[REBOL] Re: A new interface paradigm without the usual windows ...
From: ed::brittlestar::com at: 17-Jan-2004 17:35
I downloaded and played with it a bit on Friday. I was very underwhelmed.
It's an interesting approach, but ultimately it felt like an experimental
learning environment.
FYI: There's an interesting review on OS News:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5687
----- Original Msg -----
Carl Read wrote:
> or go directly to the software's homepage at http://www.nbor.com/ and
> download a demo - if you're a Win2000 or XP user. (Not too
> cross-platform at the moment...) It looks most interesting, (though
> I'm one of the ones who can't test it), as I'm throughly sick of
> windows, menus and icons, which I think have passed their use-by
> date.
>
> It'd be nice to see REBOL skins appear that don't try and ape current
> GUIs but instead try to be a new and better one.
>
> --
> Carl Read
Creating a genuinely better GUI is doable, but it requires a painstaking
amount of user research, testing and refinement. Most small companies & open
source projects simply don't have the right mix of resources to do it right,
and are much better off aping current GUIs. Now and then we see a small
evolutionary improvement, and eventually it gets incorporated in GUI
toolkits. Maybe something will shake out of NBOR.
Long-shot bets are fun, but I wouldn't advise RT to go into more
experimental areas until they have a standard widget set well implemented.
The current minimum set is probably HTML (mixed with whatever can be done
with DOM/Javascript)-- which is a respectably high standard. Does anyone
know if the VID project has published list of VID improvements on the way?
With regard to being sick of WIMP interfaces, amen. I'm hoping we'll see
some creative interfaces that provide CLI/console productivity integrated in
rich interfaces. Kinda hard to describe what that would look like, though!
Ed
