Vista - suggestions for UI

I started writing a page on changes I think would be good for the Windows UI,
I posted this on channel9 at one time, but I was hopeful someone involved
with Vista development would take an interest.

One of my main suggestions is that tabbed document interfaces should be a
native feature of Windows; where any document-type windows will have an
option to for them to group into a window with a tabbed interface, and
ungroup.

Another suggestion is on how to radically change the start menu into
something else.

http://brianshapiro.q45.org/concepts/ui.htm

thanks,

brianshapiro

That website resembles some of my ideas of the Start menu: tesk-centric
Start menu is A MUST. Please no more 3 page Program lists, but I seriously
doubt they will change the way they do things...


"Brian Shapiro" <brian_shapiro@hotmail.com>
7097D051-D01D-4D1B-8E5B-001264205D02@microsoft.com...
>I started writing a page on changes I think would be good for the Windows
>UI,
> I posted this on channel9 at one time, but I was hopeful someone involved
> with Vista development would take an interest.
>
> One of my main suggestions is that tabbed document interfaces should be a
> native feature of Windows; where any document-type windows will have an
> option to for them to group into a window with a tabbed interface, and
> ungroup.
>
> Another suggestion is on how to radically change the start menu into
> something else.
>
> http://brianshapiro.q45.org/concepts/ui.htm
>
> thanks,
>
> brianshapiro
>
>

http://www.tidystartmenu.com/index.shtml



<Nicholas> wrote in message news:OxOfQNwJGHA.604@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> That website resembles some of my ideas of the Start menu: tesk-centric
> Start menu is A MUST. Please no more 3 page Program lists, but I seriously
> doubt they will change the way they do things...
>
>
> "Brian Shapiro" <brian_shapiro@hotmail.com>
> 7097D051-D01D-4D1B-8E5B-001264205D02@microsoft.com...
>>I started writing a page on changes I think would be good for the Windows
>>UI,
>> I posted this on channel9 at one time, but I was hopeful someone involved
>> with Vista development would take an interest.
>>
>> One of my main suggestions is that tabbed document interfaces should be a
>> native feature of Windows; where any document-type windows will have an
>> option to for them to group into a window with a tabbed interface, and
>> ungroup.
>>
>> Another suggestion is on how to radically change the start menu into
>> something else.
>>
>> http://brianshapiro.q45.org/concepts/ui.htm
>>
>> thanks,
>>
>> brianshapiro
>>
>>
>
>

The current XP start menu isn't far off 'Task Centric' anyway, 'Control
Panel', 'My Documents', 'Accessories' etc. Please don't bring back that
'new Excel Document' rubbish. Task centric is not the way, it's just another
confusing hierarchy to navigate.

<Nicholas> wrote in message news:OxOfQNwJGHA.604@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> That website resembles some of my ideas of the Start menu: tesk-centric
> Start menu is A MUST. Please no more 3 page Program lists, but I seriously
> doubt they will change the way they do things...
>
>
> "Brian Shapiro" <brian_shapiro@hotmail.com>
> 7097D051-D01D-4D1B-8E5B-001264205D02@microsoft.com...
>>I started writing a page on changes I think would be good for the Windows
>>UI,
>> I posted this on channel9 at one time, but I was hopeful someone involved
>> with Vista development would take an interest.
>>
>> One of my main suggestions is that tabbed document interfaces should be a
>> native feature of Windows; where any document-type windows will have an
>> option to for them to group into a window with a tabbed interface, and
>> ungroup.
>>
>> Another suggestion is on how to radically change the start menu into
>> something else.
>>
>> http://brianshapiro.q45.org/concepts/ui.htm
>>
>> thanks,
>>
>> brianshapiro
>>
>>
>
>

So you're going for object-based UI...

There's merits for both object and task-based UIs. If you know exactly what
you're doing, object-based UI is the way to go. But for the average
computer-illiterate user, task-bsaed UI will be the better choice.

"Andrew Hilton" <hiltona@ocean.com.au.spamfree> wrote in message
news:OgQSrYFOGHA.3460@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> The current XP start menu isn't far off 'Task Centric' anyway, 'Control
> Panel', 'My Documents', 'Accessories' etc. Please don't bring back that
> 'new Excel Document' rubbish. Task centric is not the way, it's just
> another confusing hierarchy to navigate.
>
> <Nicholas> wrote in message news:OxOfQNwJGHA.604@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
>> That website resembles some of my ideas of the Start menu: tesk-centric
>> Start menu is A MUST. Please no more 3 page Program lists, but I
>> seriously doubt they will change the way they do things...
>>
>>
>> "Brian Shapiro" <brian_shapiro@hotmail.com>
>> 7097D051-D01D-4D1B-8E5B-001264205D02@microsoft.com...
>>>I started writing a page on changes I think would be good for the Windows
>>>UI,
>>> I posted this on channel9 at one time, but I was hopeful someone
>>> involved
>>> with Vista development would take an interest.
>>>
>>> One of my main suggestions is that tabbed document interfaces should be
>>> a
>>> native feature of Windows; where any document-type windows will have an
>>> option to for them to group into a window with a tabbed interface, and
>>> ungroup.
>>>
>>> Another suggestion is on how to radically change the start menu into
>>> something else.
>>>
>>> http://brianshapiro.q45.org/concepts/ui.htm
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>>
>>> brianshapiro
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

I'm not in favor of "task-based" over "object-based" I think neither
metaphors should dominate a UI and just have different roles in it. In the
illustration I made in my suggestions, the Start center is centered around
your Document library. Clicking on a Word document would open the document in
Word. So basically the only purpose of opening Word some other way, would be
to start a new Untitled document. Which is why just plain launching Word is
illustrated there as "New Word Document" and why it adopts the task-based
metaphor. This is completely purposeful and logical to the interface design,
unlike the silly "new Word Document" etc shortcuts that were placed on the
Start menu in certain versions of Office which had no real purpose.

In fact I hate when tasked-based evangelists go overboard, whether turning
everything into hyperlink pages that you have to navigate with forward and
back buttons, or removing or minimizing the use of context menus, or limiting
the flexibility of the UI by predefining the user space. The last done in the
XP-prototype Neptune did that to an extreme degree, I hated the idea of using
Neptune for a real world OS. You couldn't drag between windows, your activity
centers were tailored and designed for you, everything was controlled, yuck.
For similar reasons I hated concepts of browser-based OSs back in the days of
Constellation. I don't like how certain Macintosh designers are adamant about
not caring for context menus, which are something that makes an interface
much more easy and powerful for expert users.

On the other hand, I hate non-sensical design, and support when things are
presented to the user logically, which I think my design does, as it is
-conscious of the task that an object of the UI represents.- BeOS is a
perfect example of an object-based OS which was logical on some internal
level but made no logical sense on the level of presenting things to the user
and being intuitive. Incidentally, I hated it when people carped about the
users document folder being referred to as "My Documents" suggesting it was
some friendly-feeling gimmick by Microsoft. Its basically the same thing as a
"this" or a "self" reference in a programming language; ie instead of saying
"Nicholas' Documents" which is obvious if you're logged in under that name,
its "My Documents". So I'm not really impressed that they are dropping the
"My" in Vista. -Although- I think for the actual name of the folder on the
disk it should just be named "Documents", not "My Documents" (and maybe
sorted in folders differntly, maybe in reverse)

"Nicholas" wrote:

> So you're going for object-based UI...
>
> There's merits for both object and task-based UIs. If you know exactly what
> you're doing, object-based UI is the way to go. But for the average
> computer-illiterate user, task-bsaed UI will be the better choice.
>
> "Andrew Hilton" <hiltona@ocean.com.au.spamfree> wrote in message
> news:OgQSrYFOGHA.3460@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> > The current XP start menu isn't far off 'Task Centric' anyway, 'Control
> > Panel', 'My Documents', 'Accessories' etc. Please don't bring back that
> > 'new Excel Document' rubbish. Task centric is not the way, it's just
> > another confusing hierarchy to navigate.
> >
> > <Nicholas> wrote in message news:OxOfQNwJGHA.604@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> >> That website resembles some of my ideas of the Start menu: tesk-centric
> >> Start menu is A MUST. Please no more 3 page Program lists, but I
> >> seriously doubt they will change the way they do things...
> >>
> >>
> >> "Brian Shapiro" <brian_shapiro@hotmail.com>
> >> 7097D051-D01D-4D1B-8E5B-001264205D02@microsoft.com...
> >>>I started writing a page on changes I think would be good for the Windows
> >>>UI,
> >>> I posted this on channel9 at one time, but I was hopeful someone
> >>> involved
> >>> with Vista development would take an interest.
> >>>
> >>> One of my main suggestions is that tabbed document interfaces should be
> >>> a
> >>> native feature of Windows; where any document-type windows will have an
> >>> option to for them to group into a window with a tabbed interface, and
> >>> ungroup.
> >>>
> >>> Another suggestion is on how to radically change the start menu into
> >>> something else.
> >>>
> >>> http://brianshapiro.q45.org/concepts/ui.htm
> >>>
> >>> thanks,
> >>>
> >>> brianshapiro
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
>