8 ms·

I also like the look of Haiku/BeOS, but to me it looks a lot like Apple Platinum from Mac OS 8 and 9: https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/39579

by mdasen 6y ago

I also like the look of Haiku/BeOS, but to me it looks a lot like Apple Platinum from Mac OS 8 and 9: https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3ce39de8d4e8e2b489a2a93880-780x585.jpg https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3.... I'm curious what you like about it. I personally miss a lot of design things that have fallen out of style. On Windows, it feels like everything is blindingly white/soft grey with no texture or borders to help my eyes focus. Transparency is used without regard for its utility. Instead of using borders, they use space which ends up wasting a lot of screen real-estate. The differentiation between active and background window is very subtle. macOS has many of the same issues. Scroll bars aren't shown unless you're scrolling. You can change this behavior, but still. Background windows are hard to differentiate from foreground windows. Transparency is used for seemingly no reason. That said, macOS does offer better design queues than Windows 10. The macOS finder will use a slightly different color for the left panel than the main work area. Windows 10 uses the same white for both areas drawing focus as if they're equal. Buttons in macOS have a very subtle bump out to show that they're buttons vs just being completely flat. There are usually small borders between things. Take this screenshot: https://thehacktoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/screenshot-folder.png https://thehacktoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/screensh.... There's no border between the back/forward/up buttons and the content below. Everything is the same white. Clickable items have no real indication that they're buttons. macOS: https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import-music-in-macos-catalina-finder-1.jpg https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import-m.... You can see more clear demarcations. Buttons clearly stick out a little, the left panel is a different color with a tiny border, the title bar is a different color with a gradient, etc. Haiku's design harkens back to a day when we demarcated things. Haiku's active windows are yellow while background windows are grey (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS...). This makes it instantly clear what is the top window. There are borders on everything and a subtle beveled effect. Is that the kind of stuff that you like about Haiku's UI? Is it something els?

kingnight 6y ago
That Windows screenshot really is chaos. I would love to hear a defense of that design because I am missing any merit to it.
- 1_player 6y ago
  There's no defense. Might be harsh, but whoever is directing Windows' UI and UX department needs to be moved elsewhere, to say the least. Windows 10 might have the worst looking UI paradigm I've seen since I've started with DOS computers in the 90s. That's not even style over function. It's just pure blandness. Greys and flat whites everywhere. * Why does the title bar have a folder icon, some unknown icon and the same folder icon again? What does the dropdown arrow icon represent? * What's all that whitespace in the folder tree? * What's that down arrow next to the "forward" button? Oh and there's one next to the help icon, what does that do? * Why is "Picture Tools" in highlighted yellow in the ribbon? Is that the most important thing a user needs to be aware of? The whole Windows 10 UI is full of non-sensical UI decisions that result in a confusing, grey experience. And it's not like Microsoft isn't capable of good UIs, they've done a great job from at least Windows 95 to Windows 7. Then they've just dropped the ball hard.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    It's for touching and swiping on surfaces with fatty fingers. Jurassic mousepushers and nippletwisters are out of fashion.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      You didn't get the memo, did you? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
  - voltagex_ 6y ago
    > Why is "Picture Tools" in highlighted yellow in the ribbon? Is that the most important thing a user needs to be aware of? You're specifically in the "Pictures" library / folder and the only files in the folder are image files.
gjvc 6y ago
"cues"
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
I agree with all your points. But worth pointing out that BeOS predates Mac OS 8 and 9. Not sure if there's a line of influence between the two, but uthere's definitely a 1990s 'demarcated' design; not just with colour but with simple visual elements. And attention to physical placement. Windows 95 made a strange choice when it placed the 'close' button next to minimize/maximize, making it entirely possible to close-by-accident. OS X then strangely threw away the classic Mac positioning and adopted something like Windows, and made this worse by choosing in its first versions to make the function of the buttons unclear until the mouse moved over them. I really enjoyed Sun's "OpenLook" design back in the day: http://toastytech.com/guis/ow2default.png http://toastytech.com/guis/ow2default.png Minimalist while not being spartan or unclear.Skeuomorphism but not overdone.
- rzzzt 6y ago
  As an easter egg, BeOS R5 allowed you to change window decorations to Mac OS 8 style (among others - see the last screenshot on the page): http://toastytech.com/guis/b5pe2.html http://toastytech.com/guis/b5pe2.html
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > Windows 95 made a strange choice when it placed the 'close' button next to minimize/maximize, making it entirely possible to close-by-accident. OS X then strangely threw away the classic Mac positioning and adopted something like Windows, and made this worse by choosing in its first versions to make the function of the buttons unclear until the mouse moved over them. I think your argument against positioning them together is valid, but the reason in favor is also relatively obvious: similar actions should be grouped together. Close, minimize, and maximize all control the position of the window. On OS X, putting them together also allowed Apple to introduce a quite clever and effective traffic light metaphor. Red closes the window, yellow moves it out of the way temporarily, and green gives it full focus.
  - JonathonW 6y ago
    FWIW, green used to do something completely different than it does today (make a window full-screen)— it was the (somewhat poorly named) “zoom” button and, in a properly-functioning Mac app, resized the window to fit its contents. Its functionality gradually shifted towards a more Windows-like “maximize” over the years as more cross-platform apps moved onto the platform and apps that don’t have an explicit content size (like web browsers) proliferated, but the original implementation didn’t really have the strong connection to the traffic light metaphor you describe. It was more of a “red closes the window, yellow moves it out of the way, and green resizes it randomly in a way that may or may not actually be what you want”. (I don’t recall whether or not this made it out of beta or not, but early OSX builds at least also had a persistent “ focus mode” button in window title bars— a button off by itself at the far right would shift into a single-window mode and hide everything else.)
rakoo 6y ago
I blame flat design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_design) Before flat design the pseudo-3d visual we had was giving us helpful visual clues with the desktop metaphor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphor). We knew we had different containers, those containers had a header and content, the header contained buttons, etc... All of this was clearly visible. Flat design supposes we are already used to this and simplifies the UI to make it look cleaner. In the process we lose all the cues we had before and have to guess where things start and where they end. We've always mocked our elders for not understanding computers, not knowing where the firefox window ends and where the taskbar starts, but now with flat design we're in the same situation. There's no depth, no indication that anything is actionable, no clear demarcation. It would have been ok if it didn't still follow the desktop metaphor: I find this much more acceptable on mobile for example, but it's not working well on desktops.
- dnautics 6y ago
  to be fair before flat design came I remember there was an extreme skeuomorphism trend, that flat was a response to. It's also not like totally flat is terrible, one could imagine an effective LCARS-like UI (and I'm sure, many of us dream of it still).
  - badsectoracula 6y ago
    I've read about that extreme skeuomorphism trend before as a response for the flat design, but i think it is largely exaggerated. Outside of some Apple applications in macOS getting a leather skin or whatever for a single macOS version and getting mocked for it, there hasn't been much of a trend for unnecessary skeuomorphism on the desktop. The worst i can think of were some device driver utilities taking themability to unnecessary extremes (i remember the Windows 9x drivers for an old scanner i had using... animated AVIs of opening/closing wooden windows, for some reason :-P) but those were very rare outliers, not a trend.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
charlesdaniels 6y ago
I agree with the general sentiment of what you're saying. If I had to narrow it down to something more specific: * The UI seems very compact, the buttons/widgets are no larger than they need to be, as compared to Windows 10 and GNOME 3. I would say modern macOS also does a decent job here. The compactness is valuable for small screens for obvious reasons, and is also valuable for large screens since you can fit a lot more stuff on them. And it sounds like with this release, you can set different scaling factors, so everyone can be happy. * The intractable widgets are clearly demarcated from the rest. As you point out in many modern UIs, it's very difficult to tell what is a button and what isn't. I actually think GNOME 3's Adwaita (as much as I like to rip on GNOME for what I consider to be good reasons) does a good job in that department. In the final screenshot in your comment, it is very clear even without being familiar with the specific programs what can be clicked on, and you have a good expectation of what's going to happen. With Windows 10 and modern macOS, it's only clear if you are familiar with the specific programs being shown. I also like macOS 8 and 9 a lot from a UI design perspective, though I have read enough about their underlying architecture to know that maybe I wouldn't want to actually use them. Context: I'm just starting out as a graduate student. My first PC ran Vista, then I went to Windows 7, 8, then to Linux, a brief stint on macOS, and I've been bouncing between Linux and BSD since then. I've tried about every "modern" UI under the sun and most of them suck.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  The GNOME3 philosophy is that applications should be touch ready, without the developer having to do anything special to ensure this. When you are aware of this, the "oversized" widgets and header bars actually make a ton of sense. It would be nice to have a "compact" mode for the benefit of sophisticated users running on a non-touch platform, but it should always be under user control and 100% optional.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    The thing is that at this point few people use Linux on an actually touch first device at this point although more may do so in the future. Of interest I suppose are the pinephone, https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ coming pinetab https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ and of course the Librem 5 Here is a video of gnome + pinetab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53h_uQ41Ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53h_uQ41Ao Window management seems usable. You can see the utility of a whole screen launcher and targets are big enough to hit and indeed it does look usable but it still looks like its mostly using your finger as a not that great mouse as opposed to being touch first. It also looks like it wouldn't work if it were shrunk down much smaller than the 10" here. Another issue I see where for example windows handles the case a LOT better is automatically popping up a virtual keyboard when input is expected. I believe this is supposed to work with gnome apps when run under gnome but a pervasive standard solution would be welcome as well as a better on screen keyboard on par with something like swiftkey.
michaelgrafl 6y ago
I think aesthetics are an important aspect of GUI design, since it has such a big impact on the emotional state of the user. But if it starts to interfere with readability then no amount of visual craftmanship can make up for it. I really think contemporary design is driven by a fear of being uglier than the next guy, to an extent where a lot of proven ideas have been thrown out with the bath water instead of being iteratively improved upon.

by mdasen 6y ago

kingnight 6y ago

That Windows screenshot really is chaos. I would love to hear a defense of that design because I am missing any merit to it.

1_player 6y ago
There's no defense. Might be harsh, but whoever is directing Windows' UI and UX department needs to be moved elsewhere, to say the least. Windows 10 might have the worst looking UI paradigm I've seen since I've started with DOS computers in the 90s. That's not even style over function. It's just pure blandness. Greys and flat whites everywhere. * Why does the title bar have a folder icon, some unknown icon and the same folder icon again? What does the dropdown arrow icon represent? * What's all that whitespace in the folder tree? * What's that down arrow next to the "forward" button? Oh and there's one next to the help icon, what does that do? * Why is "Picture Tools" in highlighted yellow in the ribbon? Is that the most important thing a user needs to be aware of? The whole Windows 10 UI is full of non-sensical UI decisions that result in a confusing, grey experience. And it's not like Microsoft isn't capable of good UIs, they've done a great job from at least Windows 95 to Windows 7. Then they've just dropped the ball hard.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  It's for touching and swiping on surfaces with fatty fingers. Jurassic mousepushers and nippletwisters are out of fashion.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    You didn't get the memo, did you? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
- voltagex_ 6y ago
  > Why is "Picture Tools" in highlighted yellow in the ribbon? Is that the most important thing a user needs to be aware of? You're specifically in the "Pictures" library / folder and the only files in the folder are image files.

gjvc 6y ago

"cues"

cmrdporcupine 6y ago

I agree with all your points. But worth pointing out that BeOS predates Mac OS 8 and 9. Not sure if there's a line of influence between the two, but uthere's definitely a 1990s 'demarcated' design; not just with colour but with simple visual elements. And attention to physical placement. Windows 95 made a strange choice when it placed the 'close' button next to minimize/maximize, making it entirely possible to close-by-accident. OS X then strangely threw away the classic Mac positioning and adopted something like Windows, and made this worse by choosing in its first versions to make the function of the buttons unclear until the mouse moved over them. I really enjoyed Sun's "OpenLook" design back in the day: http://toastytech.com/guis/ow2default.png http://toastytech.com/guis/ow2default.png Minimalist while not being spartan or unclear.Skeuomorphism but not overdone.

rzzzt 6y ago
As an easter egg, BeOS R5 allowed you to change window decorations to Mac OS 8 style (among others - see the last screenshot on the page): http://toastytech.com/guis/b5pe2.html http://toastytech.com/guis/b5pe2.html
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> Windows 95 made a strange choice when it placed the 'close' button next to minimize/maximize, making it entirely possible to close-by-accident. OS X then strangely threw away the classic Mac positioning and adopted something like Windows, and made this worse by choosing in its first versions to make the function of the buttons unclear until the mouse moved over them. I think your argument against positioning them together is valid, but the reason in favor is also relatively obvious: similar actions should be grouped together. Close, minimize, and maximize all control the position of the window. On OS X, putting them together also allowed Apple to introduce a quite clever and effective traffic light metaphor. Red closes the window, yellow moves it out of the way temporarily, and green gives it full focus.
- JonathonW 6y ago
  FWIW, green used to do something completely different than it does today (make a window full-screen)— it was the (somewhat poorly named) “zoom” button and, in a properly-functioning Mac app, resized the window to fit its contents. Its functionality gradually shifted towards a more Windows-like “maximize” over the years as more cross-platform apps moved onto the platform and apps that don’t have an explicit content size (like web browsers) proliferated, but the original implementation didn’t really have the strong connection to the traffic light metaphor you describe. It was more of a “red closes the window, yellow moves it out of the way, and green resizes it randomly in a way that may or may not actually be what you want”. (I don’t recall whether or not this made it out of beta or not, but early OSX builds at least also had a persistent “ focus mode” button in window title bars— a button off by itself at the far right would shift into a single-window mode and hide everything else.)

rakoo 6y ago

I blame flat design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_design) Before flat design the pseudo-3d visual we had was giving us helpful visual clues with the desktop metaphor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphor). We knew we had different containers, those containers had a header and content, the header contained buttons, etc... All of this was clearly visible. Flat design supposes we are already used to this and simplifies the UI to make it look cleaner. In the process we lose all the cues we had before and have to guess where things start and where they end. We've always mocked our elders for not understanding computers, not knowing where the firefox window ends and where the taskbar starts, but now with flat design we're in the same situation. There's no depth, no indication that anything is actionable, no clear demarcation. It would have been ok if it didn't still follow the desktop metaphor: I find this much more acceptable on mobile for example, but it's not working well on desktops.

dnautics 6y ago
to be fair before flat design came I remember there was an extreme skeuomorphism trend, that flat was a response to. It's also not like totally flat is terrible, one could imagine an effective LCARS-like UI (and I'm sure, many of us dream of it still).
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  I've read about that extreme skeuomorphism trend before as a response for the flat design, but i think it is largely exaggerated. Outside of some Apple applications in macOS getting a leather skin or whatever for a single macOS version and getting mocked for it, there hasn't been much of a trend for unnecessary skeuomorphism on the desktop. The worst i can think of were some device driver utilities taking themability to unnecessary extremes (i remember the Windows 9x drivers for an old scanner i had using... animated AVIs of opening/closing wooden windows, for some reason :-P) but those were very rare outliers, not a trend.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago

charlesdaniels 6y ago

I agree with the general sentiment of what you're saying. If I had to narrow it down to something more specific: * The UI seems very compact, the buttons/widgets are no larger than they need to be, as compared to Windows 10 and GNOME 3. I would say modern macOS also does a decent job here. The compactness is valuable for small screens for obvious reasons, and is also valuable for large screens since you can fit a lot more stuff on them. And it sounds like with this release, you can set different scaling factors, so everyone can be happy. * The intractable widgets are clearly demarcated from the rest. As you point out in many modern UIs, it's very difficult to tell what is a button and what isn't. I actually think GNOME 3's Adwaita (as much as I like to rip on GNOME for what I consider to be good reasons) does a good job in that department. In the final screenshot in your comment, it is very clear even without being familiar with the specific programs what can be clicked on, and you have a good expectation of what's going to happen. With Windows 10 and modern macOS, it's only clear if you are familiar with the specific programs being shown. I also like macOS 8 and 9 a lot from a UI design perspective, though I have read enough about their underlying architecture to know that maybe I wouldn't want to actually use them. Context: I'm just starting out as a graduate student. My first PC ran Vista, then I went to Windows 7, 8, then to Linux, a brief stint on macOS, and I've been bouncing between Linux and BSD since then. I've tried about every "modern" UI under the sun and most of them suck.

zozbot234 6y ago
The GNOME3 philosophy is that applications should be touch ready, without the developer having to do anything special to ensure this. When you are aware of this, the "oversized" widgets and header bars actually make a ton of sense. It would be nice to have a "compact" mode for the benefit of sophisticated users running on a non-touch platform, but it should always be under user control and 100% optional.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  The thing is that at this point few people use Linux on an actually touch first device at this point although more may do so in the future. Of interest I suppose are the pinephone, https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ coming pinetab https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ and of course the Librem 5 Here is a video of gnome + pinetab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53h_uQ41Ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53h_uQ41Ao Window management seems usable. You can see the utility of a whole screen launcher and targets are big enough to hit and indeed it does look usable but it still looks like its mostly using your finger as a not that great mouse as opposed to being touch first. It also looks like it wouldn't work if it were shrunk down much smaller than the 10" here. Another issue I see where for example windows handles the case a LOT better is automatically popping up a virtual keyboard when input is expected. I believe this is supposed to work with gnome apps when run under gnome but a pervasive standard solution would be welcome as well as a better on screen keyboard on par with something like swiftkey.

michaelgrafl 6y ago

I think aesthetics are an important aspect of GUI design, since it has such a big impact on the emotional state of the user. But if it starts to interfere with readability then no amount of visual craftmanship can make up for it. I really think contemporary design is driven by a fear of being uglier than the next guy, to an extent where a lot of proven ideas have been thrown out with the bath water instead of being iteratively improved upon.