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Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

• santafe 7y ago
  Please do not make my desktop as unusable as my phone. Thanks.
  • jasonvorhe 7y ago
    Yeah, because introducing new stuff always completely replaces the old stuff and doing things the way we did x years ago because we're used to it is such a great recipe for progress.
    • Dirlewanger 7y ago
      A desktop is not a mobile device. Design practices on one don't always translate well to the other. Learning how to use the keyboard well (i.e. touch typing) and learning one's OS's shortcuts allows one to be pretty damn efficient with whatever they're doing on a desktop. I'd posit that any near-term productivity gains are going to come from refining personal habits (e.g. minimizing external distractions and actually doing work).
      • neop1x 7y ago
        No need for keyboard nor mouse anymore. You can tap on the screen with multi-finger gestures instead and write code by using speech-to-text. (jk)
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • anthk 7y ago
      Meh. AWK worked fast enough in a previous article referenced from HN, and that's software solidified in the 80's. Virtual desktops and someting akin the FVWM interface is truly the best interface ever. No need to iconify(minimize), windows because all junk can be sent to different pages on your environment, focusing on your actual work. It may be outdated according to the vision of the Gen-Z, but it works well and ridiculously fast to grasp.
• gloflo 7y ago
  Previously in 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932378
• fredley 7y ago
  This is not software, this is a design concept, for anyone else who didn't find that immediately obvious.
  • magnamerc 7y ago
    I kept looking for the download link..
• 52-6F-62 7y ago
  Just personally speaking, I find macOS already has a version of many of these features implemented (using their touchpad/gestures) in a more polished way—and I retain the mutability of the underlying system. It also has tagging, and the new 'stacks' on the desktop add another level of categorization. I can even full screen any application and line them up as workspaces and navigate between them in a "carousel"-like fashion by swiping with four fingers.
• joeblubaugh 7y ago
  This is nice and all, but it's mostly putting a "mac-looking" coat of paint on the tiling window managers that we already have. I do like the left-side menu concept better than the "top menu". It would have been nice to see more examples on a laptop-sized screen.
  • MentallyRetired 7y ago
    This is more about UX than UI, though. I skimmed it at first before actually reading it and had the same thought, expecting some big visual wow. But the meat is in the explanation. This looks like a fantastic experience.
  • zapzupnz 7y ago
    The strength of macOS' menu bar is that the menus it contains are static — an application shows all options at all times, greying out the ones that aren't currently available, as a means to enabling all functions to be discoverable at all times. This means that the ability to discover and access an applications functionality is not constrained to requiring an open window, as is the case on Windows and most Linux applications. If the left menu replicates macOS' top menu, it does so with one weakness: it is constrained by both the presence of a window and the vertical height of a window. This has two knock on effects: (a) that every window an application can present, particular document-based applications, redundantly replicate the menu in every window; and (b) that small windows cannot show the menu in a sidebar. This leads to a user interface full of surprises — can a window show all in its menu? Can a window even have a menu? If a given window is unable to show a window, should another mechanism be used instead? The alternative is to present the left menu as a global sidebar, like macOS' Notification Center or Windows 10's Action Center. However, this has two major disadvantages: (a) it's a huge waste of space to have a sidebar wide enough to show a reasonable amount of text along the horizontal axis at larger text sizes (especially on systems that support adjustable system font metrics), and (b) the size of the clickable targets is vertically smaller and more finicky to reach than the (relatively) wider horizontal dimensions of text shown along the top (or bottom, for that matter) edge of the screen. That issue could be remedied by the use of buttons with icons. However, this combines the existing, space-efficient toolbars with the left menu's horizontal screen waste — it takes two paradigms and makes them mutually worse. Of course, the waste-of-screen-space issue can be mitigated by making the menu disappear after a menu item is interacted with, like Office's File menu, or make it abled to be pinned, staying visible until dismissed manually. However, this now means the user has to manage a part of the user interface that was previously handled automatically, far from ideal. Also, if the menu is able to be pinned and presented as a global sidebar à la Notification Center/Action Menu, should it come and go depending upon which application is visible? If so, how should the left menu interact with existing windows that may be occupying its space? Cover those windows or move them to the right? The former still means the user is required to manually manage something that should be automatic, the latter means that the user loses control over the placement of their windows. Speaking of window control, I've mostly been thinking about what the left menu would look like for existing window systems where user can place windows freely. Desktop Neo proposes tileable windows similar to macOS' full screen app windows — how should the left menu be presented? If presented per-window, there will be quite a lot of wasted screen real estate; if there's a global menu bar, it would probably reserve a certain amount of the left side of the screen, taking away a significant amount of space that should be for the tiled windows — unless it dynamically resizes all tiled windows horizontally which could be computationally expensive if one of the windows is graphics-intensive, such as a game. Finally, a layout with vertically-small menu items displayed in a list as the initial way access the functions of an application, rather than as submenus, seems ergonomically finicky for use on a keyboard-and-mouse oriented system, and touch-oriented systems are better off with touch-first navigation hierarchy-oriented user interfaces backed by scrollable lists (as per iOS and many Android apps), exposing an application's functionality in a different way altogether. This left menu seems to be no more than a hamburger menu, though one with constraints compared to existing solutions such as in Firefox and Chrome today. As an alternative to both per-window top menus and a global top menu, it falls flat ergonomically.
• jorams 7y ago
  This is interesting, though a lot of the claims are highly debatable, but one really stood out to me: > the tasks you do are more complex. That’s where voice input shines. I don'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's remotely accurate enough for anything "more complex". 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.
  • sbuttgereit 7y ago
    I can only imagine the joy of an open office floor plan where employees also depend on a voice based interface for their computers.
    • Ajedi32 7y ago
      Solving that is simply a matter of developing a way for the computer to pick up inaudible or mouthed commands. Not a trivial task, but it does seem doable with current technology.
      • rijoja 7y ago
        Okay so basically controll the user input with muscle movements. Hm wonder if some other group of muscles aren't more suitable for that, how about trying say our fingers for starters? edit: I've read that NASA developed a microphone that doesn't need sound though so it is doable.
        • Ajedi32 7y ago
          Language is much more expressive than your fingers for certain tasks (and vice-versa). This design advocates for the use of _both_, not one or the other.
          • dguts 7y ago
            Language is more expressive, but I can press hundreds of buttons and type commands faster than I can yell expressive commands at my computer
• mariusmg 7y ago
  Some productivity tips from me : - get a ultrawide monitor - learn some keyboard shortcuts - profit
  • simlevesque 7y ago
    - use a tiling window manager (i3 or sway)
  • deno 7y ago
    Do 4K ultrawide even exist?
• jstewartmobile 7y 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. Linking out to a bunch of other people's opinions and tossing-in some Alan Kay quotes doesn't add much. IETF also designs on-paper instead of in-code, and it is always a hot mess.
• MentallyRetired 7y ago
  Um. Yes, please.
• japanoise 7y ago
  >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... 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.
• hashkb 7y ago
  Panels aren't innovative. On Linux we've had tiling window management with advanced organization for many years.
  • yourapostasy 7y ago
    I've been looking for a UI/environment that lets me persist the state of my applications and documents across reboots, and organize them into an indefinite number of workspaces. Each workspace can be named and tagged, and accessed through scrolling through them, by name, by tag, or by URI (I'd drop the URI's into my Emacs Org mode todo). A workspace supports a contextual state of some effort I'm working upon/researching, and views a set of documents, and can branch into a hierarchy of sub-workspaces, and the workspaces are movable in a mind-map display (or an outline form if you want a less-complex mind-map). I want specific locations/views within documents available as hyperlinks, and the state/arrangement of a workspace snapshot point-in-time available as a name, tag, or URI. Lots of this is probably doable under Linux in one of the programmable tiling window managers, with the exception of capturing any arbitrary location/view within a document as a labeled entity, I haven't run across one yet, but I can't believe I'm the only person out here that wants more sophisticated handling of complex workspaces. Right now, I'm using a clumsy, time-consuming Emacs Org mode document to keep track of what I'm doing.
• keymone 7y ago
  So, um, ipados?
• tlackemann 7y ago
  It's a nice idea but you don'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.
  • auraham 7y ago
    Actually, i3 is one of the main reasons I use Ubuntu on my daily basis (the other one is apt). As far as known there are other applications similiar to i3 for MacOS, but they are not as good as i3. So sad.
• Longhanks 7y ago
  Replace the menu bar with one giant hamburger menu? Thanks, but no, thanks.
• Ajedi32 7y ago
  Looks really cool. I especially like the ideas around eye tracking and gesture input. There are some things that might not work out as well as the author is envisioning, but that's what usability testing is for. I'd love to give this a try if it ever became a thing.
• Manfred 7y ago
  > 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. The wheel hasn't changed much in the last 1000 years. It'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.
  • zcid 7y ago
    That's a horrible analogy. And factually wrong. We use boats because wheels don't work very well on water. We use planes because they're faster. We don't use either anywhere near as much as we use trucks, cars, rail, and wheelbarrows.
  • anthk 7y ago
    Boats used wheels to drive them, too. And they are almost as old. Not a good analogy. "Now", you say. Do you realize boats were used even before Rome?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• njn 7y ago
  lol it's just xmonad
• neves 7y 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? Hey, I always wanted a desktop that tracks my gaze!!!
  • tyrust 7y ago
    You have a choice of a few tiling window managers on Linux that fit your requirements. None of them have eye tracking, though :) I've used i3wm for years and can't see myself switching anytime soon.
    • kminehart 7y ago
      You might switch to sway in the near future. ;)
      • tyrust 7y ago
        Perhaps. I have been thinking about it, but from what I've heard wayland still has some shortcomings. I'm sort of deferring this decision to the i3 dev: when/if he decides to port i3 to wayland (or pass the torch to sway) then I as a user can probably be sure that it's ready.
  • nickjj 7y ago
    It's already there on Linux with tiled window managers. You can quickly switch between different contexts with work spaces, almost no pixels are wasted and it scales beautifully with high resolution screens.
    • hobofan 7y ago
      It's also there on MacOS (mostly). Amethyst as a tiling window manager + Alfred makes for a great productivity combo. With both of them, most of the pain points in the article are adequately solved already.
• Phenix88be 7y ago
  I don't know who they are targeting with this concept, but, as a developer, a lot of thing are wrong : - Anything that require the mouse make me slower. - Trackpad gesture require a ... trackpad, and trackpad are worst than a mouse. - Speaking of the trackpad, anyone can put 6 fingers on it ? look painfull to me. - Animation are nice, but useless, they make the computer slower and takes time to complete. To me, this look anything but productive.
  • rco8786 7y ago
    > Trackpad gesture require a ... trackpad, and trackpad are worst than a mouse. Interesting, as an engineer I prefer my trackpad 100x over a normal mouse...almost solely because of the gesture abilities. Agreed on the rest of your points.
    • Phenix88be 7y ago
      I mainly use a workstation on a large desk in an office. If you use your laptop everywhere, on small table, desk, knee, trackpad are great because a mouse is basically unusable. But on a desk with plenty of space ? Also, from a medical point of view, I think a mouse is better than a trackpad. But I m not an expert in that field.
      • dlivingston 7y ago
        On a Windows box I would agree, but on macOS gestures are so productive that you actually lose quite a bit of productivity by using a mouse - even Apple's Magic Mouse.
      • rco8786 7y ago
        Yea - I use a separate magic trackpad at my desk, always. I don't even own a regular mouse.
    • llao 7y ago
      Honest curiosity: How many gestures do you regularly use? How many buttons does your mouse have?
• smacktoward 7y 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 '80s and '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't really fit lots of use cases, searching is easier than clicking up and down a hierarchy, etc.). This led to a bunch of different products and almost-products, like Apple's "Soups" for the Newton (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_(Apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_(Apple)) and Microsoft's WinFS (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS), and the original file system for BeOS (see https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/past-present-future-file-systems/7/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/past-present-future-...). 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-'90s, though, so it'd be interesting to see if those ideas that were impractical then are practical today.
  • rootlocus 7y ago
    > Hardware has come a long way since the mid-'90s Too bad Wirth's law states that software is overcompensating for that.
  • bitwize 7y ago
    Because that's just what every user wants -- for all the performance gains of their new, fast hardware to be soaked up by OS administrivia they didn't even realize they needed. I mean, FS performance under Windows is already such garbage that an SSD is basically a requirement for a usable desktop; a little more chug is basically just gravy on top by this point.
    • icebraining 7y ago
      Don't they need it, though? People are already using layers over the filesystem, like "media libraries" and "document managers", which undoubtedly trade performance for "administrivia". Maybe it'd be better if this was provided by a common layer, much like the FS already provides a layer over disk blocks.
• cat199 7y ago
  windowmaker.org
• ilmiont 7y ago
  This seems to be very much change for the sake of it. "The traditional desktop computer is struggling to adapt the simple interfaces of mobile devices while also keeping its focus on productivity." No, no, it isn't. Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. "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." No, they're not. The reason why the desktop hasn't changed much in 30 years is because it works. 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 getting work done. That's why windows and mice are still around... they just work. This project... doesn't look like it does that.
  • baybal2 7y ago
    Yes, his opinion and concept feel amateurish to me. A yet another GUI designed by a designer. What matters in GUI is an often overlooked thing called ergonomics — something beyond just code and visual design. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergonomics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergonomics
    • hsikka 7y ago
      For what its worth, I recall this was like a student project from 2016 or something. I could be wrong, but it seemed like an impressive output under the circumstances.
      • Operyl 7y ago
        You're not wrong. At the bottom of the page is a link to the HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932378
    • ptidhomme 7y ago
      Thanks for pointing this out. I find the Windows UI to often have infuriatingly poor ergonomics, especially when it comes to mouse usage. For instance, why the heck put that closing cross button so far away on the right, which will build you some arm pain quite fast ? Why are some overly used buttons so small ? When I watch people that are not used to keyboard shortcuts use Windows (explorer for example), I'm quite terrified at their painful, and consequently slow, mouse-based workflow.
• ganonm 7y ago
  I feel like the best desktop interface I have used is Ubuntu'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't get in your way. 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. I like this setup so much that when I was using MacOS for a brief period, I installed TotalSpaces2 which emulates Ubuntu style workspaces.
• RenRav 7y ago
  I hate touchscreens and mobile interfaces, all the changes seem built around these things.
• bitwize 7y ago
  All it needs is a "reloaded" or "evolved" and it'll be just like every other design-wank "reimagining" of a desktop UI I've seen for the past 20 years. Show me -- with data to back it up -- how this makes me more productive and I'll give it a closer look. Best stick with "reloaded" for now, you've already got the word "Neo" in there and "evolved" is Microsoft's thing.
• beshrkayali 7y ago
  Nothing beats tiling wm.
  • gcoda 7y ago
    Yeah kinda, after years on tiling WMs i feel almost comfortable with gnome+paperwm
• crote 7y ago
  It's an interesting combination of incredible ideas with unusable ones. First, there'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'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" 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. Second, app control, app menu, and context menu: great ideas, and have been tried by various window managers. 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'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's often more than one possibility. I'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't replace folders. The same applies to email, bookmarks, contacts, books, and all the other stuff mentioned. 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'm typing this, I'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's a fun concept, but it sounds more like a solution looking for a problem. A mouse is always going to be vastly superior. 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's probably going to remain nothing more than a very nice gimmick, not a core concept of a productive UI. Furthermore, how'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. To conclude: it seems like all the good stuff has already been (mostly) implemented!
• robto 7y 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/sidebar/fitting/pinning/minimization features seem like an improvement over existing touch interfaces, especially on linux. I don'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.
  • olejorgenb 7y ago
    Our gnome-shell plugin https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM implements a similar tiling mechanism. Although we allow mixing tiled and floating windows. Things like "minimize" and "pin" are on the road map.
• pavlov 7y ago
  Six-finger gestures on a desktop...? How does that work in practice? Do you need a giant touchpad?
  • hobofan 7y ago
    Have you seen current gen Macbooks? Their touchpads are huge.
    • touchse 7y ago
      Macs are really nice.
    • pavlov 7y ago
      Sure. It just seems like an odd emphasis for a system that's equally likely to be used with a mouse.
• dustfinger 7y 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]. [1]https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk9-q8tXbMs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk9-q8tXbMs
• kbenson 7y 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/group access, so it seems like you'll have a complex interaction of tags that exclude access and allow access. I imagine there'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't promising.
• totaldude87 7y 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? Also, the website took just under a year to load its images, can you please optimize that first :)
• pavpanchekha 7y ago
  This is a design exercise, not a product. And as a design exercise, I think it really nicely demonstrates the author's ability to think of radically new designs, even if I'm not convinced by many of them. In grad school, my advisor told me: I can't teach you to have interesting ideas, I can only teach you which ones to pursue. It's ok to have lots of bad ideas, because that's the first step to having a few good ones. As for the author, I am impressed.
  • chaostheory 7y ago
    I think this would work... but not the way the author envisions it with a mouse or touch pad. It would work well with a touch screen.
  • progval 7y ago
    While the design is new and cool, I wouldn't call "radically new". It puts together designs that exist in different contexts. Panels are already used by tiling WM (and I believe recent versions of Android as well). Scrolling though apps with a three-finger swipe already exists too (I have an extension for Firefox for Android that does this to change tabs, it's a nice feature) Sorting documents by hashtag was done by gmail since its beginning
    • dubcanada 7y ago
      Would you call the ipad and iphone "radically new" they are just existing products combined.
      • wuliwong 7y ago
        I think you are setting up a bit of a straw man argument. The parent comment said "existing designs." While you apparently refuting their statement, you are saying something different by jumping to "existing products." Products and designs are not the same thing.
        • dubcanada 7y ago
• jedberg 7y ago
  Six finger gestures feel like a huge step backwards to me. It's bad enough I have to move one hand off the keyboard, but now I have to move both hands? Clearly this was designed by someone who exclusivly uses a laptop with a trackpad in the middle.
• peteyPete 7y ago
  Based on the previous post of this in 2016, this is a university student's portfolio piece while hoping to find an internship. It's not a product, just a concept. I'd say amazing job in terms of design and concept. That being said, if this were an actual product, it wouldn't count me as a user. It looks cool, nice, etc. It may appeal to a specific type of user who'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'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. I very much liked the fact that it knows where you're looking and makes many actions instantaneous, like looking at a link and clicking or pressing a key or whatever it was. That'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. The built in voice assistant does cool things too and I can see many use cases for that too. Not that it can'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... 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.
• cabernal 7y ago
  This reminds of the GNOME 3 debacle.
• v-yadli 7y ago
  The "Alan Kay" references in the video is a good cue of what's on the author's mind -- I guess the goal is to create an environment for contents, not something like a general-purpose desktop. Quite ambitious I'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 "desktop reimagined", considering that a commodity desktop has neither a trackpad or eye-tracking device. 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`. It'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/MS Graph/Windows Search or whatever they call it. 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/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). 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's everyday routine with a desktop environment.
  • fwip 7y ago
    > could be better explained than just claiming this to be a "desktop reimagined", considering that a commodity desktop has neither a trackpad or eye-tracking device. s/desktop/laptop/ and you're golden.
    • v-yadli 7y ago
      Not a deal breaker though I think. We can simply bind the menus to some key chords/combos.
• vondur 7y ago
  While I don'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't' see it replacing file names anytime soon. The Mac has file tagging and I rarely see people using it.
• liquidise 7y 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. I've been using comps since the early 90s and as far as Desktop interfaces are concerned, there have been 2: Full CLI and Windows/Mac/Gnone/Other Clone. Touchscreen mobile has had a similarly homogeneous "evolution". 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. Hats off to hackers and designers taking on this challenge.
  • anthk 7y ago
    Those were already invented with custom FVWM scripts in the 2000's. They are nothing new in the end.
• Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  When I was a teenager, I used to really hate overlapping windows. If I'd known what a tiling window manager was at that time, I probably would have switched. As I've gotten older, I'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't ever want to lose that functionality. I'm not sure what changed.
  • egypturnash 7y ago
    Seeing other things around the edges of your main window reminds you they exist. Reminds you there are other things you need to pay attention to as part of whatever you're busy doing. Maybe teenage you just never did anything complicated enough to need that ambient awareness of other parts of a project.
• egypturnash 7y ago
  "For more, read my blog post 'Window Management is Outdated'". clicks on link to blog post Oh hey that blog post doesn't seem to exist. Nice job. I think I'll stick to the existing windowed interface, thanks. It's designed for a keyboard and a mouse. Which is what I have. Well actually a keyboard and a Wacom tablet, I'm an artist. 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. Also oh god 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't gonna be more hassle than just saving it into the appropriate folder. And then he wants to make it work via gaze tracking and you know I think I'm just done here.
• kamfc 7y 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've come across through multiple projects with creative and cutting-edge UI/UX.
• angleofrepose 7y 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'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. 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'll start with his exasperation at our lack of a real CAD system for programming) > "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]." [1] So lets talk about the interesting features he presented, and do ourselves the service of learning from this work. 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. See the new c2 federated wiki for interesting uses of vertical space and breadcrumbs [2]. 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'm sorry I can't find my source right now). 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. 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'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. 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. 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. [1]: https://youtu.be/fhOHn9TClXY?t=1962 https://youtu.be/fhOHn9TClXY?t=1962 [2]: http://fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors http://fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors E: This thread got a LOT better since I posted and refreshed the page. Thank you all.
• GordonS 7y ago
  "Windows are now inefficient and incompatible with modern productivity interfaces" What?! 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.
  • crazygringo 7y ago
    I think that quote is badly put, but still true. Arbitrarily sizing all four edges of windows and having them overlap (partially visible, partially hidden) is a waste of time. Almost always, you either want to look at a window completely or not at all. And you either want to look at 1 window, or maybe 2 or 3 or 4 and so have them either full-screen or tiled. You generally don't need them overlapping and don't need to show desktop space behind them either. Modern productivity interfaces are mostly all full-sized windows with tabs and sidebars now, not child windows and floating palettes like in 1995 or 2000. (Modal dialog boxes are still needed of course, but I don't think the author means those.)
    • anthk 7y ago
      No one cares about the pseudo modern bullshit. Those interfaces that you mean are more close to the Xeroc Park ironically, than to a modern floating window manager/desktop. It's like the more bullshit of so called modern-Material desktop. FFS, Helvetica and brutalism predate like you like 70 years in design, and Motif/CDE/Windows9x interface got brutalism and FUNCTIONALISM right from the beginning. Material is good for paper-printed books and traffic signs/urban panels, not for a working and interacting device. The same happens with mobile interfaces and Gnome 3: they suck a lot on non-consumer devices. Guess why.
    • GordonS 7y ago
      Many people are using high-res monitors now, which invariably come with software to allow quickly snapping windows to a portion of the screen, creating a grid layout where there is no overlapping, and no desktop space either. This already exists, right now. And I'd say that solutions like the one I describe are better, because they are completely customisable, and I can make windows full screen or minimise them as needed.
• crazygringo 7y ago
  This is a fun design exercise, but a couple things really do stand out to me as useful. First, panels instead of windows -- a thousand times yes, please. Overlapping windows doesn't provide any benefit. Making everything either full-screen or splitting the screen is so much better. There's a reason so much software has moved to tabs and side panels instead of separate windows within the app. Second: > 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 don't like the author's particular solution... but yes the idea of an actual "desktop" folder seems silly and antiquated now. And it'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. If the iOS Files app lets me treat my Google Drive as just another folder... why doesn't Finder? Why do I have to install third-party software for that?
  • cesarb 7y ago
    > Overlapping windows doesn't provide any benefit. Just yesterday, I overlapped a tiny terminal window (resized to be very small and set to "always on top") showing the current disk space ("watch df") over the corner of a larger window which was doing a file transfer. While I agree that non-overlapping panels are better most of the time, sometimes overlapping can be useful. > treat my Google Drive as just another folder That illusion would fail quickly as soon as your network connection dropped. Non-local folders have fundamental differences to local folders and should be treated differently. (Local folders can be assumed to always be present unless manually removed, be fast, and unmetered; non-local folders can disappear and/or change at any time, can be slow and/or vary in speed, and might have a per-megabyte cost.)
    • falcolas 7y ago
      > Overlapping windows doesn't provide any benefit. Another example: Overlapping my work windows over the Slack window. The red "you have new mention" indicator is a poor indicator for determining the importance of the mention; being able to see the channel it occurs in at a glance is very nice for prioritization. There's no real need to see the whole slack window.
• hansdieter1337 7y ago
  I'm still happy with awesome wm :)
• pcunite 7y ago
  hastags instead of folders I understand that a designer might like that, but I don't.
• ilayn 7y ago
  so basically a smartphone streaming to a TV?
• uhhhhhhh 7y ago
  Moving to gestures on a desktop is a productivity nightmare. There is certainly room for improvement, I like the panels window management, with very large/super wide monitors third party solutions are often used to provide similar functionality. Tagging/multi-patch hierarchies over folders could be really really useful, but potentially more of a nightmare if not done really well. 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.
• kryogen1c 7y ago
  My solution to the screenspace problem is, as many good things are, from sysinternals. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/desktops https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/desk... Works with flux and most other apps. Webbrowsers dont work well, but that doesn't bother me much
• Aelius 7y ago
  I was interested until I saw the gestures. I don't have a left hand, I don't have six fingers, guess I'll stick with my mouse. I'm sure this could be adapted for one-hand use, but- and maybe I'm slightly biased, but I think even if I still had two hands I'd prefer interfaces that don't require me to use both to do simple actions.
  • Jaruzel 7y ago
    In the modern design world, there are a lot of assumptions that everyone is able-bodied, and it's getting worse. Whereas, I am able bodied, I'm also left-handed, which is annoying on a daily basis. Ignoring all the real-world issues, touch interfaces are optimised for right-handers. A 'flick' gesture for a right hand, is a 'push' gesture for a left hand, the amount of times a touch screen or touch-pad based OS mis-interprets my badly-done 'flicks' for 'push' and the screen scrolls instead of going back or forward. There are endless issues just like this, all because my finger-profile is mirrored compared to right-handers. If Google enforce the 'pill' navigation on newer Android versions (right now it's an option), I'm going to have to seriously consider switching to iOS, as the 'pill' depends on right-handed 'flicks' to the left to 'Go Back'. Which for left-handers is a 'push' action, and won't be properly recognised.
    • Aelius 7y ago
      Yeah, right now my biggest challenge is VR. I have been able to work around everything else, but VR is increasingly becoming the domain of those with 10 fingers and two wrists. I can play beatsaper by taping the controller to my arm, but the scoring system punishes me for not having a wrist. /sigh Re: pill navigation- I find the navigation bar to be an outdated concept and I don't know why we even still have it at all. I use an app called "edge gestures" to navigate with swipes, and I disabe the system navigation bar. I suggest you try that.
• SquareWheel 7y ago
  I think it's pretty cool. I see no reason why the current desktop paradigm - as used to it as I am - is the pinnacle of efficiency. It's not so different than a tiling window manager, but introduces some unique input methods and a hybrid touch control system that I'd like to try before I judge. 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. Tagging to replace folders isn'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. 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.
• BonesJustice 7y ago
  > No, no, it isn't. Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. Desktop is usually more productive when you're sitting down to work. Desktop is probably not more productive if you're walking down the street or riding a crowded bus or subway. It all comes down to your environment. The mobile UX is optimized for when you're mobile and can't provide the kind of higher-precision input typically required to interact with a desktop UX.
• tomxor 7y ago
  > 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 "Window Management is Outdated". Uuhm [1]: > 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. Tiling window managers were first, and I think I prefer the less bloated offerings already available compared to this. What does this do for productivity that existing tiling managers do not? or is this a mac/windows specific thing. [edit] Yeah this sounds horrible: > Click and hold on the touchpad with one finger to open the context menu wherever you are looking. Then swipe to select an action. How is this better than a right click context menu? it's not, it's a physically slower event, and a UI that is less capable of adapting to it's context due to geometric limitations just cos "CIRCLES". 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#History
• TheRealPomax 7y ago
  What are these tasks that people "switch to mobile devices for" while using their desktop? When I'm working on a desktop, there is literally nothing a mobile device does faster, or more conveniently O_o
• olejorgenb 7y ago
  The tiling mechanics[1] looks very similar to our gnome-shell plugin: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM (we also allow vertical tiling and mixing floating windows) To my knowledge there'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. 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. 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) C|AAB| ^^ <switch to prev window> |CAA|B ^ A tabbed tiling achieve something similar: eg. put A and C in a tabbed frame, but then it's not simple to view A and C at the same time. It'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: |AAB|C ^^ <swap right neighbours> |AAC|B ^^ 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. 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.) We also implement touch-pad gestures to switch workspace and scroll the tiling left/right (only on wayland) [1] https://desktopneo.com/#panels https://desktopneo.com/#panels
• nocman 7y ago
  I think this is a good example of how bad wording in an opening paragraph can turn readers off. Here's what I took from that paragraph: * destop computer interfaces haven't changed much in 30 years -- that is bad * people use smartphones and tablets more than desktop computers -- because they are better * desktop computers should work more like phones/tablets I don'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). IMHO a better approach would be to be less dismissive of "older" technology, and rather simply state that you are exploring an alternative interface, and explain specifically why you think it is better. 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).
  • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    Indeed. It was this line of thinking that got us Windows 8.
• sk221 7y ago
  This looks amazing. I would use this in a heart beat. More specifically, I love: - Full screen for apps - The way panels are sized on a screen The rest seems like it could reasonably work.
• izzydata 7y ago
  I don't like any aspect of this. It's good to revisit this problem every now and then, but I'll stick to my keyboard and mouse with multiple monitors.
• bsmith 7y ago
  > We now use smartphones and tablets most of the time, since they are much easier to use. * since we carry them around with us everywhere.
• nautilus12 7y 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?
• iamleppert 7y 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.
• tarikjn 7y ago
  There is a lot going on, and it definitely feels more like an experiment than design informed by all the relevant human disciplines. 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. 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's the most pressing pain point of modern user interfaces and hardware.
• pard68 7y 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!
• modzu 7y 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) 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). 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!
• lisnake 7y 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
• LifeLiverTransp 7y 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. 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.
• king_magic 7y ago
  "...we have the opportunity to rethink the desktop computer with a focus on getting professional work done." This smacks of someone who is clueless about what real professional work actually entails.
• mises 7y 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't say that to disparaging, and quite like tiling window managers, but don't see this as "rethinking" anything.
  • olejorgenb 7y ago
    Traditional tiling WMs constrain all windows to be visible at the same time, preferring reduced window sizes over window overlap. This mockup also avoids window overlap, but allow window content to overflow the left/right monitor edges. The display becomes a viewport into a much wider tiling.
• TuringTest 7y ago
  Now, where have I seen this before... https://vimeo.com/6712657 https://vimeo.com/6712657
• jaredklewis 7y ago
  Reminds me a lot of 10/GUI http://10gui.com/video/ http://10gui.com/video/
• kn100 7y ago
  This looks a lot like an old concept piece called 10/GUI - I thought it was a cool concept then which is what made me remember. Possible plagiarism? Link: https://youtu.be/tf03YBxCyGI https://youtu.be/tf03YBxCyGI
• eadmund 7y 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!
• 55555 7y ago
  I suddenly really want panels instead of windows and menus on the left side instead of menus on top.
• epynonymous 7y ago
  i like a lot of the concepts in this article, if someone were to build this then i'd be very happy to use it, but they seem more incremental as opposed to game changing, very tactical or utilitarian, it'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. 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. 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's a lot of churn translating from one'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. 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's the interface between man and comouter/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's hand, brain, etc, just like a well built car is an extension if one's foot and hand. kind of what i'm thinking is that we could be walking around with supplemented displays that could be toggled on/off, dont really like the smart glasses, they'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. to me, that'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'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. and ultimately the computer needs to get smarter about understanding our needs, machine learning is a general step in the right direction, but i'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.
• ashton314 7y ago
  I do most of my work in full-screen. (Usually a full-screen terminal.) I feel like it helps me focus. Have there been any studies showing correlation between windowing habits and productivity?
• tambourine_man 7y ago
  I may change my mind in a decade or so, but I don’t understand the appeal of voice interfaces. 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. 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. 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.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• nerd7473 7y ago
  I don't think this is a good idea.
• womplewomplepie 7y ago
  just use tiling window managers migga hahah wtf
• OptionX 7y ago
  This "project" isn't even vaporware, its bellow that. I don't thinks there'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/eye tracking based interfaces at this point in technology. There'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.
• RHSeeger 7y ago
  > Panels use screen space more efficiently and are a more elegant way to multitask than normal windows. 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'm using it.
• m0zg 7y ago
  Productivity is a highly individual thing. By far the most productive environment _for me_ is Vim. Which basically looks nothing whatsoever like this. You're not going to find some silver bullet which will work for everyone.
• enriquto 7y ago
  Does everybody here use a "desktop" ? 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.
• Kaiyou 7y ago
  GUI was a mistake. CLI is the way to go.
• baalimago 7y ago
  I envy those who's primary issue with productivity is making text in a document bold. Getting the stuff done is easy, finding motivation to do so is hard.
• jsilence 7y ago
  Really wish someone would write a tiling window manager based rice to accomplish most of this design study.
• anotheryou 7y ago
  Touch on the desktop is just too much hassle.
• anigbrowl 7y ago
  Looks like the happy marriage of DesqView and Markdown. I'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.
• rj5 7y ago
  This looks really good! I’m curious how good the eye tracking works in practice though.