osx for x86. its no match for windows or linux.
I said it was just an idea, which was most likely fundamentaly flawed, and I realise this is true. But you don't present any reasons behind your little rant. Did you even read my post? ;o)
I really believe that all Linux lacks to become a genuine MS-Windows-beater is a classy GUI and a standard package management system. And those things getting close. I think that with the chaos in the XServer community, Apple are missing a golden opportunity to finish the job they started with the original Macintosh.
It's just my opinion, and I know it's flawed, but Windows is the single worst operating system on the planet. It is broken down to the very core and philosophy. I have it installed only for 2 games that I play online, which cannot be emulated with Winex3.
If I woke up tomorrow, and Windows was gone, I wouldn't shed a tear, because I can do 90% of anything I personally need a computer for with Linux. The other 10% will follow soon. Microsoft had better start believing that.
Also, I said nothing of porting Mac OSX to x86. I said I hate Mac OSX. I just want the graphical back-end (apparently Quartz/DisplayPDF) to be ported. If Apple slapped their name onto that most fundamental part of the Linux Desktop, attatched to a GPL licence, then it would be in a position to steal back (at least) a big chunk of the market share.
Lets not forget that without Quartz, OSX is essentially beefed-up FreeBSD. Is it really such a controversial thing to suggest that they might have an x86 port in mind? Especially with the Darwin source-code and x86 install openly available on their site.
Okay so it's a crazy dream, but a nice one.
You've definately got some interesting ideas in this article, The Future OS needs people who aren't afraid to explore modern innovative ideas in these fields of user interfaces and decentralized computing. Keep up the good work; don't be shy to stand on the shoulders of giants either. Perhaps look into things like Capability Security Systems, Microkernels (L4 etc), peer to peer virtual hard disks, mind mapping associative file systems, etc.
I think all dem buttons should be pushed and all da stuff work tagedder reel well. And den dah stuff all workz and uzers happi.
(future request to OSnews : please make sure writers have GED or equivalent)
The last page sounds very much like Plan9. People should
take a look at it, the OS itself has some very nice features.
(though it needs applications and a usable UI)
I agree that there is NO need for overlapping windows.
The Apple Newton Message Pad had very few ooverlapping windows, but was still able to function.
HOW? by having a place on screen to store clippings. Too bad they never saw the true significance of it, nor the next step in functionality.
Oops, someone just fell into a big gaping hole in logic. Every OS I've seen that works on devices with similar functionality and form factor to the Newton does something similar, and doesn't have overlapping windows, even when they're multi-tasking. You don't need to store clippings on-screen to do this, as you can store them the same way you do in other operating systems (though storing them on-screen can be nice). This method of functioning is primarily determined by the form factor, low resolution, and normal method of use, though, and not some massive UI revolution that's going to take over outside of the handheld space.
"what do you do if you have applications that do not process any documents?"
You have them process data. ( and shove the results in the temp save area )
Why? Not all applications have results, and not all applications need to export any results they may have.
For those that do not process any data ( like screen savers and games ), you dont need to care about these anyway.
This is v