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Don't Mode Me In

c2.com

28 pointsuros6435 comments

Sounds an awful lot like the teachings of Jef Raskin. I read The Humane Interface years ago and I seem to remember him talking about modeless interfaces. Definitely worth a read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface

http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?NoApplication is also a good read, especially when the Rise of the App seems to be the big new thing. I'm not convinced about Apps -- I think NoApplication is where we will get to in not so long.

I agree. However, I disagree with the C2 page regarding the form that "NoApplication" will take. Most of the writing on the C2 page seems to talk about integrating applications into a file manager-like UI. I, on the other hand, think most applications will be integrated into a web browser style interface.

We already have tabbed window managers, and tabs are becoming increasingly prominent in other applications (e.g. text editors, IDEs, etc.). What we'd need to see is the OS integrating all of that into a master set of tabs.

Want to view a web page? Open an "internet" tab. Want to work on a document? Open a "Word" tab, and so on. We already have this interface (in a limited sense) with Google's Chrome OS. However, Chrome OS goes too far - it forces everything to run within the browser executable. What I'd like to see is a Window manager concept that brought the web metaphor to the desktop without shoehorning everything into an actual web browser.

> Want to view a web page? Open an "internet" tab. Want to work on a document? Open a "Word" tab, and so on.

Isn't that what we already had with standard OS window managers, before some applications (like browsers) started using their own internal window management (MDI and tabs)?

Also, purely tabbed window managers (and similar interfaces, like on iOS) have the disadvantage of not allowing user multitasking, which is a huge step backwards in UX. See this article: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/04/multitasking.

Yes, I don't think the everything-as-a-file-manager concept is where it will go. The same subject is discussed on the ObjectBrowser page, and that concept is very much in line with what I came up with separately. The basic idea being that the user interacts directly with (mostly data) objects, and new functionality is added by adding commands that do something involving one or more objects. Basically along the lines of unix piping, but not restricted to working on plaintext only. Tabs are really a bit of a kludge, I think a proper Zoomable Interface with automatic layout is the best choice as far as the UI goes.

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