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Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

507 pointsby iBelievealmost 6 years ago

87 comments

pavpanchekhaalmost 6 years ago
This is a design exercise, not a product. And as a design exercise, I think it really nicely demonstrates the author&#x27;s ability to think of radically new designs, even if I&#x27;m not convinced by many of them.<p>In grad school, my advisor told me: I can&#x27;t teach you to have interesting ideas, I can only teach you which ones to pursue. It&#x27;s ok to have lots of bad ideas, because that&#x27;s the first step to having a few good ones. As for the author, I am impressed.
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smacktowardalmost 6 years ago
The bit about replacing folder hierarchies with tags and search reminds me of some ideas that are actually pretty old now. Back in the &#x27;80s and &#x27;90s, there was a wave of interest in replacing the traditional filesystem with a relational database, for most of the same reasons as outlined here (we can store more files than we can meaningfully organize, hierarchical organization doesn&#x27;t really fit lots of use cases, searching is easier than clicking up and down a hierarchy, etc.).<p>This led to a bunch of different products and almost-products, like Apple&#x27;s &quot;Soups&quot; for the Newton (see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Soup_(Apple)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Soup_(Apple)</a>) and Microsoft&#x27;s WinFS (see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WinFS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WinFS</a>), and the original file system for BeOS (see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2008&#x2F;03&#x2F;past-present-future-file-systems&#x2F;7&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2008&#x2F;03&#x2F;past-present-future-...</a>).<p>None of these ever really took off, though. Mostly this was because they ran into unsolvable performance problems. Hardware has come a long way since the mid-&#x27;90s, though, so it&#x27;d be interesting to see if those ideas that were impractical then are practical today.
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joramsalmost 6 years ago
This is interesting, though a lot of the claims are highly debatable, but one really stood out to me:<p>&gt; the tasks you do are more complex. That’s where voice input shines.<p>I don&#x27;t know how far into the future this is supposed to be implemented, but I still have yet to find a form of voice input that&#x27;s remotely accurate enough for anything &quot;more complex&quot;. Current voice input seems to rely heavily on the scope for commands being limited, and even then it breaks down often with names and such.
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crazygringoalmost 6 years ago
This is a fun design exercise, but a couple things really <i>do</i> stand out to me as useful.<p>First, panels instead of windows -- a thousand times yes, please. Overlapping windows doesn&#x27;t provide any benefit. Making everything either full-screen or splitting the screen is so much better. There&#x27;s a reason so much software has moved to tabs and side panels instead of separate windows within the app.<p>Second:<p>&gt; <i>The desktop metaphor as the basis of computer interfaces is inefficient and outdated. Today, most of our data exists outsides of files and folders. The desktop worked great to get us started 40 years ago, but it was never built for the complexity and amount of work today.</i><p>I don&#x27;t like the author&#x27;s particular solution... but yes the idea of an actual &quot;desktop&quot; folder seems silly and antiquated now.<p><i>And</i> it&#x27;s about time that cloud content (whether file-based like Google Drive or content-based like Google Photos) got treated as a first-class citizen in the OS.<p>If the iOS Files app lets me treat my Google Drive as just another folder... why doesn&#x27;t Finder? Why do I have to install third-party software for that?
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peteyPetealmost 6 years ago
Based on the previous post of this in 2016, this is a university student&#x27;s portfolio piece while hoping to find an internship. It&#x27;s not a product, just a concept.<p>I&#x27;d say amazing job in terms of design and concept. That being said, if this were an actual product, it wouldn&#x27;t count me as a user. It looks cool, nice, etc. It may appeal to a specific type of user who&#x27;s fine with relinquishing control over how things are done on their computer, but as a dev, if I chose to change things about my work flow, I want additive changes to my existing flow. Not a full end to end replacement. Lots of things already exist which brings my current flow close to this. This doesn&#x27;t make multitasking easier for me, it just drops a fat anchor on my normal flow. 3 finger swipe up, cmd-tab, cmd-` to switch between apps, tabs.. Divvy to setup zones in a grid to global shortcuts so you can place windows where ever you want in a key stroke. All those things are natural and happen without me thinking about it. I can manage 30 open apps and 100 tabs in multiple browser windows if I wish and its not slow or confusing.<p>I very much liked the fact that it knows where you&#x27;re looking and makes many actions instantaneous, like looking at a link and clicking or pressing a key or whatever it was. That&#x27;s cool, and if it works well and can be integrated everywhere it makes sense, I think its a great shortcut, saves you having to mouse around. But thats additive to an existing flow. Not replacing the entire thing.<p>The built in voice assistant does cool things too and I can see many use cases for that too. Not that it can&#x27;t already be done though. Things like, make a directory called X, open this app, build project, run automation, or run smoke tests on X project, etc...<p>Still great work though. As a concept it appears usable and neat. Just think its too far a departure from regular work flows to work for most people.
nevesalmost 6 years ago
This is the place Linux could shine. High productivity desktops. Windows and Apple computers are mass production items. Even semi-illiterate people must be able to use it. We need a desktop for highly skilled technical workers. One we that allows us to quickly switch context, to have a lot of info in the screen, one that works well with very big screens. A jet pilot has a specialized interface, why not programmers could have one?<p>Hey, I always wanted a desktop that tracks my gaze!!!
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Phenix88bealmost 6 years ago
I don&#x27;t know who they are targeting with this concept, but, as a developer, a lot of thing are wrong :<p>- Anything that require the mouse make me slower.<p>- Trackpad gesture require a ... trackpad, and trackpad are worst than a mouse.<p>- Speaking of the trackpad, anyone can put 6 fingers on it ? look painfull to me.<p>- Animation are nice, but useless, they make the computer slower and takes time to complete.<p>To me, this look anything but productive.
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joeblubaughalmost 6 years ago
This is nice and all, but it&#x27;s mostly putting a &quot;mac-looking&quot; coat of paint on the tiling window managers that we already have.<p>I <i>do</i> like the left-side menu concept better than the &quot;top menu&quot;.<p>It would have been nice to see more examples on a laptop-sized screen.
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nocmanalmost 6 years ago
I think this is a good example of how bad wording in an opening paragraph can turn readers off. Here&#x27;s what I took from that paragraph:<p>* destop computer interfaces haven&#x27;t changed much in 30 years -- that is bad<p>* people use smartphones and tablets more than desktop computers -- because they are better<p>* desktop computers should work more like phones&#x2F;tablets<p>I don&#x27;t have a problem with conceptual designs, and I would encourage exploration of different types of user interfaces (both on desktop and mobile). However, after reading that first paragraph on the web site (and watching the video), it was my perception that the author seems to believe the above three points are absolute, and they show nothing that convinces me that any of them are true (and in fact, some of what was shown had the opposite effect).<p>IMHO a better approach would be to be less dismissive of &quot;older&quot; technology, and rather simply state that you are exploring an alternative interface, and explain specifically why you think it is better.<p>In other words, make your case for why your interface is better, then let the reader decide whether they are convinced (rather than just stating that a particular kind of interface is better as a matter of fact).
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japanoisealmost 6 years ago
&gt;We now use smartphones and tablets most of the time, since they are much easier to use. ... With people switching to mobile devices for mundane tasks...<p>Who are these people and for what tasks? Afaict, except for email and Facebook, the promised death of the PC is extremely overblown. In a professional setting, even major phone addicts still use PCs or laptops.
tomxoralmost 6 years ago
&gt; Overlapping windows as an interface metaphor were invented over 40 years ago with the Xerox Star. Since then, the amount and complexity of how we use computers has increased dramatically. Windows are now inefficient and incompatible with modern productivity interfaces. For more, read my blog post &quot;Window Management is Outdated&quot;.<p>Uuhm [1]:<p>&gt; The first Xerox Star system (released in 1981) tiled application windows, but allowed dialogs and property windows to overlap.[1] Later, Xerox PARC also developed CEDAR[2] (released in 1982), the first windowing system using a tiled window manager.<p>Tiling window managers were first, and I think I prefer the less bloated offerings already available compared to this.<p>What does this do for productivity that existing tiling managers do not? or is this a mac&#x2F;windows specific thing.<p>[edit]<p>Yeah this sounds horrible:<p>&gt; Click and hold on the touchpad with one finger to open the context menu wherever you are looking. Then swipe to select an action.<p>How is this better than a right click context menu? it&#x27;s not, it&#x27;s a physically slower event, and a UI that is less capable of adapting to it&#x27;s context due to geometric limitations just cos &quot;CIRCLES&quot;. This is integrating phone HID into desktops for the sake of it, this is unification at the cost of productivity not for the benefit of productivity.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tiling_window_manager#History" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tiling_window_manager#History</a>
egypturnashalmost 6 years ago
&quot;For more, read my blog post &#x27;Window Management is Outdated&#x27;&quot;.<p><i>clicks on link to blog post</i><p>Oh hey that blog post doesn&#x27;t seem to exist. Nice job.<p>I think I&#x27;ll stick to the existing windowed interface, thanks. It&#x27;s designed for a keyboard and a mouse. Which is what I have. Well actually a keyboard and a Wacom tablet, I&#x27;m an artist.<p>Looking at his redesign of application menus and thinking about trying to make that work for the vast array of menu items in Adobe Illustrator (my main art tool) gives me the heebie-jeebies.<p>Also oh <i>god</i> he wants to banish folders in favor of tags, too. Everyone who has a sweeping reinvention of How The Desktop Works wants to do that and they never really have an answer for how the end result would be different for managing large projects made up of hundreds of files in nested folders, and how saving something with seven tags that reproduce that sort of arrangement isn&#x27;t gonna be more hassle than just saving it into the appropriate folder.<p>And then he wants to make it work via gaze tracking and you know I think I&#x27;m just done here.
glofloalmost 6 years ago
Previously in 2016: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10932378" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10932378</a>
GordonSalmost 6 years ago
&quot;Windows are now inefficient and incompatible with modern productivity interfaces&quot;<p><i>What?!</i><p>I have to agree with some of the other comments here - this is change for the sake of it, and the arguments against current-day desktop UIs seem weak at best, comprising mainly of opinion stated as fact.
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SquareWheelalmost 6 years ago
I think it&#x27;s pretty cool. I see no reason why the current desktop paradigm - as used to it as I am - is the pinnacle of efficiency.<p>It&#x27;s not so different than a tiling window manager, but introduces some unique input methods and a hybrid touch control system that I&#x27;d like to try before I judge.<p>I also feel that voice can and will play a larger role in input in the coming years. If it works well enough, it can be faster and easier for many. Especially those with disabilities, or prone to RSI as many in the tech sector are.<p>Tagging to replace folders isn&#x27;t a new idea, and was introduces by Gmail a decade ago. It works well. I do think that in the days of machine learning, a system for automatically generating tags would make this process even more fluid.<p>Is it perfect? Probably not. But I find these alternate interface projects wonderful to play with. It takes imaginative and bold ideas to make them real, and I applaud the author for that alone.
fredleyalmost 6 years ago
This is not software, this is a design concept, for anyone else who didn&#x27;t find that immediately obvious.
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ilmiontalmost 6 years ago
This seems to be very much change for the sake of it.<p>&quot;The traditional desktop computer is struggling to adapt the simple interfaces of mobile devices while also keeping its focus on productivity.&quot;<p>No, no, it isn&#x27;t. Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be.<p>&quot;The desktop computer hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years. It’s still built on windows, folders and mouse input. But we have changed. We now use smartphones and tablets most of the time, since they are much easier to use.&quot;<p>No, they&#x27;re not. The reason <i>why</i> the desktop hasn&#x27;t changed much in 30 years is because <i>it works</i>.<p>It may not be the prettiest or the most modern or even the easiest for a new computer user to navigate, but it works damned well for <i>getting work done.</i> That&#x27;s why windows and mice are still around... they <i>just work</i>. This project... doesn&#x27;t look like it does that.
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santafealmost 6 years ago
Please do not make my desktop as unusable as my phone. Thanks.
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52-6F-62almost 6 years ago
Just personally speaking, I find macOS already has a version of many of these features implemented (using their touchpad&#x2F;gestures) in a more polished way—and I retain the mutability of the underlying system. It also has tagging, and the new &#x27;stacks&#x27; on the desktop add another level of categorization.<p>I can even full screen any application and line them up as workspaces and navigate between them in a &quot;carousel&quot;-like fashion by swiping with four fingers.
Aeliusalmost 6 years ago
I was interested until I saw the gestures.<p>I don&#x27;t have a left hand, I don&#x27;t have six fingers, guess I&#x27;ll stick with my mouse.<p>I&#x27;m sure this could be adapted for one-hand use, but- and maybe I&#x27;m slightly biased, but I think even if I still had two hands I&#x27;d prefer interfaces that don&#x27;t require me to use both to do simple actions.
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jedbergalmost 6 years ago
Six finger gestures feel like a huge step backwards to me. It&#x27;s bad enough I have to move <i>one</i> hand off the keyboard, but now I have to move <i>both</i> hands? Clearly this was designed by someone who exclusivly uses a laptop with a trackpad in the middle.
TheRealPomaxalmost 6 years ago
What are these tasks that people &quot;switch to mobile devices for&quot; while using their desktop? When I&#x27;m working on a desktop, there is literally nothing a mobile device does faster, or more conveniently O_o
mariusmgalmost 6 years ago
Some productivity tips from me :<p>- get a ultrawide monitor<p>- learn some keyboard shortcuts<p>- profit
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robtoalmost 6 years ago
This actually seems like it would be pretty good on something like the Librem 5! I like the idea of a tiling-esque window manager with this level of flexibility, especially on a phone. The launcher&#x2F;sidebar&#x2F;fitting&#x2F;pinning&#x2F;minimization features seem like an improvement over existing touch interfaces, especially on linux.<p>I don&#x27;t think I would abandon my i3 setup for something like this for work, but I could see myself happily using something like this in a more casual setting. I hope that some of these ideas see the light of day with an actual implementation.
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uhhhhhhhalmost 6 years ago
Moving to gestures on a desktop is a productivity nightmare.<p>There is certainly room for improvement, I like the panels window management, with very large&#x2F;super wide monitors third party solutions are often used to provide similar functionality.<p>Tagging&#x2F;multi-patch hierarchies over folders could be really really useful, but potentially more of a nightmare if not done really well.<p>The lack of leveraging keyboard commands is the biggest failure here. Its basically designing a mobile interface for a desktop, ignoring the actual usefulness and reality of desktop interfaces having functional keyboards and mice.
pavlovalmost 6 years ago
Six-finger gestures on a desktop...? How does that work in practice? Do you need a giant touchpad?
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tambourine_manalmost 6 years ago
I may change my mind in a decade or so, but I don’t understand the appeal of voice interfaces.<p>I love silence and hate screaming. If there’s something that I want to listen to is good music, not my own voice or synthesized answers.<p>If you think you hate the clicking of your colleague’s mechanical keyboard, imagine how an office would sound in a voice driven computing world.<p>Besides, it seems a lot more tiresome to speak for extended periods than to just type. I’d probably need a bottle of water every hour.
lisnakealmost 6 years ago
Gnome Shell with PaperWM extension looks a lot like this. I used to use PaperWM and enjoyed it a lot. They have some interesting ideas
v-yadlialmost 6 years ago
The &quot;Alan Kay&quot; references in the video is a good cue of what&#x27;s on the author&#x27;s mind -- I guess the goal is to create an environment for contents, not something like a general-purpose desktop.<p>Quite ambitious I&#x27;d say! But I would also suggest that this goal (if I guess it right) could be better explained than just claiming this to be a &quot;desktop reimagined&quot;, considering that a commodity desktop has neither a trackpad or eye-tracking device.<p>The discussion here has already made it clear -- hashtags for file organization is anything but new. It can be even simulated with a filesystem pretty easily. Just post everything into a big content folder, and then create a folder for each tag, then `ln -s`.<p>It&#x27;d be more awesome if a miner extracts semantic tags and metadata from the files. Not a new idea either, there were google desktop, gnome-tracker etc. macOS spotlight seems to be the most popular descendant these days. Microsoft is making another push with Cortana&#x2F;MS Graph&#x2F;Windows Search or whatever they call it.<p>The relationship between the contents is also an interesting aspect. Hashtags just throw things into hash buckets but do not help to relate in a broader sense. Even wiki links&#x2F;hyperlinks are more effective. Project Xanadu also has interesting ideas that a reference link addresses by content so that you can reference a portion of the source (without the source defining them, unlike html anchors).<p>But again, this was the vision of the pioneers, but did not take off smoothly. IMHO partly because this idea is too big and involves a lot of smaller (yet still challenging) pieces (natural language understanding, resource description, app interop, and also, including the UX problem that the op is trying to solve) and none of the previous trials have both the depth and breadth to cover enough aspect of a user&#x27;s everyday routine with a desktop environment.
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iamleppertalmost 6 years ago
I enjoy dragging my windows around, resizing them and arranging them in arbitrarily complex ways. I don’t like being constrained to work in a way that someone else came up with. I even like the act of dragging windows and such, I’ll even do it when I’m thinking as something to play with and it makes me feel more connected to my work.
olejorgenbalmost 6 years ago
The tiling mechanics[1] looks very similar to our gnome-shell plugin: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;paperwm&#x2F;PaperWM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;paperwm&#x2F;PaperWM</a> (we also allow vertical tiling and mixing floating windows)<p>To my knowledge there&#x27;s no any other tiling window manager that implements this mechanic(?) Ie. traditional tiling WMs force all windows in a workspace to fit within the monitor.<p>This mockup (and paperwm) organize the windows in a non-overlapping strip that is allowed to extend beyond the left and right monitor edges. This allows for a nice spatial map.<p>Say my monitor has room for two windows but I need to use 3 windows. With a tiled strip this workflow is quite nice: (| indicates the monitor edges, AA window content of window A, etc. ^ marks the active window)<p><pre><code> C|AAB| ^^ &lt;switch to prev window&gt; |CAA|B ^ </code></pre> A tabbed tiling achieve something similar: eg. put A and C in a tabbed frame, but then it&#x27;s not simple to view A and C at the same time.<p>It&#x27;s also possible to define more specialized operations: When one window is primarily used for input and two mostly for viewing (eg. editor, documentation, code-artifact) I use the following setup:<p><pre><code> |AAB|C ^^ &lt;swap right neighbours&gt; |AAC|B ^^ </code></pre> A workspace grid (a couple windows per workspace) also gives a spatial map, but does not allow to look at windows from different workspace at the same time.<p>In addition we have a floating layer that can easily be toggled. Useful for windows I need access to from a large number of places (across workspaces, etc.)<p>We also implement touch-pad gestures to switch workspace and scroll the tiling left&#x2F;right (only on wayland)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;desktopneo.com&#x2F;#panels" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;desktopneo.com&#x2F;#panels</a>
jstewartmobilealmost 6 years ago
The dimensionality on these things is so high. The only way to tell if this idea is any good or not is to make it and use it for a while.<p>Linking out to a bunch of other people&#x27;s opinions and tossing-in some Alan Kay quotes doesn&#x27;t add much. IETF also designs on-paper instead of in-code, and it is always a hot mess.
OptionXalmost 6 years ago
This &quot;project&quot; isn&#x27;t even vaporware, its bellow that. I don&#x27;t thinks there&#x27;s even a word for it. And even in concept its seems, to be nice, lackluster. Its a smorgasbord of random concept from mobile, things already available in desktop os (panels? snap to edge?) and frankly absurd thoughts like organizing files by tags or voice&#x2F;eye tracking based interfaces at this point in technology. There&#x27;s a reason people with large motor disabilities still use those stupid rods versus eye tracking or voice recognition. Based on the projects from the author on the page it seems like hes run-of-the-mill idea man who jots down whatever brain blast he has before bed and spends the rest of the 99.9% of the time in the project designing the website instead of thinking the idea trough.
ganonmalmost 6 years ago
I feel like the best desktop interface I have used is Ubuntu&#x27;s workspace implementation. Typically you have one app, e.g. your browser, per workspace and seamlessly transition between them using ctrl + alt + arrows. The animation is very snappy and doesn&#x27;t get in your way.<p>The workspaces are laid out in a grid (e.g. 4x4) so you naturally adopt a convention for where you place applications. For me, I have browsers and desktop apps along the bottom, terminals and IDEs along 2nd row and then GVim instances in the remaining top two rows. I can almost instantaneously switch between any window I like.<p>I like this setup so much that when I was using MacOS for a brief period, I installed TotalSpaces2 which emulates Ubuntu style workspaces.
Ajedi32almost 6 years ago
Looks really cool. I especially like the ideas around eye tracking and gesture input.<p>There are some things that might not work out as well as the author is envisioning, but that&#x27;s what usability testing is for. I&#x27;d love to give this a try if it ever became a thing.
kamfcalmost 6 years ago
Kind of like QWERTY vs DVORAK keyboard. Qwerty just works; but technically, Dvorak IS faster. The design presented is definitely a well-thought mash up of what I&#x27;ve come across through multiple projects with creative and cutting-edge UI&#x2F;UX.
tarikjnalmost 6 years ago
There is a lot going on, and it definitely feels more like an experiment than design informed by all the relevant human disciplines.<p>I am not sold on panels and snap in place. I would much prefer to see something like a zooming user interface. Mess is a necessary step to go from broad to clear thinking.<p>Also, trackpads are not necessarily ergonomic and may hurt your fingers in prolonged use, though the sub-menus designed for swiping are interesting. The gaze tracking is a really interesting idea, and I wonder if there are anything out there that pushes this idea. Anything that can improve ergonomics is good in my book, that&#x27;s the most pressing pain point of modern user interfaces and hardware.
liquidisealmost 6 years ago
Experimenting with interfacing and desktop technologies is a massive, thankless and risky job. Anyone who tackles it is a braver person than i am.<p>I&#x27;ve been using comps since the early 90s and as far as Desktop interfaces are concerned, there have been 2: Full CLI and Windows&#x2F;Mac&#x2F;Gnone&#x2F;Other Clone. Touchscreen mobile has had a similarly homogeneous &quot;evolution&quot;. Current OS frontends are fiscally optimal, not operationally so. That is to say: as soon as a company had a reasonably usable interface, everyone copied it instead of opting to fundamentally rethink the landscape.<p>Hats off to hackers and designers taking on this challenge.
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Longhanksalmost 6 years ago
Replace the menu bar with one giant hamburger menu? Thanks, but no, thanks.
kbensonalmost 6 years ago
How do you add security context easily using tags for file access? Tags seem pretty broad, but I guess you could have an ACL that excludes access unless you have access to the tag of that application name. But you also want to ability to allow specific user&#x2F;group access, so it seems like you&#x27;ll have a complex interaction of tags that exclude access and allow access.<p>I imagine there&#x27;s some good prior work out there regarding this, but the complete lack of any mention of how this affects the security of the system isn&#x27;t promising.
tlackemannalmost 6 years ago
It&#x27;s a nice idea but you don&#x27;t need to reinvent an OS to achieve most of these concepts. In fact, you can do almost all of these things today on Linux using i3 + rofi.
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dustfingeralmost 6 years ago
exwm [1] is the best change I have made to my desktop experience in terms of improving productivity. For a tutorial on how to set exwm up see Uncle Dave Emacs Tutorial 14 - EXWM aka managing X windows with emacs [2].<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ch11ng&#x2F;exwm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ch11ng&#x2F;exwm</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Gk9-q8tXbMs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Gk9-q8tXbMs</a>
pard68almost 6 years ago
So it is a tiling wm with eye tracking and a database for a file system? Seems a lot less sexy when you put it that way. I also see this being very frustrating to use!
izzydataalmost 6 years ago
I don&#x27;t like any aspect of this. It&#x27;s good to revisit this problem every now and then, but I&#x27;ll stick to my keyboard and mouse with multiple monitors.
bitwizealmost 6 years ago
All it needs is a &quot;reloaded&quot; or &quot;evolved&quot; and it&#x27;ll be just like every other design-wank &quot;reimagining&quot; of a desktop UI I&#x27;ve seen for the past 20 years. Show me -- with data to back it up -- how this makes <i>me</i> more productive and I&#x27;ll give it a closer look.<p>Best stick with &quot;reloaded&quot; for now, you&#x27;ve already got the word &quot;Neo&quot; in there and &quot;evolved&quot; is Microsoft&#x27;s thing.
Manfredalmost 6 years ago
&gt; The desktop computer hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years. It’s still built on windows, folders and mouse input. But we have changed. We now use smartphones and tablets most of the time, since they are much easier to use.<p>The wheel hasn&#x27;t changed much in the last 1000 years. It&#x27;s still built round, with spokes or other structs. But we have changed. We now use planes and boats most of the time, since they are much easier to use.
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Wowfunhappyalmost 6 years ago
When I was a teenager, I used to really hate overlapping windows. If I&#x27;d known what a tiling window manager was at that time, I probably would have switched.<p>As I&#x27;ve gotten older, I&#x27;ve come to appreciate overlapping windows much more. I find them a really good use of screen real-estate—even on relatively large screens where I have room to spare—and wouldn&#x27;t ever want to lose that functionality.<p>I&#x27;m not sure what changed.
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kryogen1calmost 6 years ago
My solution to the screenspace problem is, as many good things are, from sysinternals.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;sysinternals&#x2F;downloads&#x2F;desktops" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;sysinternals&#x2F;downloads&#x2F;desk...</a><p>Works with flux and most other apps. Webbrowsers dont work well, but that doesn&#x27;t bother me much
RHSeegeralmost 6 years ago
&gt; Panels use screen space more efficiently and are a more elegant way to multitask than normal windows.<p>This is flat out false for me. I generally have 3-6 windows open on my main monitor that I am actively using. Some of them are only partially visible, but still very useful. One takes up 75% of my screen, but I still want to see information in the others while I&#x27;m using it.
anigbrowlalmost 6 years ago
Looks like the happy marriage of DesqView and Markdown. I&#x27;m very here for this, I am sick to the back teeth of having 16:9 monitor and a 4:3 desktop paradigm. It grinds my gears that most of the games on my Playstation have vastly superior UIs to my workstation. Add graph extraction as a core UI function and this would be the best thing since Netscape.
TuringTestalmost 6 years ago
Now, where have I seen this before...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;6712657" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;6712657</a>
bsmithalmost 6 years ago
&gt; We now use smartphones and tablets most of the time, since they are much easier to use.<p>* since we carry them around with us everywhere.
nautilus12almost 6 years ago
No desktop productivity OS with a linear mission control style desktop switcher is going to be taken seriously by me. I have fought for total spaces for so long just because the idea of a grid makes so much more sense than a line of apps. Think about it, if you have 9 spaces do you really want to scroll 4 spaces in or 1?
vonduralmost 6 years ago
While I don&#x27;t like the emphasis on gestures for navigation, the whole central info panel bringing different info into once screen is nice. I also appreciate the use of tagging for file info, but I can&#x27;t&#x27; see it replacing file names anytime soon. The Mac has file tagging and I rarely see people using it.
kn100almost 6 years ago
This looks a lot like an old concept piece called 10&#x2F;GUI - I thought it was a cool concept then which is what made me remember. Possible plagiarism? Link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;tf03YBxCyGI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;tf03YBxCyGI</a>
misesalmost 6 years ago
Can any one explain how this is more than a tiling window manager? It seems like i3 with touch-gestures and a fancy skin. I don&#x27;t say that to disparaging, and quite like tiling window managers, but don&#x27;t see this as &quot;rethinking&quot; anything.
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totaldude87almost 6 years ago
Looks like a combination of MacOS married with Windows and bedding with iPadOS :) .. What about over populating data on one screen? How does it affect the concentration levels?<p>Also, the website took just under a year to load its images, can you please optimize that first :)
enriqutoalmost 6 years ago
Does everybody here use a &quot;desktop&quot; ?<p>My only visible interface is a borderless xterm on a plain background, and a few full-screen apps an ALT-TAB away. My colleagues treat me like the last member of an endangered species.
pcunitealmost 6 years ago
<i>hastags instead of folders</i><p>I understand that a designer might like that, but I don&#x27;t.
m0zgalmost 6 years ago
Productivity is a highly individual thing. By far the most productive environment _for me_ is Vim. Which basically looks nothing whatsoever like this.<p>You&#x27;re not going to find some silver bullet which will work for everyone.
modzualmost 6 years ago
much of this seems to boil down to window management, which ive used to great effect in blackbox for 20 years (pinning, rolling, always on top, transparency, tiling, etc)<p>while i dont want a mobile ui on my desktop (do you sit at a keyboard and only use your thumbs??), it is true MS and Apple have been content with their duopoly and are not innovating in this space at all (for each useful feature in either I can think of a regression).<p>The only reason I have windows over linux is gaming, and the only reason I have mac (book) is the hardware. Neither reason to use either OS is the OS itself!
king_magicalmost 6 years ago
&quot;...we have the opportunity to rethink the desktop computer with a focus on getting professional work done.&quot;<p>This smacks of someone who is clueless about what real professional work actually entails.
ashton314almost 6 years ago
I do most of my work in full-screen. (Usually a full-screen terminal.) I feel like it helps me focus.<p>Have there been any studies showing correlation between windowing habits and productivity?
sk221almost 6 years ago
This looks amazing. I would use this in a heart beat. More specifically, I love:<p>- Full screen for apps - The way panels are sized on a screen<p>The rest seems like it could reasonably work.
eadmundalmost 6 years ago
Cutting the screen up into panes, searching for things by name, tagging, even the single-stop menu (in a way) — these things all remind me of Emacs!
jaredklewisalmost 6 years ago
Reminds me a lot of 10&#x2F;GUI <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;10gui.com&#x2F;video&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;10gui.com&#x2F;video&#x2F;</a>
baalimagoalmost 6 years ago
I envy those who&#x27;s primary issue with productivity is making text in a document bold.<p>Getting the stuff done is easy, finding motivation to do so is hard.
crotealmost 6 years ago
It&#x27;s an interesting combination of incredible ideas with unusable ones.<p>First, there&#x27;s an interesting disconnect between app panes and what I actually do in practice. This concept seems to organise windows as a stack. In practice, I use them more tree-like. I already notice an annoyance with Android&#x27;s stack-like app switching, which basically seems to implement what is proposed here, and I expect it to be worse on desktop. Furthermore, it seems like a poor fit for larger monitors. On my 32&quot; 4K monitor, I rarely want full-height windows: having half-height is more than enough, which enables me to easily have 4 or 6 windows open at the same time. With full-height panes, this is not possible.<p>Second, app control, app menu, and context menu: great ideas, and have been tried by various window managers.<p>But the real trouble is in the other ideas. The finder is nice at first glance - it would be a great addition to file managers, and a large portion of it already exists. But it proposes replacing them, which seems like a really bad idea to me. It is unclear to me how this is supposed to work with large amounts of content: how is this supposed to work with tens or hundreds of thousands of files? Either you end up adding dozens of tags to every file, or the tags devolve into a path-like structure, defeating the purpose. Additionally, it seems lacking in discoverability. It might work to discover a project folder, or a file within a project, but I&#x27;m doubtful that full-filesystem would work. It does solve a real problem, though: I often try to put files in a logical directory structure, but there&#x27;s often more than one possibility. I&#x27;d like pictures to be stored by date, but also accessible by subject and context. The same goes for a lot of other documents. Being able to tag a single file or a directory would be great, but it doesn&#x27;t replace folders. The same applies to email, bookmarks, contacts, books, and all the other stuff mentioned.<p>Eye tracking is a bit similar. It might feel magical the few times it actually works, but seems quite useless when we still need a mouse for precision stuff. Furthermore, as I&#x27;m typing this, I&#x27;m reading text in another window as a reference. Eye tracking would completely break that. Focus Mode sounds incredibly distracting to me, Just Type is actually harmful, dismissing notifications after a single look sounds great at first, but is actually harmful for those notifications which require action at a point in the near future. It&#x27;s a fun concept, but it sounds more like a solution looking for a problem. A mouse is always going to be vastly superior.<p>And voice control? Seriously? In my experience, every single voice interface is absolutely horrible and incredibly distracting. Unless someone manages to get Artificial General Intelligence working, it&#x27;s probably going to remain nothing more than a very nice gimmick, not a core concept of a productive UI. Furthermore, how&#x27;s this going to work in office spaces or libraries? Calls are already bad enough, forcing everyone to talk non-stop to their computer is going to make it impossible to actually do anything productive.<p>To conclude: it seems like all the good stuff has already been (mostly) implemented!
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BonesJusticealmost 6 years ago
<i>&gt; No, no, it isn&#x27;t. Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be.</i><p>Desktop is usually more productive when you&#x27;re sitting down to work.<p>Desktop is probably <i>not</i> more productive if you&#x27;re walking down the street or riding a crowded bus or subway.<p>It all comes down to your environment. The mobile UX is optimized for when you&#x27;re <i>mobile</i> and can&#x27;t provide the kind of higher-precision input typically required to interact with a desktop UX.
hashkbalmost 6 years ago
Panels aren&#x27;t innovative. On Linux we&#x27;ve had tiling window management with advanced organization for many years.
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jsilencealmost 6 years ago
Really wish someone would write a tiling window manager based rice to accomplish most of this design study.
55555almost 6 years ago
I suddenly really want panels instead of windows and menus on the left side instead of menus on top.
RenRavalmost 6 years ago
I hate touchscreens and mobile interfaces, all the changes seem built around these things.
rj5almost 6 years ago
This looks really good! I’m curious how good the eye tracking works in practice though.
anotheryoualmost 6 years ago
Touch on the desktop is just too much hassle.
Kaiyoualmost 6 years ago
GUI was a mistake. CLI is the way to go.
hansdieter1337almost 6 years ago
I&#x27;m still happy with awesome wm :)
cabernalalmost 6 years ago
This reminds of the GNOME 3 debacle.
beshrkayalialmost 6 years ago
Nothing beats tiling wm.
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ilaynalmost 6 years ago
so basically a smartphone streaming to a TV?
MentallyRetiredalmost 6 years ago
Um. Yes, please.
nerd7473almost 6 years ago
I don&#x27;t think this is a good idea.
angleofreposealmost 6 years ago
Well, hn seems to have collectively shit on this project in this comment thread. I agree with some of the negatives, but I don&#x27;t understand why those would be the facets that stick out in this conversation. Yes, his site text explaining motivations are pretty bad. App control is nothing new. And many gestures are similar to other systems. But criticisms based on security, or the originality of his ideas or his general use of swipe gestures are just bullshit.<p>It is backwards and naive to think that desktops are just fine, and computer programmers are historically the last to understand and embrace change (now here is where we could put some Alan Kay quotes, I&#x27;ll start with his exasperation at our lack of a real CAD system for programming)<p>&gt; &quot;we would have something like what other engineering disciplines have in serious cad system, a serious simulation of the cad designs and a serious fab facility, to deal with the real problems of doing programming. Ivan [Sutherland] just jumped there [with sketchpad].&quot; [1]<p>So lets talk about the interesting features he presented, and do ourselves the service of learning from this work.<p>Panels: Top to bottom for content is DIFFERENT THAN ALL MAINSTREAM OSes. He is lamenting permanent status bars, the windows ribbon, the chrome tab bar and more with this feature. And he goes on to explain alternate features to replace that functionality he moved for this goal of more vertical space. He also displayed a number of situations regarding navigation through panels which seem well designed. He factors in pinning an active window and the ability to scroll among others, and minimizing windows to reinforce spatial memory and leave breadcrumbs. He also accounts for resizing windows.<p>See the new c2 federated wiki for interesting uses of vertical space and breadcrumbs [2].<p>Tags: As another user mentioned in the comments, a lot of work has gone into the study of PIM, and tagging is quite effective. Of the three (search, hierarchy, tag) none is found to be best, but the availability of all three is important. This project does us the service of reminding us that we are generally missing that third option. This system offers all 3 options. (I&#x27;m sorry I can&#x27;t find my source right now).<p>Search: Across all elements of personal computing (email to tabs to applications to files) is an interesting idea. Yes omniboxes have been around forever and will be, but this project pushes the idea that there are even more hooks to toss into that system.<p>Gaze: This is fantastic, and there are limitless opportunities. Of course its not a silver bullet, you wont be taking my tiling wm keyboard controls away from me (see that Onion video on the keyboardless apple) and obviously I don&#x27;t think that way. But there are cool interactions that very few people if any have had the ability to come up with on gaze augmented PC systems.<p>Touch: Everyone is saying that tiling wm controls are way better. Of course they are. What percentage of PC users have tiling wms? Lets just round down to 0%. This brings that kind of efficiency to users which would otherwise never have it.<p>I appreciate the commentors who have looked at this project and reflected on it. I learn a lot from and really enjoy reading hn especially for the comment threads, I hope I can pay it back some with this.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;fhOHn9TClXY?t=1962" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;fhOHn9TClXY?t=1962</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fed.wiki.org&#x2F;view&#x2F;welcome-visitors" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fed.wiki.org&#x2F;view&#x2F;welcome-visitors</a><p>E: This thread got a LOT better since I posted and refreshed the page. Thank you all.
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cat199almost 6 years ago
windowmaker.org
keymonealmost 6 years ago
So, um, ipados?
epynonymousalmost 6 years ago
i like a lot of the concepts in this article, if someone were to build this then i&#x27;d be very happy to use it, but they seem more incremental as opposed to game changing, very tactical or utilitarian, it&#x27;s like taking patterns from modern websites and applying them to the desktop, drawers, tags, cards, filters, notifications. there were some more advanced things like the eye sensor, touch, and audio, but i was expecting some groundbreaking stuff since your original premise was about desktops not changing over the last 30 years.<p>a lot of sci-fi movies stretch the imagination, they tend to think outside the box, i was expecting something like that, like ghost in the shell hologram displays, or displays embbeded directly in the retina.<p>ultimately, it comes down to convenience, finding ways to meld the computer and physical worlds such that the lines are blurred. letting the computer be an extension of oneself, kind of like cars to humans. so for example, typing is a very unnatural thing, and to some degree there&#x27;s a lot of churn translating from one&#x27;s brain to the keyboard and then to the computer, voice would be a more natural way of input, but imagine trying to write code using voice only or this article (gasp), my throat would be dry after the first function. so voice isnt a full supplement, but i think having to tap things in a context sensitive way would be good, borrowing from web design, less clicks the better, imagine writing code by tapping, choosing functions instead of having to write a for loop every single time, checking for errors, etc.<p>my feedback would be to take several steps backwards, look wholistically at the computer, and dream of how humans could better, more efficiently, and more naturally interact with them, that to me is the crux of a what a desktop represents, it&#x27;s the interface between man and comouter&#x2F;machine some of the solutions that you dream up could very much be based on patterns found on mobile phones or web pages, but dont let that limit you, ultimate goal is make a computer an extension of one&#x27;s hand, brain, etc, just like a well built car is an extension if one&#x27;s foot and hand.<p>kind of what i&#x27;m thinking is that we could be walking around with supplemented displays that could be toggled on&#x2F;off, dont really like the smart glasses, they&#x27;re bulky, cumbersome, and generally stupid looking, but almost like ar, layered on top of reality, i can see certain statistics, or necessary things followed by actions, absorbing different things from multiple sensors to supplement my view.<p>to me, that&#x27;s where innovation needs to take place, quite honestly mac os x and windows both have voice assistants, amazon echo as well, but i dont rely on these things as much, they are not as usuable at the moment, it&#x27;s more of a toy. i think visual technology is not as usable either, ar glasses, holographic displays, we have a long way to go.<p>and ultimately the computer needs to get smarter about understanding our needs, machine learning is a general step in the right direction, but i&#x27;m talking about being able to learn, adapt, and tie lots of things together to make decisions or recommendations without having to massage data, create data models, or choose certain algorithms.
LifeLiverTranspalmost 6 years ago
Its a good thing, as designer you dont have to proof your concept by merit- aka, make a linux-distro and see wether it ships. No, you convince and preach to the higher ups, build up hype and then drop you creation on all those lowly creatures like a 500 pound bomb and needed that much.<p>Win8 - i remember, how good it looks, and how little choice it left you to use its disgusting MetroUI. If people do not use your UI, when they have a choice, maybe its bad, maybe you have thrown away years and years of learning and experience.