If by new GUI that means minor superficial updates to the interface–nothing like the great mess that Microsoft created with the abomination: Windows 11–I am forced to use that OS at work–it just sucks!!
I love the look and feel of the current Haiku. I agree with most here that minor tweaks would make it look better.
The first thing GUI-wise that must be addressed is a menu paradigm like in Beos and Zeta OS–that should have been completed from initial development. I think everything else should be minor visual effects to give the user a better look and feel.
I do have the feeling that the proposed GUI tweaks are primarily intended to reduce the “eurgh has this been updated since the 90s” initial reaction of newcomers, ideally while preserving space-efficiency and readability. Hence rounded buttons and window shadows.
Haiku’s GUI is fine the way it is, I see nothing that can be improved in the matter of usability and beauty. Some people are too accustomed to the perfumery of Windows and Linux with some appealing desktop theme.
This has nothing to do with being “modern”.
What perfumery? The mishmash of Win32 and WinRT? The evergoing path to nowhere of GNOME and KDE? Heck, even OS X is going the way of mobile oversimplification. If anything, Haiku offers the most fragrant user experience out there.
I would like more option in the FIND function. For example instead of searching entire drives, I would like to point a folder and have only it and it’s sub-folder searched.
Also there would be an option to have a search defined by the GUI and then switch to the GREP mode.
The use of many libraries in Haiku such as QT/GTK allows you to create Hybrid programs, which is not easy because there are no cross-platform tools, except for QT Desinger, but I’m not a fan of QT. As far as I know, wxHaiku also works, maybe it still has a few bugs. However, this type of restriction software requires extensive knowledge. Some might say that it is YAB for GUI development, however
it doesn’t support widgets or GTK or QT.
If Haiku’s GUI were changed significantly, I would lose my interest. I absolutely love the way Haiku looks. It has everything that’s great about BeOS, but with a refined and modern appearance that will remain beautiful for decades to come.
As I said before, I installed Haiku because I missed BeOS since the day Be Inc. folded. So I’m here for the love I have for the classic interface. Of course, it goes against current design trends, but I don’t care. Classic interfaces become trendy again from time to time. Just look at the flat Windows 3.x. Who would have guessed that after the 3D controls in Win 9x and Mac Os, Windows would become flat again?
Nowadays I use the flat decorator in Haiku. I don’t like any of the themes bundled with Theme Manager, but that’s a matter of personal taste. I just wish Be Inc was still around so we could see the natural evolution of BeOS.
I wouldn’t change the default interface, but in addition to the default theme and the first one in haiku-extras, I’d like to see a rounded “super flat” “Material Design/Material You” (Android style) or “Fluent Design” (Windows 10/11) theme. It would be interesting because I think maybe that’s how BeOS would look today. But the default theme should stay.
And maybe enable alpha transparency, especially in terminal background.
A function I really miss is double-click window title bar (tab in Haiku) in classic Mac OS to collapse the window but leave the title bar. It was an option in Mac OS X but since Apple do not want us to make our own decisions, it was later removed.
If the three preceding comments are talking about rolling windows up and down as I think, this is present in several Linux distros. It only affects the selected window, so I don’t understand the question about the rest. As for how to trigger the action, it’s true that dinner clocking is already in use. In the Linux window managers or desktop environments I’ve tried, it’s typically done using the mouse wheel (of course we are talking about a PC mouse. Macs are different, I know.
Also played with that for a while 