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“I made an operating system UI within Unity”

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Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#91

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

Answerawake wrote: post #3

Looks like a generic Linux distro. Am I the only one getting "visual fatigue" over seeing flat design? I just feel like we need a trend change. Its been way too long. I find myself looking at the old Windows Vista, Windows XP, early Mac OS X, or even Windows 3.1 designs and longing for that simplicity.

This https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/ is for https://q4os.org/ which is based on http://trinitydesktop.org/ which in turn is based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Desktop_Environment_3 but adapted to more modern systems.

Rip it apart, integrate into your system, be happy. Maybe do it in a generalized way and "show HN". But why? It is out there, more or less ready to use.

But to be honest, i think this nostalgy is overrated. It is not good, just what you have been used to for a long time. Because you had no other options, except of using alternative windows shells which broke with every update, and most users shied away from such deep modding anyways.

Personally i can't stand the XP look, but can live with "classic" which is based on that Windows2000/W98 style. But it is too dark! And i dislike some of the common Icons and Widgets.

Anyways, i'm using something "Material" since about 20 years now, with lighter color palettes, but not that low contrast stuff which is so common now. Very small padding, and small but visible borders. You can tune and modify that into blissful oblivion, and have it applied across QT3/4/5 and GTK2/3.

It's up to you.

Or choose just another Distro because of the nice desktop backround!1!!

(Hop! Hop! Hop!)

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#92

Post by presidentender »

MrLeap wrote: post #40

Years ago, when I was adapting field manuals into Unity Games -- I got asked to create some training for a piece of field kit that relied heavily on a windows mobile device (very early windows mobile, that had a registry -- could run some win32 apps, had a noticeable delay of like 350ms between every input and it reacting...) I had that new-job-gotta-impress energy, so went _hard_ at this project. I added so many tin…

I worked for the same field-manual-into-Unity employer for a few years, first doing DoDAF architectures on a contract on Ft Huachuca, switching to the serious games division for a small number of weeks before I politely quit in frustration.

We spent years building what amounted to UML diagrams of existing Army units. Great effort went into them. Coordination with active-duty officers, with GS civilian stakeholders, training from certified DoDAF-training instructors; we had TS-SCI clearances.

Then the resulting products went into a database somewhere, and nobody ever looked at them.

I imagine that sort of thing is rife in the government contracting world, but it seems like that particular firm has a real knack for finding truly futile things to get paid for.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#93

Post by arexxbifs »

kick wrote: post #80
Answerawake wrote: post #3

Looks like a generic Linux distro. Am I the only one getting "visual fatigue" over seeing flat design? I just feel like we need a trend change. Its been way too long. I find myself looking at the old Windows Vista, Windows XP, early Mac OS X, or even Windows 3.1 designs and longing for that simplicity.

Flat design is more simple than skeuomorphism, almost by definition. What you seem to want is complexity.

There's plenty of middle ground between the current extreme flatness and, say, MacOS X Tiger. An interface with a simple 3D bevel look (such as in Motif or the toolkit in NeXTStep) is no more skeuomorphic than than a flat interface, especially not considering how prevalent touchscreen controls are today.

Flatness to the current point of minimalism is, to me, very taxing and complex. Things blend together so much it's hard to tell where one UI element begins and another one ends. I frequently misclick in Windows 10/Office 365 even though I've used it for years now, simply because the flatness makes me misinterpret the layout and function of the UI.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#95

Post by [deleted] »

that_jojo wrote: post #62
kick wrote: post #16

reddit's modern userbase is really interesting. There are some incredibly interesting people who use it, but you also find a bunch of accounts that are under a year old with lines like this: Please don't. I would like to see you get rewarded for your hard work. Screw the parasites. Their new UI seems to be doing its job, but I wonder if the decline in thread quality was worth it.

As if the quality of HN threads is better by leaps and bounds.

[deleted]

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#96

Post by kick »

msla wrote: post #90
kick wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flat design is more simple than skeuomorphism, almost by definition. What you seem to want is complexity.

Complexity is good if it allows you to see affordances more easily. Maybe buttons should look different from non-clickable icons. That requires some complexity.

I don't disagree that complexity can be good! I was just correcting the "longing for that simplicity" statement, which was incorrect.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#97

Post by threatofrain »

kick wrote: post #80
Answerawake wrote: post #3

Looks like a generic Linux distro. Am I the only one getting "visual fatigue" over seeing flat design? I just feel like we need a trend change. Its been way too long. I find myself looking at the old Windows Vista, Windows XP, early Mac OS X, or even Windows 3.1 designs and longing for that simplicity.

Flat design is more simple than skeuomorphism, almost by definition. What you seem to want is complexity.

Easy isn’t always so simple.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#98

Post by MrLeap »

presidentender wrote: post #92
MrLeap wrote: post #40

Years ago, when I was adapting field manuals into Unity Games -- I got asked to create some training for a piece of field kit that relied heavily on a windows mobile device (very early windows mobile, that had a registry -- could run some win32 apps, had a noticeable delay of like 350ms between every input and it reacting...) I had that new-job-gotta-impress energy, so went _hard_ at this project. I added so many tin…

I worked for the same field-manual-into-Unity employer for a few years, first doing DoDAF architectures on a contract on Ft Huachuca, switching to the serious games division for a small number of weeks before I politely quit in frustration. We spent years building what amounted to UML diagrams of existing Army units. Great effort went into them. Coordination with active-duty officers, with GS civilian stakeholders, t…

It was a rough situation at times. I really took advantage of how self directed things were in the beginning. It was basically a masters program in whatever technology I chose to learn. Some people used the time to watch netflix. I wrote a 3d engine for android in almost entirely openGL ES2.0. After that, Unity was what I chose.

I did find a few things I could do that made an impact. One project I did on a lark even resulted in a little recognition.

I overheard an instructor complaining about an onerous, all hands on deck eternal data wrangling task. Seemed like an easy thing to automate. For bureaucracy dodging reasons, I wrote it in actionscript3. All it did was eat files and spit out xslx files.

Turns out it wiped out XX% of the manual labor every instructor on post had to do in a single button press.

A GS megaboss said it was going to save the government millions of dollars a year. Was a little disappointed I never personally got a challenge coin for it. My boss did :)

I'm grateful for the numbers though, I could leave that job confident I saved the tax payer more than I cost.

Hopefully some of the things I'm working on for my current employer will get some visibility in the outside world. Software is ephemera, but I'd like to make a token effort to be remembered.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#99

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

0xffff2 wrote: post #19

Am I the only one who hates most animation? If the animation doesn't serve a clear purpose in signalling something to the user, I want it gone. I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95.

> I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95.

I completely agree there. There have been some small improvements — XP added recent items to the Start Menu, Vista added search to the Start Menu, 7 improved the taskbar somewhat. But overall, things are still built on what 95 established, and the only overhaul since that was actually released (Windows 8) was a clear regression and Microsoft was forced to revert much of it.

Unfortunately though, while the 95-era concepts are still around, the presentation of them is an inconsistent mess now. Windows 10 is full of different UI stylings that look horrible and make the system confusing. I often suspect that people only know how to use “modern” flat UI through sheer inertia, because it's close enough to the old skeumorphic UI that what people learned back then is still useful. But how do new starters figure out what the shapes and colours mean? They don't convey meaning any more.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#100

Post by Enginerrrd »

presidentender wrote: post #92
MrLeap wrote: post #40

Years ago, when I was adapting field manuals into Unity Games -- I got asked to create some training for a piece of field kit that relied heavily on a windows mobile device (very early windows mobile, that had a registry -- could run some win32 apps, had a noticeable delay of like 350ms between every input and it reacting...) I had that new-job-gotta-impress energy, so went _hard_ at this project. I added so many tin…

I worked for the same field-manual-into-Unity employer for a few years, first doing DoDAF architectures on a contract on Ft Huachuca, switching to the serious games division for a small number of weeks before I politely quit in frustration. We spent years building what amounted to UML diagrams of existing Army units. Great effort went into them. Coordination with active-duty officers, with GS civilian stakeholders, t…

Honestly, this kind of thing is still super valuable. It's really nice when you go digging up some old resource and have it be there when it's needed, and it's amazing when it was done right.

What sucks is if it was half-assed when you finally do find it. Or worse, it gets forgotten about and the work gets duplicated every time someone needs that info.

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