I think one feature what Haiku very need is true fractional scalling,
when i have haiku on thinkpad t60 with 1024x768 all is ok, but when i switch to another pc where i have haswell pentium conected to 1920x1080 24lcd there is all small, i think haiku need Fractional Scalling, like 100-125-150-175-200
Increase the font size
To make myself clear. I liked the concept but I wouldn’t want to loose anything from usability perspective. I want my scrollbars always visible and big enough to grab them. Any UI design change in Haiku should be taken very seriously and deeply thought about.
2 Likes
Is it possible to coordinate tray icon size with Deskbar icon size? Overall, I like the UI the way it is, it seems other OS’s are catching up to Haiku. After the Aero, Aqua shiny faze, many UI are resembling Haiku. I will study the usability this weekend and make a list of things that could work better.
2 Likes
I like the Font name field and the font size field, like in other Apps.
In Haiku it is not nice managed:
If you have lots of fonts it is not a good GUI!
Besides the arrow keys dont work well in this case!
Would be nice to have some drag and drop from Fontboy to change or to choose the font.
Sometimes if I have lots of windows I use “shift” and drag option to arrange the tabs.
Unfortunately the size of the tabs are changeing with the size and the amount of text in it is used.
Then don’t use too many fonts lol 
The problem will be still the same if you have to choose fonts. And if you work with them you need them a lot.
I know … I was joking.
I guess using ‘‘specialised’’ or ‘‘enclosed’’ software, that has it’s own way, only ‘‘wrapped’’ in Haiku looks might help.
Good example is Krita … It only adopts Haiku’s ‘‘outfit’’, while preserving it’s original functionality, (since it is originally KDE app) so it applies to any OS or distro it is available on. 
An option to fixate tabs’ size would be on point.
1 Like
This. It totally needs a makeover, maybe something that would work like OS X/macOS where it has a fonts box (which can be opened with the keyboard with command+T with most apps) which works a lot nicer than the retro way the menus work today
IMO Linux could learn a thing or two from Haiku. GNOME and KDE feel so laggy to use compared to Haiku’s interface. Most of my displeasure with Linux comes from these shells.
For my own usage, I don’t feel much should change in terms of appearance. A few features like Spotlight, Quick Look and a built-in dictionary would help improve the usability A LOT.
1 Like
before agg available on haikuport. .you can check here , before i try build it because want to build gnash
btw… it seem it continue development fork on here… so maybe it can be bring alive on haikuports?
There is a Dictionary available for Haiku called “Lingua”.
It is written for BeOs and works well in Haiku.
You will find it in HaikuDepot
Like Spotlight there is QuickLaunch where you can fast start your Apps.
1 Like
The poll is missing an option. The UI is neither bad nor very good. It’s okay and gets the job done but certain things are counter intuitive or cumbersome to use.
That’s a good approach to incremental improvements, if you give us a bit more detail about your problems we can start thinking about it 
A “let’s redo everything” approach could solve a few things, but introduce new problems.
One of my biggest issues are the combo-boxes besides and certain menu handling, both from user perspective but especially from a developers perspective.
I’m not sure what you mean here, but since you mention “developers perspective”, maybe you are thinking about the issues already solved by BOptionPopUp? I think this was already introduced in BeOS but somehow did not make it to the Be Book documentation. It is a lot easier for programmers than the old BPopUpMenu which should probably be deprecated or at least kept only for advanced uses.
Another something which I find lacking is window alignment on screen. Maximizing is practically non-working and thus useless.
There is no maximizing in Haiku, only “fit to contents”. But that is sadly not implemented correctly by a lot of apps.
Also I’m still unconvincd by the somewhat recent changes to the default behavior of this which is to maximize the window while avoiding the deskbar area. Fortunately for me it is still indirectly configurable (it depends if the deskbar is set to “always on top”). But if you don’t know about it this only adds to the confusion.
The lack of proper stacking (not the one you are talking about) makes working with multiple windows of the same kind cumbersome. Showing/hiding windows is working half of the time.
I don’t really understand what you have in mind in most of these examples.
And if a window ends up behind another its pretty much impossible to get it to the front without hiding half the windows and then having to seek the next window which is now gone.
You can click anywhere in a window border to bring it to front, which is better than what other OS would allow already. And you can also access the window from Deskbar window list or from Twitcher (control+tab).
I admit that I rarely use these things. These days a lot of my window management relies on distributing windows accross several workspaces to keep managable amount of them.
A few years ago I played about with Haiku, and loved the drop-down heirarchical menus, the clarity and snappiness of desktop/window management. I spend 90% of my computer time in Mojave MacOS GUI, 8% in Linux CLI, and say, 2% in plan/9/front GUI.
MacOS is generally pleasant and familiar and I have it tuned to be helpful and unintrusive. I installed Big Sur on an ext SSD and am slightly sickened by the aesthetic choices they have made, seemingly solely on the basis of ‘palates get jaded, let’s give them a different sugar’.
I believe that Apple’s now ‘legacy’ philosophy of HIG was the right one, but it’s a science, based on psychology, biology and the tech resources available.
I’ve been appalled that since, forever?, I’ve been unable to elect to have the same highlighting colour for selected Finder items and highlighted text.
I was saddened when after making a huge deal about ditching ‘skeumorphism’, Apple adopted the ‘grey Soviet recycled cardboard’ look, especially for Finder sidebar items, and mystified when after the much-vaunted bringing together of iOS and macOS styles they remain so prudish about the use of colour in areas where it can help the human interface efficacy.
Yeah, I know this is only borderline relevant, but methinks, perhaps as an only wannabe Haiku user I have something to bring to the party.
I dont like the yellow window grab tags, but there’s probably a good reason why Haiku does it this way and I confess I’ve not bothered to check, only that my Haiku experience has been on an Acer 1024x600 netbook where useable screen area is costly.
Linux GUIs are universally bad and Linux seems to stuck in the Blue Peter era of cobbling stuff together with Sqezy bottles and matchboxes. How pleasant, and rare ii is to discover post-install that your TZ and kbd work correctly…
Plan9-9front has acme which pleases me. I find the bland colours easy on the eye and the devs made it non-trivial to change (à la Apple), obliging the use of a uniform style, so helping brand recognition and value.
TL;DR is … study the HIGs, don’t alway go on what the user says she wants, (Steve Jobs Ford quote!) do not make aesthetic changes which go against ease of use.
2 Likes
I would love a BeOS Look. I’m kinda surprised that there isn’t one packaged in even though BeDecorator is.
Re: topic
I really like the current UI mechanically, though the current Haiku default theme (here referring to a CL/Decorator combo) feels a little too gradienty and plastic. And there’s nothing wrong with gradients, but IMO it’s just too much on the default, it feels like a mid-2000s distro. I think probably a dark FlatLook is the best future default we have so far, unless someone makes what Akuji posted into a reality. As long as every element is distinct, it’s good.
1 Like
It’s quite fun, because for 10 years people complain we need more gradients and rounded corners, and for the next 10 years they complain we need something more flat and square.
My conclusion is that the current theme has the perfect balance 
9 Likes
Every time has his own feeling ;-).
Themen are the best way to solve this. Like beos had in the past.
I’m an old BeOS refugee and I think changing the UI would be a real shame. I’ve seen people try (Dano had a lot of changes, Zeta some more, and PhOS some others) and Haiku already changes a few subtle things. I don’t see any reason to change the UI more.
I have an example - when AtheOS became Syllable, a lot of things were tweaked, but not everything worked and I thought some of the changes made the OS look uglier. I feel like the same danger exists in tweaking Haiku.
Any project where there is not a full time UX designer will probably fail to make changes that really make a difference and avoid changes that are fluffy but don’t improve anything. The tendency is superficial changes and trying to make things look “sexy”, but is that what you really want?
I’d also point you towards Mac OS X… the UI has changed completely every 5 or so years, and often it just makes simple tasks more complex - the whole app installation thing is a nightmare for example, the UI to approve apps is hidden in a control panel!! You need to find it to approve an app. There was nothing much wrong with the UI in Leopard/Snow Leopard. Most of the stuff up to Catalina was just making way for Big Sur and Big Sur is such a change it sometimes feels like I don’t know how to do simple tasks anymore that I used to do regularly.
4 Likes