I’m a fan of the idea of using WebKit as rendering engine in Desktop Environment which would enable simple applet development theming. Woot woot! Gnome3 has this AFAIK.
However anybody who suggests a Mac OS/Win 7 (default) style application bar should be stabbed in the face with a rusty fork. It simply isn’t usable – it’s nothing more than the product of bad UI designers masturbating.
I don’t mind the classic Windows/KDE/Gnome2 style application bar. It works well. Also, being able to mouse over a stack of windows associated with an application and see the thumbnails is cool and usable. I would start here and then continue onto something fancier when compositing is available…
I would replace the application bar with an application area (activated by gesture/key-press) which does away with the restrictions enforced by the linear bar metaphor and allows for much more visual feedback on application states/statuses and application management features.
One thing that may become developed enough in the near future, on Windows and Mac OS, is speech recognition. Wndows 7 has speech recognition now but mostly you have to remember specific phrases to operate the desktop GUI.
It might be preferable not only for sight impaired people but most people know how tired the eyes can get over a long period. Imagine if you did not have to sit in one position over a long period also. Just stand up in the office or whatever room and speak in the computers direction, if you only had to dictate to one application for example. Other times it might still be necessary been close up, when opening/closing applications or gaming etc.
Of course speech recognition as it is with a lot of current user experience, can be frustrating when having to repeat something over many times (if a good microphone won’t solve the problem).
In the near future it may really catch on though.
With that in mind how about a desktop GUI, that would give feedback to the user as he/she spoke commands. If a application was fullscreen and covered the Taskbar/Deskbar, just speak “show Desktop” or “show Taskbar”. It might also be possible to dispense with the Taskbar/Deskbar and just speak; “open Abiword”, or “find word processing applications”. A tracker window would open showing a list of found applications. It should not be neseccary for these phrases to always be the same for the same commands, when AI techniques are implemented. So a user would not have to remember a list of phrase style for opening applications, although this would not be a lot of trouble to do. Since we have to remember from a visual GUI what sequence of mouse/keyboard moves gets a certain task done.
Here is an example of how good speech recognition might be, even now:
This is used in a virtual agent. It is proprietary software though. I don’t know if there is any open source equivalent or anyone skilled in that to develop for Haiku. After R1 or R2 this may be more practicable.
I think what sets Haiku apart is it’s current desktop. I think if in the future the Haiku desktop uses KDE or Gnome or whatever similar clone is out there that we retain the current Haiku layout for those who like the nostalgia or like it the way it is. I’m not sure if I speak for others but I’m a really big fan of the current desktop.
i agree with darkwym, we are here becouse we love design of haiku. look to linux today… when you have installed kde4 desktop there are gtk2, gtk3 diferrent apps with themes, when you have installed xfce then you must use hybrid gtk2 / gtk3 theme for unity theme. windows will have metro becouse microsoft likes UI from Xbox360, nothing alse. i thing this will be microsoft fail like Vista…
another think to support haiku is haiku API. haiku like Mac OS have uniform API. and for example QT4 apps from qt-haiku.ru looks like haiku native apps…
only one feature what is tracker missing is pictures preview in file browser (something like have Album app)
Please, please, pretty please DO NOT copy from Linux GUI there are a very bad example of GUIs they are NOT ergonomic in any way…
I f you WANT to copy copy the good GUI Apple OS-X and Yes Windows there is a motivation behind that “Start” menu, right? What is program system and so on ? And on top, too?
And please, again, NEVER think to HTML to design an OS GUI… the only good way in which HTML works in an empty page with a JAVA applet :-)))