I’m going to re-imagine, re-design, re-think, the whole Haiku Experience.
I’ve been working on this for a couple of days, I’m a UX designer, that used to be in love with BeOS.
Let me know if this forum is still alive 
Cheers
How can you ‘used’ to be in love with BeOS?? Seriously, let’s see what ideas you have.
The ‘desktop experience’ seems to work very well as it stands today and the aesthetic of the user-interface appeals to me as it is currently too.
Lets see what you got in mind.
What are you a UX designer on?
Glad to see there’s interest. I’m still polishing the idea, the icons and the interaction.
The starting point, Haiku has the interaction heritage from BeOS and after November 2001 the User experience hasn’t changed at all and we are talking 12 years which is a century in technology-years. (because it works fine is not an answer, that kind of thinking stops innovation)
Premises.
- Desktop computer industry is dying and that’s a fact shown by sales that are shrinking 10 years in a row.
- Applications run the brave-new world.
- Social is very important to users, 1.6 Billion people that uses social networking are proof of that.
- Windows management and overlapping windows are confusing to new-users and come on it’s 1980’s technology.
- Filesystem and archives should be handle by applications and not by folders.
- Minimalism is the ultimate goal.
- Let’s get Haiku to new users
Recommendations
- I would love to have Haiku on my Mac but why should I install other OS since OS X runs great and have tons of Applications? There’s no value.
Answer: Performance/ease of use, I would install and use Haiku if I could get better performance than OS X or Windows for that matter, one way of doing it is by making Haiku, Single task oriented, meaning that Haiku will run a single application fast-as-hell and let the other apps on Stand-by waiting for the user to activate it.
Which means, having a push notifications on a Desktop OS to increase performance.
And people without internet wont use their computers thats another fact.
Why should we do this?
Look at the consoles why a 7 year old hardware are still on sale, because they handle one task very well.
This are just a few of many, which I think it’s enough for me to know the position of Haiku core-team in terms of listening to ideas.
There are many ideas, but I’m gonna leave it for now.
Just in case, here’s my profile.
http://cl.linkedin.com/in/calelares/
Fell free to post your ideas, but i don’t accept most of your premises.
"Windows management and overlapping windows are confusing to new-users and come on it’s 1980’s technology."
Most Amiga software was single screen style app, it did not helped much the platform. It does not help consistency.
Desktop computing dying is related to the good enough hardware. If software solutions start to max out computing power again, it will pick up again.
Social is very important to users. Perhaps to some, for me motor controls is. To each his own view. That is why the PCs were successful they are general purpose machine.
“Filesystem and archives should be handle by applications and not by folders.” Is it now already like that? The quitrequested() function and the file dialog windows?
“Single task oriented”, hard to tell if you are trolling here.
"push notifications"
We have the Messagerecieved() function and BMessage already. And no, an app in the back ground don’t always use your cpu. The ram need to be refreshed anyway, that it contain a string or 0 or the app data. Axing multitasking is just wanting to have no legs because it will be faster and take less water to take a bath. In fact i want LOT more multitasking, if you don’t then don’t even bother to stick with Haiku, you would be better served by another OS. Following your premise, the Atari ST OS would be a good starting point to do what you want (the Amiga OS already multi-task too well for your goals).
Cool,
For example “general-purpuse” ? How many 3rd party applications does Haiku have, or users for that matter?
Maybe for amiga OS didn’t work but two other modern platform seem to be doing pretty well like this.
Apps downloads hit record high in last week of December- ( Just one week 1.2 Billion downloads)
I didn’t agree with most of your points.
I would love to know if that’s the position of the whole haiku core-team?
Cheers.
Hard to say how many use haiku. The IRC channel is around 110 on average. I personally still use R5 because i still have sound issue while moving windows around, so many may still lurk without using it and many may use it without ever being on IRC.
I never counter the apps, i would say around 300. But more if you count the possible SLD and QT ports.
I know a lot of app are being sold, but so are potatoes, does that mean Haiku should start to buy land and cultivate potatoes? You need to have focus.
The core team is probably on my side in the sense that what you suggest is too radically different from Haiku that it would just not be haiku anymore. I assume many could trash the Desktop metaphor but i doubt anyone would want to trow away a workstation capability to downscale to the type of app you are referring to.
If you want to develop an app store and apps with haiku as a base, you are free to do it, nothing prevent a programmer from doing so.
So, Here’s the first iteration of the re-imagined Haiku.
On the lock screen we have a quick-view of the Haiku look & feel UI.
Home screen, getting rid of the “desktop” where your apps take over the home use.
This is how applications are on stand-by or in cryogenic-mode waiting to be activated by the user or updated by a push notification.
I was going to continue making the notification screen and the full-screen app views, but let me know first if I should.
Cheers.
It does not look “bad”. Some critic i have is that it waste a lot of screen estate. The second screen is not much different than a normal desktop fixed on a grid (you even have a trash). Did you not say data should be handled by app, if so why the docs icon?
Without windows, how do you compare the content of 2 apps?
How are the apps supposed to communicate if in hibernation when not used, an internal push server?
The following quoted comment pretty much sums up my view …
Re: Quick take on Haiku…
by Earl Colby Pottinger - 2012-12-19 20:43
My beef, is every time someone suggests making the UI prettier that they never explain how these extra work will benefit the users (ie. people like me).
What use are extra effects that will cost the developers time and effort if you can’t show an improvement beyond looks? Some appearance improvements can speed up user interactions, but most times I just seen useless pretty fluff being asked for.
Please, all you UI designers out there, think of things that are real advances to the human <-> computer interface instead of following the fashions of the day.
Docs = Google Docs / word document, Pages documents.
Trash = works as an undo for deleted apps.
Keep in mind this is a fresh install, so there are many apps that should in be there on the home screen. clean space so the user could easily use and pick their app.
The apps should handle the files and folders.
Because this is what happen to most “desktops” or filesystems out there, cluttered/messy and studies have shown that this is where the learning curve for users goes up exponentially.
<img src=“http://www.ampercent.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/post/desktop-clutter.png”
" alt=“Clutter” height=“291” width=“400”>
Haiku apps could have three Status/View.
1- closed (icon at the home)
2- switching (cryogenic mode)
3- full-screen (app running)
4- Optional for some apps ( could be by merging two apps in the cryogenic mode ( that Haiku allows to run) the two at the same time to collaborate. But comparing two content could be done by the cryogenic snapshot as well side by side.
An internal OS push service could work at minimizing the CPU cycles. But I think a internet Haiku-push-server would work best.
Keep in mind battery life, if Haiku runs “just one” dedicated app at the time, the battery of a laptop could last for way more hours.
Just imagine for example the browser app, surfing the web for 10 hours straight in battery life or maybe more 
Or a webApp like Google speadsheets, Youtube Or maybe a Design App, a coding App, you name it. With such perfomance that there won’t be a need for an activity monitor or task monitor to know what app is sucking CPU cycles and the longevity in battery life will be a wonderful value.
This is how I think push the notifications should work. Take a look.
I won’t say this is downscaling it, but it sure is a big pivot and in my humble opinion a way of making Haiku programming way more easy to update. Since its (downscaling it)
I just imagine booting Haiku in 2 seconds. And boom haha!
Cheers
[quote=mmadia]The following quoted comment pretty much sums up my view …
Re: Quick take on Haiku…
by Earl Colby Pottinger - 2012-12-19 20:43
My beef, is every time someone suggests making the UI prettier that they never explain how these extra work will benefit the users (ie. people like me).
What use are extra effects that will cost the developers time and effort if you can’t show an improvement beyond looks? Some appearance improvements can speed up user interactions, but most times I just seen useless pretty fluff being asked for.
Please, all you UI designers out there, think of things that are real advances to the human <-> computer interface instead of following the fashions of the day.
----------------------------------------[/quote]
I’m a User experience designer.
So, design is not only how it looks its how it works.
And this is not fashion of the day, you need to accept the fact that Haiku is way behind in user experience.
I won’t say / quote
“To all developers out there to stop focusing on technology of the code and start focusing on the real value that those lines of codes are going to bring to the human and not only to developers to tell their buddies, look how cool my code is”
But let me repeat it, I’m not gonna say that kinda thing.
I just answered a few of the questions before, and how we can really benefit the end-user, and I don’t appreciate the attitude nor the quote.
If you have questions about the benefits just ask.
So no harm done, let us keep the conversation clean and trash-talk free.
Cheers
I’m a User experience designer.’
Maybe you need to re-think your career.
The user interface you are showing would be a complete failure on the desktop. The experiance from the current HAIKU user interface is clean, quick, and efficient. The idea of apps owning your files is contrary to how HAIKU works. For example, one may open an email in one of many email clients, or in a text editor or maybe an html browser. The file is your data, and does not belong to an application.
You don’t seem to know Haiku or BeOS well at all… otherwise you would realise how offensive your ideas are. They are anti Desktop and anti multitasking… which are a pretty big deal for anyone really into BeOS… Otherwise they’d just use Android Win Mac…
Btw google docs isn’t usable for any real world documents … its a shame anyone would even bring it up unless there where pretty desperate or loved collaborating. But even then you end up copying your text out to format it nicely into a real editor.
Perhaps I should just be blunt with you. Forcing a STUPID interface on the user… is not helping. It is also extremely arrogant to think that you know better than all the users have you ever surveyed anyone to see what they really think. It is also quite obvious that you haven’t given much though to the UI improvements Haiku has implemented … and there are several that aren’t commonly found on any other OS. So to say that Haiku is behinds the times is quite disingenuous seeing as it has recently been used in real research and development in state of the art Desktop user interface design. Might not be pretty in every regard but the design is solid.
[quote=cb88]You don’t seem to know Haiku or BeOS well at all… otherwise you would realise how offensive your ideas are. They are anti Desktop and anti multitasking… which are a pretty big deal for anyone really into BeOS… Otherwise they’d just use Android Win Mac…
Btw google docs isn’t usable for any real world documents … its a shame anyone would even bring it up unless there where pretty desperate or loved collaborating. But even then you end up copying your text out to format it nicely into a real editor.
Perhaps I should just be blunt with you. Forcing a STUPID interface on the user… is not helping. It is also extremely arrogant to think that you know better than all the users have you ever surveyed anyone to see what they really think. It is also quite obvious that you haven’t given much though to the UI improvements Haiku has implemented … and there are several that aren’t commonly found on any other OS. So to say that Haiku is behinds the times is quite disingenuous seeing as it has recently been used in real research and development in state of the art Desktop user interface design. Might not be pretty in every regard but the design is solid.[/quote]
Cool I won’t bother then. There’s no need to insult, a lot of rage there.
Ill take down my designs, because somehow they are giving you the middle finger apparently. No need to explain further the premises of the design.
According to you there’s apparently no room here for questioning the bases. Because that’s “offensive”
Maybe Haiku will always belong to a lab and thats fine, maybe not to a general public, it might be there my mistake to think so…
But your rage tells me that I’m in the right direction and I hit a nerve.
And btw that’s all they are, just proposals / iterations. Keep it cool student.
Anyways.
Cheers.
The statement was to rethink.
If you’re happy on how it works, or if you feel insulted, my bad, that’s the failure on my part which I’m not afraid to fail at all.
Innovation is a bunch of experimental errors until you finally crack it.
Like Edison said. I didn’t fail 10.000 times I found 10.000 ways how not to make a lightbulb.
I’ll just stop bothering, continuing on this particular matter. If I shouldn’t, ping me and let me know. I’ll be more than happy to help.
Cheers.
The statement was to rethink.
If you’re happy on how it works, or if you feel insulted, my bad, that’s the failure on my part which I’m not afraid to fail at all.
Innovation is a bunch of experimental errors until you finally crack it.
Like Edison said. I didn’t fail 10.000 times I found 10.000 ways how not to make a lightbulb.
I’ll just stop bothering, continuing on this particular matter. If I shouldn’t, ping me and let me know. I’ll be more than happy to help.
Cheers.
Common, taking down your concept after a day because of a few critical comments? What did you have in mind, when coming here and showing Haiku users your radical re-imagination and asking for feedback? Seems you are not used to criticism. I don’t think Edison would have succeeded if he was as thin-skinned as you.
It’s not that Haiku users are unwilling to experiment (I assume, because of the advances that are already in Haiku over BeOS), it’s just that you fail to explain how your design is any better than the many others who drop by from time to time and present something “radically new” that’s really just “radiaclly dumbed down”. Try to keep in mind that Haiku is not trying to be just another Hipster touch-and-smear OS, but a heritage to a classic, “real”, and powerful desktop OS. Taking multi tasking out of that equation is like taking the motor from a motorbike. What you get is a bycicle that’s too heavy to pedal … and has no pedals.
Anyways, although I’m in favor of the majority of the other opinions here, I would have liked to see your design. After all Edison didn’t succeed by stopping to try after the first failure.