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I long for the days of early MacOS X where there was no maximize and the green button just optimized the size of the window to its contents. The days of tear-of

by donatj 2y ago

I long for the days of early MacOS X where there was no maximize and the green button just optimized the size of the window to its contents. The days of tear-off tools where I could pull toolbars and menus out into their own windows and just build a little workspace for the exact task I was working on. The maximized single window of Windows stood in stark contrast to MacOS X’s floating windows. I came from Windows, and it took time for my brain to buy in but when it did I tell you, true productivity awaited in a way we are direly missing. Nothing makes me sadder in life than seeing someone using an ultra wide with a maximized browser where the contents take the center 8th of the screen.

kkfx 2y ago
Did you try just seeing Plan 9 GUIs? They do more than what you ask and better, you do not need to "pull out toolbars", you simply create them typing functions names in a relevant place. Try Pharo and you'll see and even powerful model, the UI is just an element to makes the text active and user-programmable for anyone. If you think about them you'll realize why the widget GUI model can't be an answer, it try to offer "some" flexibility, but can't be enough, trying to avoid the need of an acculturated user, well, the acculturate user is not an issue, it's a target. We MUST form them, because IT is the nervous system of our society. We should stop making Ford model workers as a kind of dumb-terminal meat-based robots, we must craft people, humans who bend their desktops to their needs. You can't create anything like that up front, you need empowered end users. The current old mac model is rubbish today since we are in the era of WebApps, and we are there because we need DocUIs, and the current WebUIs are not flexible enough on the user side, and that's why we start again NotebookUI and alike, modern 2D CLIs, trying to deny we need end user programming while we slowly push it again. Old Mac like modern Gnome SHell want just to be at the center for narcissistic business purposes.
- ropejumper 2y ago
  > Plan 9 GUIs Mostly just Acme, though. The others are kind of mediocre and don't have this mechanism. Oberon does implement something like this system-wide, and iirc that was the inspiration for Acme.

by donatj 2y ago

kkfx 2y ago

Did you try just seeing Plan 9 GUIs? They do more than what you ask and better, you do not need to "pull out toolbars", you simply create them typing functions names in a relevant place. Try Pharo and you'll see and even powerful model, the UI is just an element to makes the text active and user-programmable for anyone. If you think about them you'll realize why the widget GUI model can't be an answer, it try to offer "some" flexibility, but can't be enough, trying to avoid the need of an acculturated user, well, the acculturate user is not an issue, it's a target. We MUST form them, because IT is the nervous system of our society. We should stop making Ford model workers as a kind of dumb-terminal meat-based robots, we must craft people, humans who bend their desktops to their needs. You can't create anything like that up front, you need empowered end users. The current old mac model is rubbish today since we are in the era of WebApps, and we are there because we need DocUIs, and the current WebUIs are not flexible enough on the user side, and that's why we start again NotebookUI and alike, modern 2D CLIs, trying to deny we need end user programming while we slowly push it again. Old Mac like modern Gnome SHell want just to be at the center for narcissistic business purposes.

ropejumper 2y ago
> Plan 9 GUIs Mostly just Acme, though. The others are kind of mediocre and don't have this mechanism. Oberon does implement something like this system-wide, and iirc that was the inspiration for Acme.