7 ms·

A great example of a really nice information dense app is the Bloomberg terminal. Maybe it’s ugly (a lot of people say this, but I personally don’t think so), b

by mruts 8y ago

A great example of a really nice information dense app is the Bloomberg terminal. Maybe it’s ugly (a lot of people say this, but I personally don’t think so), but all the right design choices have been made. High Contrast, monospaced fonts, extensive keybindings, absolutely no wasted space. And, most essential, it’s not a web app. I used to work at a portfolio analytics company who’s explicit goal was: to have all of Wall St use Bloomberg on one screen, and our product on the other. Our app was probably the anti-thesis to the Bloomberg Terminal in almost everyway: “modern” design, tons of white space, a web app, making you have to log in every 30 minutes for “security”, no keybindings. I’m sure most of HN have never used the terminal, but let me give an analogy. The Bloomberg Terminal is like using Emacs or Vim, they make you feel powerful, they make you feel like a wizard. Our app was like google docs, you never felt like you were in direct control of it. You never felt like it was an extension of yourself. Unsurprisingly, even though our app was incredibly useful and provided portfolio analytics that you could only get from excel (our biggest competitor), it, and the company, was largely a failure. Instead of being worth billions, we were capped at a valuation of 200m for over 5 years. I believe completely that the company’s failure was due to our “modern” white space heavy app.

richardcrossley 8y ago
I love the Bloomberg Terminal style. I watched one of my users retrieve some product information yesterday, a few key presses and it was there. Much faster than a web application. The colour scheme also looks good. A black background gives you many more high contrast choices. Try using yellow or cyan on a light background. It seems most of the colours are based on the old 8-bit selection; red, green, blue, cyan, yellow, white and black. Orange seems to have been added as well.
- quietbritishjim 8y ago
  Actually orange is the oldest. The story goes that when the Bloomberg terminal was created in the early 80s all the consoles where monochrome, and the only choices were green or orange (on black in both cases, of course). Everyone else used green so they went with orange to be distinctive.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    > The story goes that when the Bloomberg terminal was created in the early 80s all the consoles where monochrome, and the only choices were green or orange (on black in both cases, of course). It's probably not entirely true given there were dozens of known phosphors, and there were monochrome displays in other colors (e.g. the 1980 Apple Monitor III was available in green and white). However assuming they went with pretty standard equipments green was by far the most common followed by amber. Amber is also somewhat softer on the eyes, which might have been an argument in favour given they'd have folks looking at these displays all day long, especially for charts which would fill the terminal with <color>: green monitors were OK when you had mostly black (text, curses interfaces) but it was way too harsh otherwise. Our first computer actually had both green and amber displays, the amber display was dedicated for games and the like, anything which would light up a significant fraction of the display at once would go to the smaller amber monitor instead of the larger green one.
  - hnick 8y ago
    Green and orange? You just gave me a flashback to my 1980s school experience in Australia with MicroBee computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee
noir_lord 8y ago
I liked the bloomberg style so much I ripped the fonts out of some Bloomberg software and use them as my terminal font :). It's an attractive font.
- deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
artursapek 8y ago
People who say Bloomberg is ugly have a very shallow view of what design means. It's the form over function way of seeing things. These are the people Apple markets its products to.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  This seems to be the mainstream school of design, no doubt inspired by what Apple and Google are doing. Myself, I absolutely hate it, because it puts sellability over productivity for end users. I.e. it literally wastes people's time.
redwall_hp 8y ago
This is how I feel about computing in general. GUIs in general were a mistake. Vim is fucking awesome, and there's no replacing a shell and the myriad CLI utilities you have at your disposal. The computer is there to automate repetitive tasks, not create virtual busywork. GUIs generally represent the sacrifice of power and automation for approachability by the lowest common denominator.
- beamatronic 8y ago
  I have also thought this through to the following logical conclusion: Imagine computer users being fluent in SQL and everyone sharing one giant database. Let’s check Twitter... select message, username from TWEETS order by date desc limit 10 Slightly more realistic is the “semantic web” concept.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    The trend of GraphQL in JS-land is helping move a little bit towards this, since it's a strong reason to have row-level user authentication and access control so that queries can live in the frontend.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      The problem at this point isn't with technology, it's with companies that try to silo in the data users give them.
- shawnz 8y ago
  > The computer is there to automate repetitive tasks, not create virtual busywork. The GUI eliminated the busy work of setting up your environment to make your workflows easy. It instead provides an environment where a wide variety of workflows are easy by default, although maybe not as easy as they could be with specific configuration like setting up customized keybindings, etc.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
twic 8y ago
> I used to work at a portfolio analytics company who’s explicit goal was: to have all of Wall St use Bloomberg on one screen, and our product on the other. Me too! I wonder if it was the same company? > Our app was probably the anti-thesis to the Bloomberg Terminal in almost everyway: “modern” design, tons of white space It was not.
- mruts 8y ago
  I worked for a company that rhymes with “potus” did you work for the company that rhymed with “brighthouse”? Man those guys had an ugly app.
  - twic 8y ago
    Mine rhymed with "grim soup". To be honest, although there was a portfolio management tool of sorts, it only had one customer, and the company's real focus was on trade ideas. It sounds like the top brass had similar levels of ambition, though.
IshKebab 8y ago
Actually I was talking to the Bloomberg people at a conference and parts of the terminal are web based now. Also how are monospaced fonts "the right decision"?
- mruts 8y ago
  For the same reason that monospaced fonts are the correct choice for code: so text can line up. If you you’ve used the terminal, it displays structured information really nicely because of this. Also in regards to the monospaced fonts, you can easily calculate how much space a block of text will take on the screen. They do have the Bloomberg anywhere portal which is web-based, but the main app isn’t web based.
  - IshKebab 8y ago
    > the main app isn’t web based. Source? I heard this from the developers directly. > For the same reason that monospaced fonts are the correct choice for code: so text can line up. This isn't a requirement for code. Coding in variable width fonts actually works fine.
    - mruts 8y ago
      I don't think I've ever met a single programmer that has ever used variable width fonts for code. Maybe you're the exception? But the vast, vast, majority of people think otherwise.
taude 8y ago
I was going to post about Bloomberg Terminals, but figured since I'm late to the story, someone else already did. Yeup. It's funny how little credit we give to business users these days, and how much marketing UX there can be. There was a time when business students attending college and their crufty professors could manage using email by telneting into the mainframe to use Pine. And the technology was a wonderment to them.
zhte415 8y ago
> You never felt like it was an extension of yourself. Not a better phrase to describe a Bloomberg Terminal. Everything is there, mainly data, quick charts, Messenger and with it 'social' (yes, Bloomberg Support do make restaurant recommendations if asked), quick facilitation to sometimes complex questions through these services, handy linking to Excel, and where data quality was questionable a quick response. I think what Bloomberg did/do was/is listen to their customers. A Bloomberg today is much like when I first touched it 20 years ago, but it isn't. It feels the same, or similar, the screens are vastly larger, does what it has always done, scales. There are no redesigns that stop a user doing what they've done before, yet allow them to do more. It is what is expected and surprises, sometimes frustrates, but a learning curve and pleasure comes from learning.
- mruts 8y ago
  The Terminal is probably the best and greatest app that's ever existed. There's just this ineffable feeling you have when using it.. like all the knowledge in the entire world is available at your fingertips. Using it just feels good, you feel powerful, and in control. For people that haven't used it, I know it sounds like porn. But it's incredible.

by mruts 8y ago

richardcrossley 8y ago

I love the Bloomberg Terminal style. I watched one of my users retrieve some product information yesterday, a few key presses and it was there. Much faster than a web application. The colour scheme also looks good. A black background gives you many more high contrast choices. Try using yellow or cyan on a light background. It seems most of the colours are based on the old 8-bit selection; red, green, blue, cyan, yellow, white and black. Orange seems to have been added as well.

quietbritishjim 8y ago
Actually orange is the oldest. The story goes that when the Bloomberg terminal was created in the early 80s all the consoles where monochrome, and the only choices were green or orange (on black in both cases, of course). Everyone else used green so they went with orange to be distinctive.
- masklinn 8y ago
  > The story goes that when the Bloomberg terminal was created in the early 80s all the consoles where monochrome, and the only choices were green or orange (on black in both cases, of course). It's probably not entirely true given there were dozens of known phosphors, and there were monochrome displays in other colors (e.g. the 1980 Apple Monitor III was available in green and white). However assuming they went with pretty standard equipments green was by far the most common followed by amber. Amber is also somewhat softer on the eyes, which might have been an argument in favour given they'd have folks looking at these displays all day long, especially for charts which would fill the terminal with <color>: green monitors were OK when you had mostly black (text, curses interfaces) but it was way too harsh otherwise. Our first computer actually had both green and amber displays, the amber display was dedicated for games and the like, anything which would light up a significant fraction of the display at once would go to the smaller amber monitor instead of the larger green one.
- hnick 8y ago
  Green and orange? You just gave me a flashback to my 1980s school experience in Australia with MicroBee computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee

noir_lord 8y ago

I liked the bloomberg style so much I ripped the fonts out of some Bloomberg software and use them as my terminal font :). It's an attractive font.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

artursapek 8y ago

People who say Bloomberg is ugly have a very shallow view of what design means. It's the form over function way of seeing things. These are the people Apple markets its products to.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
This seems to be the mainstream school of design, no doubt inspired by what Apple and Google are doing. Myself, I absolutely hate it, because it puts sellability over productivity for end users. I.e. it literally wastes people's time.

redwall_hp 8y ago

This is how I feel about computing in general. GUIs in general were a mistake. Vim is fucking awesome, and there's no replacing a shell and the myriad CLI utilities you have at your disposal. The computer is there to automate repetitive tasks, not create virtual busywork. GUIs generally represent the sacrifice of power and automation for approachability by the lowest common denominator.

beamatronic 8y ago
I have also thought this through to the following logical conclusion: Imagine computer users being fluent in SQL and everyone sharing one giant database. Let’s check Twitter... select message, username from TWEETS order by date desc limit 10 Slightly more realistic is the “semantic web” concept.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  The trend of GraphQL in JS-land is helping move a little bit towards this, since it's a strong reason to have row-level user authentication and access control so that queries can live in the frontend.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    The problem at this point isn't with technology, it's with companies that try to silo in the data users give them.
shawnz 8y ago
> The computer is there to automate repetitive tasks, not create virtual busywork. The GUI eliminated the busy work of setting up your environment to make your workflows easy. It instead provides an environment where a wide variety of workflows are easy by default, although maybe not as easy as they could be with specific configuration like setting up customized keybindings, etc.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago

twic 8y ago

> I used to work at a portfolio analytics company who’s explicit goal was: to have all of Wall St use Bloomberg on one screen, and our product on the other. Me too! I wonder if it was the same company? > Our app was probably the anti-thesis to the Bloomberg Terminal in almost everyway: “modern” design, tons of white space It was not.

mruts 8y ago
I worked for a company that rhymes with “potus” did you work for the company that rhymed with “brighthouse”? Man those guys had an ugly app.
- twic 8y ago
  Mine rhymed with "grim soup". To be honest, although there was a portfolio management tool of sorts, it only had one customer, and the company's real focus was on trade ideas. It sounds like the top brass had similar levels of ambition, though.

IshKebab 8y ago

Actually I was talking to the Bloomberg people at a conference and parts of the terminal are web based now. Also how are monospaced fonts "the right decision"?

mruts 8y ago
For the same reason that monospaced fonts are the correct choice for code: so text can line up. If you you’ve used the terminal, it displays structured information really nicely because of this. Also in regards to the monospaced fonts, you can easily calculate how much space a block of text will take on the screen. They do have the Bloomberg anywhere portal which is web-based, but the main app isn’t web based.
- IshKebab 8y ago
  > the main app isn’t web based. Source? I heard this from the developers directly. > For the same reason that monospaced fonts are the correct choice for code: so text can line up. This isn't a requirement for code. Coding in variable width fonts actually works fine.
  - mruts 8y ago
    I don't think I've ever met a single programmer that has ever used variable width fonts for code. Maybe you're the exception? But the vast, vast, majority of people think otherwise.

taude 8y ago

I was going to post about Bloomberg Terminals, but figured since I'm late to the story, someone else already did. Yeup. It's funny how little credit we give to business users these days, and how much marketing UX there can be. There was a time when business students attending college and their crufty professors could manage using email by telneting into the mainframe to use Pine. And the technology was a wonderment to them.

zhte415 8y ago

> You never felt like it was an extension of yourself. Not a better phrase to describe a Bloomberg Terminal. Everything is there, mainly data, quick charts, Messenger and with it 'social' (yes, Bloomberg Support do make restaurant recommendations if asked), quick facilitation to sometimes complex questions through these services, handy linking to Excel, and where data quality was questionable a quick response. I think what Bloomberg did/do was/is listen to their customers. A Bloomberg today is much like when I first touched it 20 years ago, but it isn't. It feels the same, or similar, the screens are vastly larger, does what it has always done, scales. There are no redesigns that stop a user doing what they've done before, yet allow them to do more. It is what is expected and surprises, sometimes frustrates, but a learning curve and pleasure comes from learning.

mruts 8y ago
The Terminal is probably the best and greatest app that's ever existed. There's just this ineffable feeling you have when using it.. like all the knowledge in the entire world is available at your fingertips. Using it just feels good, you feel powerful, and in control. For people that haven't used it, I know it sounds like porn. But it's incredible.