8 ms·

> I intentionally left aside modern UI design trends (fancy animations, shadows, gray blurry lines, flat controls, acid colours, transparency). I like this accu

by rogual 8y ago

> I intentionally left aside modern UI design trends (fancy animations, shadows, gray blurry lines, flat controls, acid colours, transparency). I like this accurate, clear, grayish, boring UI that just not hinder to get my job done... Amen! The UI in the screenshots looks very tasteful to me, and it's nice to see somebody not conflating “no-nonsense” with “ugly programmer art”. Looking forward to giving this a try.

ttty 8y ago
When I read your comment I thought is going to look clean and nice... Looks like win 98... Not at all tasteful to me
- TomMarius 8y ago
  It's sort of retro, but it's very clean, at least IMO. What's your idea of a clean and nice UI?
  - wycy 8y ago
    Windows 10 with transparency turned off is very clean and usable. I know I'm going to get a lot of reflexive disagreement on this point for unrelated "because Windows" reasons, but I think this is objectively true. The entire UI is just basic shapes and line drawings.
    - giancarlostoro 8y ago
      Basically what Windows Server comes with iirc. I wish the "Pro" version of Windows 10 was just Windows Server, aka I don't care for a lot of the bloat that Microsoft has to offer to all consumer versions of Windows. If I'm a Pro user let me decide what I want to install.
    - omaranto 8y ago
      I agree, and it's not just the appearance, the UX is generally sensible (and little things like keyboard shortcuts for snapping a window to half the screen are very useful). I just wish it weren't so damn buggy. I just had to reinstall because Windows Update got stuck on an install/uninstall update loop. Sigh
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      I'm missing depth in their UI. I liked the Windows 7 UX the most.
  - meddlepal 8y ago
    XFCE4.12 with the Default Window Manager styling.
- jcelerier 8y ago
  win2k UI is best UI
  - etatoby 8y ago
    Amen. The entire OS was so polished and stable. I don't think it has been surpassed yet. Maybe by OS X 10.6
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      my favorite MS anecdote: PC Magazine gave a beta 2k install on a CD. I tried it, and it was such an improvement over 98 that I never installed anything else until XP was a ~requirement (mostly a convenience because it embedded more and more recent drivers)
      - ashleyn 8y ago
        To be frank, that's because the Win 9x line was intentionally designed around the older, less-stable MS-DOS architecture. NT, which is what 2000 was based on, was around for seven years by that point and was remarkably stable. The big problem is that it was compatible with virtually nothing, and it wasn't until Win XP that the business world aligned itself with NT.
        menacingly 8y ago
        It wasn't until XP that the _consumer_ world aligned itself with NT. NT 4 & 2000 were unavoidable in business networks with windows domains
        agumonkey 8y ago
        NT was more compatible with my hardware than 98 :)
        kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        Unless you wanted USB support.
- whywhywhywhy 8y ago
  Maybe Win 98 looks like Nextstep rather than the other way around.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    Who's the guilty party does not really matter, it's crummy either way
    - mschaef 8y ago
      What's your definition of crummy?
  - JulianMorrison 8y ago
    Win 95 literally stole some of the NeXT look. They stole the grey raised borders and the close [X]. They turned the iconize button into a maximize button for some reason.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      Grey raised borders definitely existed in Windows 3.1 GUI elements.
      - kstenerud 8y ago
        ... which Microsoft copied from Motif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) Both Windows 3.1 and Amiga OS (Workbench) 2.0 copied the look in 1990.
        monocasa 8y ago
        Totally, everyone not relegated to the dustbins of history stole.
      - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        Only on buttons until ctl3d.dll became commonplace.
- HHest 8y ago
  Compare the nextspace screenshot to the nextstep screenshot, and one can see they are appreciably different. nextspace: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/master/Documentation/NEXTSPACE_Screenshot.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/mast... nextstep: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/NeXTSTEP_desktop.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/NeXTSTEP_desk...
  - SSLy 8y ago
    I don't see anything really standing out between these two.
    - HHest 8y ago
      Sorry for the late response. The biggest difference to my eyes is the color choices. Although this was many years ago, I recall that the nextstep color scheme was very muted, tending to scale of grays rather than contrasting colors. The wikipedia screenshot seems to confirm my memory. The nextspace screenshot shows apps and icons with very bright colors. Nowadays icons and apps tend to be colorful, and since they follow different color schemes, a collection of them has a high probability of clashing (e.g. the gray Gimp next to the orange Firefox.) Nextstep could maintain a consistent aesthetic, I think, because: 1) there were not many apps available on it as there are now on nextspace, and 2) a single company, which had a notoriously style conscious CEO, produced these apps. Nowadays, apps are produced by different groups, with different tastes (let alone skills) in designs. Nextspace faces the problem of maintaining the muted and clean style of nextstep, in a more diversified world. That's what I was reacting to.
  - optimuspaul 8y ago
    appreciably different?!? Not sure I follow. Both are hideous to behold and look very similar. Is there a joke here I am missing?
  - darreld 8y ago
    I'm not sure I'm seeing much difference. Could you explain more fully?
pankajdoharey 8y ago
I totally love its pastel colour styled gray look and feel of olden days. Very Nice. Is this an implementation from scratch?
- trunkmaster 8y ago
  Yes. However Workspace contains WindowMaker for window management functionality. Here is some information about internals https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Workspace-internals https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Workspace-inte...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
peatmoss 8y ago
While I like the way NeXT looks too (“Lickable, like concrete!”), a lot of the comments are getting wrapped around the axle of skin deep appearances. What’s exciting to me about this is that someone is chasing the notion of desktop environment built on OpenSTEP-compatible technology. Projects that chase skin-deep appearance of macOS are a dime a dozen. What would be cool, is if all those developers who’ve written software for macOS could also target Linux and BSD without much trouble. And if disappointed macOS developers could still target macOS while running Linux/BSD day-to-day. The Etoilé project doesn’t seem to have seen any love in some years, but imagine if they’d continued and Apple was forced to play catch up with some first-class bridges to new and exciting programming languages. This project is exciting not because it looks good or bad, it’s exciting because it’s the seed of a not-skin-deep reimplementation of a desktop environment on top of GUI technologies whose consistency and viability have been bourne out spectacularly by NeXT and macOS.
- trunkmaster 8y ago
  Exactly! Look at architecture (https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Architecture-and-design https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Architecture-a...). NEXTSPACE is a marriage of Linux quite mature technologies (D-Bus, PolKit, systemd) and OpenStep implementation frameworks (GNUstep) to create SPACE where NeXT or NeXT-like applications can live or reborn. Essential part of this is a UX (mature, consistent) with attention to any tiny piece of applications look and feel. That's what I though when started this project.
- staticautomatic 8y ago
  >Projects that chase skin-deep appearance of macOS are a dime a dozen. Cue the best fundraising pitch ever. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aEdrey6U5dU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aEdrey6U5dU
- mediocrejoker 8y ago
  As someone who is not familiar with OpenSTEP, what are the implications of a desktop built with it? There are many small things that I like about OS X that never seem to make it into the graphical re-skins. Things like coherence of applications "feel", as well as more tangible features such as consistent and global keyboard shortcuts in every app (ie. Cmd + , for preferences). The visual polish of OS X is the least important thing that makes it usable. Do you think a project like Nextspace could be the foundation for a Linux desktop experience more on par with the consistency of OS X?
bhauer 8y ago
Agreed. However, the first and perhaps only modern user interface feature I find lacking in the screenshot is font anti-aliasing. At a regular viewing distance of about three feet, I find the text much more difficult to read than the fonts rendered by Windows 10 elsewhere on my screen. Enable a quality subpixel font rendering engine onto that tastefully minimal UI and I think you'd have something real nice.
- pavlov 8y ago
  OTOH we now have 4K screens on laptops where you don't really need antialiasing anymore. Maybe Nextspace is simply ahead of the curve here.
- trunkmaster 8y ago
  I've tried to use anti-aliasing but for menus and titlebars it looks quite weird to my taste. Maybe it's a libfreetype packaged with CentOS? I don't know. I left this question unanswered for the future.
derefr 8y ago
"No-nonsense" is one thing, but I would caution that there's likely an optimal amount of "nonsense", and it's probably nonzero. Specifically, I've found through my own user testing that certain "fancy animations" are important to helping users build a correct mental model of the current workflow—taking them away makes the user take longer to learn the application. For example, the window-minimization animation on macOS: it shows you where to find the window you just minimized, by showing you the window "going into" the Dock rather than just disappearing. Or, for another example, disclosure indicators (triangle buttons), where in most modern app frameworks the results sort of "unfold" into place below the indicator, rather than just appearing. Having the results just flash into place, especially if it causes the document (and thus the scrollbar) to change size, tends to disorient the user. Having as little useless decoration is commendable, but I'd advocate for user testing on mockup versions of the software that contain some minimal animation, vs. those that don't. (Don't trust the user's opinions on which is better; just watch which version they get used to faster. Basically, do the same thing that game developers do when testing interaction mechanics: find the optimal "communication path" between the user and the software.)
- trunkmaster 8y ago
  Completely agree with you. In NEXTSPACE at this point available animations are: window miniaturizing, application hiding, application launching from File Viewer (icon slides to the place where application icon will be created), dropping icon dragged from Dock and Shelf (icon destroying).

by rogual 8y ago

ttty 8y ago

When I read your comment I thought is going to look clean and nice... Looks like win 98... Not at all tasteful to me

TomMarius 8y ago
It's sort of retro, but it's very clean, at least IMO. What's your idea of a clean and nice UI?
- wycy 8y ago
  Windows 10 with transparency turned off is very clean and usable. I know I'm going to get a lot of reflexive disagreement on this point for unrelated "because Windows" reasons, but I think this is objectively true. The entire UI is just basic shapes and line drawings.
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    Basically what Windows Server comes with iirc. I wish the "Pro" version of Windows 10 was just Windows Server, aka I don't care for a lot of the bloat that Microsoft has to offer to all consumer versions of Windows. If I'm a Pro user let me decide what I want to install.
  - omaranto 8y ago
    I agree, and it's not just the appearance, the UX is generally sensible (and little things like keyboard shortcuts for snapping a window to half the screen are very useful). I just wish it weren't so damn buggy. I just had to reinstall because Windows Update got stuck on an install/uninstall update loop. Sigh
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    I'm missing depth in their UI. I liked the Windows 7 UX the most.
- meddlepal 8y ago
  XFCE4.12 with the Default Window Manager styling.
jcelerier 8y ago
win2k UI is best UI
- etatoby 8y ago
  Amen. The entire OS was so polished and stable. I don't think it has been surpassed yet. Maybe by OS X 10.6
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    my favorite MS anecdote: PC Magazine gave a beta 2k install on a CD. I tried it, and it was such an improvement over 98 that I never installed anything else until XP was a ~requirement (mostly a convenience because it embedded more and more recent drivers)
    - ashleyn 8y ago
      To be frank, that's because the Win 9x line was intentionally designed around the older, less-stable MS-DOS architecture. NT, which is what 2000 was based on, was around for seven years by that point and was remarkably stable. The big problem is that it was compatible with virtually nothing, and it wasn't until Win XP that the business world aligned itself with NT.
      - menacingly 8y ago
        It wasn't until XP that the _consumer_ world aligned itself with NT. NT 4 & 2000 were unavoidable in business networks with windows domains
      - agumonkey 8y ago
        NT was more compatible with my hardware than 98 :)
        kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        Unless you wanted USB support.
whywhywhywhy 8y ago
Maybe Win 98 looks like Nextstep rather than the other way around.
- masklinn 8y ago
  Who's the guilty party does not really matter, it's crummy either way
  - mschaef 8y ago
    What's your definition of crummy?
- JulianMorrison 8y ago
  Win 95 literally stole some of the NeXT look. They stole the grey raised borders and the close [X]. They turned the iconize button into a maximize button for some reason.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Grey raised borders definitely existed in Windows 3.1 GUI elements.
    - kstenerud 8y ago
      ... which Microsoft copied from Motif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) Both Windows 3.1 and Amiga OS (Workbench) 2.0 copied the look in 1990.
      - monocasa 8y ago
        Totally, everyone not relegated to the dustbins of history stole.
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      Only on buttons until ctl3d.dll became commonplace.
HHest 8y ago
Compare the nextspace screenshot to the nextstep screenshot, and one can see they are appreciably different. nextspace: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/master/Documentation/NEXTSPACE_Screenshot.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/mast... nextstep: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/NeXTSTEP_desktop.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/NeXTSTEP_desk...
- SSLy 8y ago
  I don't see anything really standing out between these two.
  - HHest 8y ago
    Sorry for the late response. The biggest difference to my eyes is the color choices. Although this was many years ago, I recall that the nextstep color scheme was very muted, tending to scale of grays rather than contrasting colors. The wikipedia screenshot seems to confirm my memory. The nextspace screenshot shows apps and icons with very bright colors. Nowadays icons and apps tend to be colorful, and since they follow different color schemes, a collection of them has a high probability of clashing (e.g. the gray Gimp next to the orange Firefox.) Nextstep could maintain a consistent aesthetic, I think, because: 1) there were not many apps available on it as there are now on nextspace, and 2) a single company, which had a notoriously style conscious CEO, produced these apps. Nowadays, apps are produced by different groups, with different tastes (let alone skills) in designs. Nextspace faces the problem of maintaining the muted and clean style of nextstep, in a more diversified world. That's what I was reacting to.
- optimuspaul 8y ago
  appreciably different?!? Not sure I follow. Both are hideous to behold and look very similar. Is there a joke here I am missing?
- darreld 8y ago
  I'm not sure I'm seeing much difference. Could you explain more fully?

pankajdoharey 8y ago

I totally love its pastel colour styled gray look and feel of olden days. Very Nice. Is this an implementation from scratch?

trunkmaster 8y ago
Yes. However Workspace contains WindowMaker for window management functionality. Here is some information about internals https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Workspace-internals https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Workspace-inte...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

peatmoss 8y ago

While I like the way NeXT looks too (“Lickable, like concrete!”), a lot of the comments are getting wrapped around the axle of skin deep appearances. What’s exciting to me about this is that someone is chasing the notion of desktop environment built on OpenSTEP-compatible technology. Projects that chase skin-deep appearance of macOS are a dime a dozen. What would be cool, is if all those developers who’ve written software for macOS could also target Linux and BSD without much trouble. And if disappointed macOS developers could still target macOS while running Linux/BSD day-to-day. The Etoilé project doesn’t seem to have seen any love in some years, but imagine if they’d continued and Apple was forced to play catch up with some first-class bridges to new and exciting programming languages. This project is exciting not because it looks good or bad, it’s exciting because it’s the seed of a not-skin-deep reimplementation of a desktop environment on top of GUI technologies whose consistency and viability have been bourne out spectacularly by NeXT and macOS.

trunkmaster 8y ago
Exactly! Look at architecture (https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Architecture-and-design https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Architecture-a...). NEXTSPACE is a marriage of Linux quite mature technologies (D-Bus, PolKit, systemd) and OpenStep implementation frameworks (GNUstep) to create SPACE where NeXT or NeXT-like applications can live or reborn. Essential part of this is a UX (mature, consistent) with attention to any tiny piece of applications look and feel. That's what I though when started this project.
staticautomatic 8y ago
>Projects that chase skin-deep appearance of macOS are a dime a dozen. Cue the best fundraising pitch ever. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aEdrey6U5dU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aEdrey6U5dU
mediocrejoker 8y ago
As someone who is not familiar with OpenSTEP, what are the implications of a desktop built with it? There are many small things that I like about OS X that never seem to make it into the graphical re-skins. Things like coherence of applications "feel", as well as more tangible features such as consistent and global keyboard shortcuts in every app (ie. Cmd + , for preferences). The visual polish of OS X is the least important thing that makes it usable. Do you think a project like Nextspace could be the foundation for a Linux desktop experience more on par with the consistency of OS X?

bhauer 8y ago

Agreed. However, the first and perhaps only modern user interface feature I find lacking in the screenshot is font anti-aliasing. At a regular viewing distance of about three feet, I find the text much more difficult to read than the fonts rendered by Windows 10 elsewhere on my screen. Enable a quality subpixel font rendering engine onto that tastefully minimal UI and I think you'd have something real nice.

pavlov 8y ago
OTOH we now have 4K screens on laptops where you don't really need antialiasing anymore. Maybe Nextspace is simply ahead of the curve here.
trunkmaster 8y ago
I've tried to use anti-aliasing but for menus and titlebars it looks quite weird to my taste. Maybe it's a libfreetype packaged with CentOS? I don't know. I left this question unanswered for the future.

derefr 8y ago

"No-nonsense" is one thing, but I would caution that there's likely an optimal amount of "nonsense", and it's probably nonzero. Specifically, I've found through my own user testing that certain "fancy animations" are important to helping users build a correct mental model of the current workflow—taking them away makes the user take longer to learn the application. For example, the window-minimization animation on macOS: it shows you where to find the window you just minimized, by showing you the window "going into" the Dock rather than just disappearing. Or, for another example, disclosure indicators (triangle buttons), where in most modern app frameworks the results sort of "unfold" into place below the indicator, rather than just appearing. Having the results just flash into place, especially if it causes the document (and thus the scrollbar) to change size, tends to disorient the user. Having as little useless decoration is commendable, but I'd advocate for user testing on mockup versions of the software that contain some minimal animation, vs. those that don't. (Don't trust the user's opinions on which is better; just watch which version they get used to faster. Basically, do the same thing that game developers do when testing interaction mechanics: find the optimal "communication path" between the user and the software.)

trunkmaster 8y ago
Completely agree with you. In NEXTSPACE at this point available animations are: window miniaturizing, application hiding, application launching from File Viewer (icon slides to the place where application icon will be created), dropping icon dragged from Dock and Shelf (icon destroying).