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Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

desktopneo.com

31–40 of 325 posts

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#31
post #18

So basically xmonad + with a tagged file indexer. Although fzf + https://github.com/rupa/z works for me most of the time. With respect to eye tracking, I had a similar idea the other day. Imagine holding a key, then moving your gaze to see an on-screen target following where you're looking at. You could use this as a really quick way to scroll or highlight/copy text without leaving your home row. I really don't like…

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. Fzf is great, it's like anything.el/helm but works outside of emacs. Thanks!

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#33

The problem with the tablet analogy is nobody seems to know how to design complex, professional-level (like Photoshop, or Blender) applications in that paradigm. Tablet apps are overwhelmingly consumption-oriented, and those that aren't all seem to be oriented around popular (and populist) appeal. Why is everyone out for the blood of the desktop/windows paradigm? Why can't the simplified-tablet market and the desktop…

Right, this seems to me to be a tiling window manager with a touch interface. This is kind of an odd combination too, because most tiling WMs are keyboard oriented, whereas most non-tiling WMs are pointer oriented. Maybe that's just historical and doesn't really make much of a difference though.

But with i3, I have keybindings to "open the last browser window i used" or "open the last gvim window i opened." I can tile them in different workspaces as I please extremely efficiently and quickly, and move them around as needed. I can move much faster using the keyboard than when I'm in my Windows machine. Having this tiling ability on a tablet seems odd to me.

I am kind of getting tired of the "attacks" on the traditional desktop interface. People just don't want to admit that just because tablets exist they are not a superior interface. Just a different one.

The interface they propose is beautiful but it would really have to walk a thin, thin line between usability and screen space.

I do like the idea of a tag-based filesystem though. Obviously then you get into the problem of managing your tags (a tree-based filesystem solves this problem naturally).

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#34

The problem with the tablet analogy is nobody seems to know how to design complex, professional-level (like Photoshop, or Blender) applications in that paradigm. Tablet apps are overwhelmingly consumption-oriented, and those that aren't all seem to be oriented around popular (and populist) appeal. Why is everyone out for the blood of the desktop/windows paradigm? Why can't the simplified-tablet market and the desktop…

Agreed, the folder metaphor works as its a direct visualization of the hierarchy of the computer.

I remember what Yahoo! was originally like: a nice, hierarchical categorization of websites. That was great when there were 1,000 websites. Maybe even okay for 10,000.

Google quickly became an obviously superior approach.

Back when Yahoo! was a categorized directory of sites, my computer had probably 1GB of storage. I didn't have a digital camera or many thousands of email messages. I didn't have as many documents that I either created myself or was given by someone else. I didn't have ebooks. Or mp3 files.

The hierarchy that we have is not necessarily a given and even if it exists on disk, the UI metaphor does not need to be tied to that paradigm. Perhaps there is a better way for the things we do today?

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#35
post #30
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never felt like I could productively work with a tiling manager, since I frequently overlap windows as a mechanism for easy access Part of the idea of most tiling window managers is that you use the keyboard to control them, not the mouse. As such, you no longer need to overlap windows to quickly switch to the one you want. You have keybinds to do so (which actually exist in the default Windows and OSX window man…

Seeing more than one at a time is high value. I personally hate the basic tile schemes, and full screen in many of my use cases. Yes, when I'm using one app hard, full screen is good. When I'm using multiple ones, I often want to copy paste info, or just refer to it. Auto pop to foreground is toxic, it forces a change in state when there is no need for that change most of the time. On IRIX, focus follows mouse, and m…

i3 defaults to focus following the mouse and middle pasting

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#37
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the folder metaphor works as its a direct visualization of the hierarchy of the computer.

I remember what Yahoo! was originally like: a nice, hierarchical categorization of websites. That was great when there were 1,000 websites. Maybe even okay for 10,000. Google quickly became an obviously superior approach. Back when Yahoo! was a categorized directory of sites, my computer had probably 1GB of storage. I didn't have a digital camera or many thousands of email messages. I didn't have as many documents th…

Perhaps, but I think the answer lies more in backend tweaks than a UI/UX overhaul. File/folder tagging, for example, could integrate easily into existing UI paradigms without having to overhaul (or remove) the files/folders analogy. I agree that dealing with folders gets too complicated above a certain threshold, but to me that signals a need for additional (thoughtful) tooling.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#38
Computers knowing about focus is quite a compelling future direction. There are lots of really good possibilities. But also a few problems.

For instance, If you can track focus, you can make the monitor seem larger than it really is. Just scale everything that isn't being looked at down a bit. As the gaze shifts towards other objects, shift things slowly around and overlap the enlarged window over other background windows.

You can make focus-dependent shortcuts. Imagine vim with nouns and motions that can refer to and act on the focus point. `ytF`: yank-to-focus, where F is a motion from cursor to focus. Lots of rich possibilities there.

The only major problem I see is that you can't really share work easily (unless you open it up to multiple focus points somehow.) Also, it would be frustrating to have to look where you're typing. I'll often look at something else while typing just before switching tasks. I'm going to start paying attention to my focus more to see if there are other potential pitfalls with the computer knowing about it and changing modes in response.

In general I like the possibilities opened up by having focus. Heck even with a traditional mouse+keyboard, the extra data would help the computer understand us better. It might be more suited to a VR desktop, where the 'multiple-viewers' problem does not exist.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#39

First paragraph in and I'm already not their customer: "We now use smartphones and tablets most of the time, since they are much easier to use." No. Just no. I don't want to use a touchscreen and closed ecosystem to develop software. That would be a nightmare. The rest of the design seems to be taken straight from 10/GUI.

"We now use smartphones and tablets most of the time, since they are much easier to use."

Isn't this the kind of thinking behind Windows 8?

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#40

The problem with the tablet analogy is nobody seems to know how to design complex, professional-level (like Photoshop, or Blender) applications in that paradigm. Tablet apps are overwhelmingly consumption-oriented, and those that aren't all seem to be oriented around popular (and populist) appeal. Why is everyone out for the blood of the desktop/windows paradigm? Why can't the simplified-tablet market and the desktop…

This is exactly the idea of Desktop Neo. If tablets and phones are used for consumption, the desktop can be focused on productivity.

I don't want to replace the complexity of the desktop with interfaces that are easier. I want them to be better, to be more efficient for professionals.

Concepts like panels, tags and touch input are probably way harder to understand than windows, folders and mouse input. But it doesn’t matter, because professionals spend so much time on desktop computers that it's worth the effort to master the interface.

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