all standards are subjective. also, every suggestion you’ve made is something created by those same professionals in order to market touchscreen tablets and smartphones.
As much as I’d like a complete visual overhaul of both the OS and the website myself, it is extremely low on the list of things that need to be done (as it should be). What’s the point of having a beautiful OS if it isn’t complete? I’m with you on this point, but I still think we’re at least 6 months away from any significant aesthetic changes.
And when it comes to the browser, PulkoMandy has already done a considerable amount of work on getting Web+ up to par with other major browsers. It’s already showing respectable speed test results, and it can only get better from here. Keep in mind that the bulk of the work being done on the browser is by one person…so it’ll take a bit more time.
The only way to speed this process up is money; money that can be used to fund more contracts to really get the ball rolling on development. Unfortunately, not everyone has money to spare. If you’d still like to help in some way though, I recommend switching your search engine to GoodSearch (http://www.goodsearch.com/nonprofit/haiku.aspx) and selecting Haiku as your non-profit of choice. While the amount you get per search is small, over time it can really add up. I believe it’s been less than a year since Haiku started using GoodSearch and it’s already nearing $1,000 in donations from 2,564 users. If even a fraction of those users regularly used GoodSearch, Haiku could be netting in an extra $5,000 a year to fund contracts.
In my personal opinion, the look and feel of Haiku is perfact. It is not garish like Windows 8 and not overblown and processor intensive like many Linux interfaces.
If you wish to change this, make a new Window Decorator, and icon theme. AFAIK the facilities are in place to do this. Just leve the clean default interface alone.
Apple magic? Mostly transparency tricks, and gestures. Trivial things, but perceived as much more.
It’s something that could be added fairly easily if the devs decided to enable the “pseudo-light-years ahead” look, albeit with no more real functionality. Maybe that would reduce the “windows manager” request posts. My wife was quite impressed with her iphone, and how the weather page was guzzied up with transparency and night sky lightning strikes behind the forecast text. It became so much more fancy a device. Each to his/her own, I guess…
work from the university of auckland (stacking & tiling, layout editor) has made haiku’s a more modern desktop than most – including windows and mac. also, vector icons allow for a more consistent look across screen resolutions, which is pretty much unheard of in other desktops. folks keep saying they want a more modern ui but most the ones this gets unfavorably compared to are based on paradigms from the '70s (you don’t really want an x server here) or still struggle to implement the same ideas this one was built on. this thing, as is, pretty much Is the future.
That is something I didn’t find, but would certainly make life easier, though I would prefer it at the top of the screen.[/quote]
you can drag the deskbar and place it in any corner or along any edge
I personally like the new UI design concepts introduced by iOS. I like the transparencies, the bounces, and the ripples. I don’t think it would be difficult to introduce these to Haiku for a UI designer/coder. I think the C++ Haiku/BeOS API is ideal for designing this kind of UI.
Maybe a good way to get this started is to recommend Haiku for use in upper level undergraduate Computer Science classes or Masters level thesis development work.
Certainly 3D hardware support would be useful. This would mean completing MESA drivers.
UI design is very subjective and often controversial. Every single time a new OS/UI is released some people are pleased and others are shocked. But still, options are good to have.
it isn’t controversial at all, though. desktop usability standards are pretty well understood by now. and all the desktops have pretty much looked alike forever, design fluorishes adding little to usibility, but lots to the ability to protect the intellectual property of a given desktop
UI design is very subjective and no matter what there will be many users extremely pleased and as many others extremely displeased with a given design at a given moment in time.
A design is a compromise on many requirements and wishes.
As an end-user, I would prefer a focus on progression to R1 with current UI than a mid-course re-direction to a UI redesign.
An excellent point. we only have so many devs hacking on the project, and there are so many things that really need doing before we even start to think of tinkering with the interface. Save it for R2.
I jump here from time to time and see nothing has changed
That is so true, unfortunately.
With regard to the visual appearance of Haiku, I think that it is almost perfect. I would not like to see it changed much. As it is, Haiku’s theme has a nice touch of uniqueness about it. It is very pleasant.
In particular, I LOVE the color palette (those soft, pastel colors! aahh!) and the very beautiful icons. Please don’t change anything of these two.
Only, I would like to see some change in the right-hand top corner menu of open applications. It does not look very nice, in the 2010s…
Also, don’t waste time and resources with transparency effects and the like. Simplicity is the best form of elegance, and Haiku’s theme and visual appearance has already achieved it for the most part.
I agree with both of these. I generally use Fluxbox/Openbox on Linux, these use a simple toolbar/menu system, which I would like to see on Haiku, eventually.
