11–20 of 58 posts
The above links run emulators in Javascript and have been used for live demos as well (see https://youtu.be/AnrlSqtpOkw?t=2m29s for a fun one)
Related, for a Javascript based live system check out https://www.lively-kernel.org/ (also created by Dan Ingalls).
An easy way to try ST-72 is in your browser here: https://lively-web.org/users/Dan/ALTO-Smalltalk-72.html and ST-78 here: https://lively-web.org/users/bert/Smalltalk-78.html The above links run emulators in Javascript and have been used for live demos as well (see https://youtu.be/AnrlSqtpOkw?t=2m29s for a fun one) Related, for a Javascript based live system check out https://www.lively-kernel.org/ (also created by D…
The Lively project evolved over time:
- https://www.lively-kernel.org is from the Sun Labs / HPI days (check out the ancient http://sunlabs-kernel.lively-web.org, fully SVG based rendering :D)
- Lively Web: https://lively-web.org A live, programmable wiki (2012-2015)
- Since 2016 we are working on lively.next: https://lively-next.org. lively.next will focus more on the "personal environment" aspect.
biotech gene editing ? quantum computers ? artificial intelligence ? Cars ?
Is there someone somewhere discovering the ubiquitous usage of the next decades ? Does computer science still has the potential to bring the same kind of world-changing tools ?
Here's something i'd like to ask AlanKay : at that time, you probably had the feeling that you were working on groundbreaking technologies, but what were the magazines saying ? I'm pretty sure some people were thinking that computers were going to play a role, but was this obvious to everyone ? Did people hesitate between funding CS and, say, flying cars ?
It's fascinating how the GUI's haven't changed much since. I run a UI design agency (we work mostly with startups) but would love to collaborate with someone who's working on a (niche?) OS and see if we can redesign the UI. Open Source is fine. If you're working on something, hit me up. Details in my bio :)
I think you mean WIMP GUIs haven't changed much (and indeed, the WIMP interfaces of the classic Mac, Windows, current Mac, Apollo, Sun all felt very much like the Smalltalk GUI to me).
But I think the tile+touch interface pioneered on the iPhone is indeed a new GUI paradigm which shrugged off the baby-boomer "desktop" metaphor.
These shifts require a change in hardware, as any interface that gets traction with technology T forms a local maximum, which makes it inherently conservative. That suggests that the phone interface is unlikely to change.
What are the elements of the next generation? Looking at the horizon, some subset of voice and AR+gesture, and likely shared experience (note: I don't believe VR offers any affordances for mass UI). So far I have seen nothing viable (including some efforts I've participated in) with these technologies though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been following OS UI experiments for some years and the problem with all of them was that they took an approach that sounded cool but wasn’t really practical. From 3D desktops to strange card based interfaces that wanted to replicate the messy physical desk. I think the key is to redesign the GUI by removing stuff instead of adding fancy new ways of shuffling files.
I imagine the big issue is that the underlying model isn't actually being changed to support the new UI (even by a wrapper-layer); so you're just doing shallow edits to the "skin" of the OS. The problem being the underlying model and the WIMP model have been co-evolving, and likely aren't very open to other fashions of interaction. Presumably, the way to beat it out is to figure out how to change both to instantiate…
Absent research labs, we wait on market availability for hardware. For the modern analogues of mice and bitmapped screens. Eye tracking may be cheap next year, but now it's $2k. High-resolution HMDs may be $10k next year, but now they're simply unavailable. Hand tracking is flaky. Haptics are "it buzzes".
For software, we're so used to the 2D windows interface, it's easy to forget how much foundational work was needed. Eg, around topography, and Smalltalk, and live coding. Hand gesture recognition, spoken dialog management, 3D constraint-based layout, are just a few modern analogues. And so on.
So it looks like we're going to be doing broad-based innovation and infrastructure construction, gated on hardware availability. And plagued by patents.
It's not clear to me what can usefully be done to explore UI in the meantime. You can do wireframing in TiltBrush, but not really. It doesn't give you the feel of say hand-attached controls, and of automated collaboration in general. The "oh, it feels good to present this graph as a sphere, and hold it you lap and peel off layers". So...
Perhaps do UI design by paper improv? A crew scribbling on and holding up paper, hovering around a "user", who is managing a todo list? :) That could be fun.
i wonder what's today's equivalent to this pionnering technologies... biotech gene editing ? quantum computers ? artificial intelligence ? Cars ? Is there someone somewhere discovering the ubiquitous usage of the next decades ? Does computer science still has the potential to bring the same kind of world-changing tools ? Here's something i'd like to ask AlanKay : at that time, you probably had the feeling that you we…
It's amazing to see how little the concepts have changed in desktop world since Xerox Alto. The only different concept I saw few years back was by 10gui http://10gui.com/ with VR, MR, and AR coming in we need such innovation again.
Smalltalk was the first dynamic UI environment but within a few years you could do this on lisp machines as well (both the Xerox D machines in either Smalltalk or Interlisp modes and MIT CADR lispms). Which is to say the Smalltalk environment was influential both at the time and later.
Actually some of the REPL and debugging features in Mesa/Cedar were done because they wanted to appeal to the Interlisp-D and Smalltalk users, while offering a strong type development environment.