Fixing the Taskbar
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This is something I've meant to address for a couple of years. Unfortunately my life has not been conducive to much volunteer work.
I have a project on my disk with a rather noble aim: to make the Taskbar not suck anymore without adding a single new class to the system. I think it's doable but I haven't had time to tack the work. I have some ideas about how to do this, but there are some interesting questions... If we want to throw out most of the idea of "application modality," and still keep a system that's both usable in essence and familiar to newcomers, what might that look like? To my mind, the most obvious thing to do is to emulate the Windows taskbar. Windows could be grouped by morph class into a single taskbar button (so all the Inspectors would group together and one would pick one from a menu upon clicking the button.) I'd put a clock on the right, and a button with a Cuis icon on the left, and maybe call it the "Open" menu, both in order to dodge branding laws and in order to emphasize the ethos of open source software, at the same time as literally saying "click here to open stuff." I'd imagine this "Open" menu would provide fast access to "applications" or what the VPRI folks are calling "moods." But that's just the most obvious thing to do from the guy who wrote the current (crappy!) taskbar. Maybe the Windows metaphor isn't as recognizable as it was a few years ago, and further effort in that direction is not a good plan. Maybe it should be more like OS X's dock or the iOS task list when one hits the home button twice. Or maybe it's not any of these old and limited ideas... Maybe it's something completely new. With Morphic 3 approaching, and the promise of a truly zoomable user interface, maybe the taskbar/dock idea is obsolete. If this is the case, I'd leave it as it is, focus on getting Morphic 3 pushed out into the world, and then jettison the taskbar thing. I've spent some time doing demos of Cuis for people. I know for sure that the taskbar as is a) doesn't look like a taskbar, and b) doesn't behave as one expects a taskbar to behave. Both are an artifact of that I was trying to do the simplest thing which would make the minimize button not throw a debugger window while also not adding a bunch of unwanted complexity to the system. It occurs to me, now that we have a vocal group of users, I should just ask: how should minimizing and restoring SystemWindows work? Should we be able to minimize/restore morphs which are not also SystemWindows? Is the current half-solution painful in your experience? Any comments, ideas, insight, references to usability research, or downright flame mail is requested: seriously, don't spare my feelings, because I know this aspect is wanting. Casey _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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On Wed, 30 Oct 2013 04:39:16 -0700
Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote: > This is something I've meant to address for a couple of years. Unfortunately my life has not been conducive to much volunteer work. > > I have a project on my disk with a rather noble aim: to make the Taskbar not suck anymore without adding a single new class to the system. I think it's doable but I haven't had time to tack the work. > > I have some ideas about how to do this, but there are some interesting questions... > > If we want to throw out most of the idea of "application modality," and still keep a system that's both usable in essence and familiar to newcomers, what might that look like? Stepping back a bit, a user interface in general is about visibility and control. The fundamental questions are; Where am I? What can I do here? Thinking about scalable user interfaces I think about what I would want to be with me in a 2.5d to 3d (Croquet, the (sur)real world with me and "an electronic device" with Cuis). Basically, I want to be able to "carry things with me in my pocket" as I traverse scales, landscapes, worlds, whatever. I want map and compass and a weather report, basic communications, my swiss army knife (Cuis). In a scalable UI, this pocket (dock/taskbar) could be a place where the visible objects I want to remember and have with me are in the same scale and access location. So I think of morphs (which could be windows, movies, worlds) just scaled to fit into a taskbar. Live icons if you will. In the Taskbar, the "iconized window" is just the full window scaled to fit rather than just a thumbnail. We have the World menu, which is great for things which organize linguistically (cognitive structure based on concept hierarchies). I think the Taskbar should be like this for the visual cognitive realm. How do I visually distinguish scaled down things which look similar? The Mac dock comes to mind, just enlarge slightly the image under the cursor. How do I group things? Squeak's world thumbnails come to mind. How do I find things? ... Just some ideas to play with.. -KenD _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
-KenD
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Some good thoughts. Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Ken. I particularly liked your AR/VR/Croquet comment; I think this stuff will really take off as soon as someone comes up with a headset that doesn't make one look hopelessly silly!
Iconic representation of "task" (or really, "activity," task is so age-of-productivity and we're quite over that for the most part I think) to my mind is still of value. The hard part is to decide when to use an iconic symbol and when to use zooming. Obviously if having zoomed out, one can't make sense of the zoomed-out thing by looking it, the zooming strategy has failed. Beyond that, it's hard to think about, because I've never used a zooming interface before. I'm stuck on the pink plane and I haven't got many blue ideas. I think the dock/taskbar idea is too wrapped up in "apps." Which to me are mostly an unwanted form of constrictive modality. It bums me out that the world seems to be moving into more modality when less (and instead more interoperability between computing activities) is so much more of an amplifier. I've reached out for interesting research in this department, because there are probably people who've thought about the problem a lot more than I have. We'll see if science bites. I love fishing for science. We'll see if I find anything fantastic. On Oct 31, 2013, at 7:43 AM, Ken Dickey <[hidden email]> wrote: > On Wed, 30 Oct 2013 04:39:16 -0700 > Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote: > >> This is something I've meant to address for a couple of years. Unfortunately my life has not been conducive to much volunteer work. >> >> I have a project on my disk with a rather noble aim: to make the Taskbar not suck anymore without adding a single new class to the system. I think it's doable but I haven't had time to tack the work. >> >> I have some ideas about how to do this, but there are some interesting questions... >> >> If we want to throw out most of the idea of "application modality," and still keep a system that's both usable in essence and familiar to newcomers, what might that look like? > > Stepping back a bit, a user interface in general is about visibility and control. The fundamental questions are; Where am I? What can I do here? > > Thinking about scalable user interfaces I think about what I would want to be with me in a 2.5d to 3d (Croquet, the (sur)real world with me and "an electronic device" with Cuis). > > Basically, I want to be able to "carry things with me in my pocket" as I traverse scales, landscapes, worlds, whatever. I want map and compass and a weather report, basic communications, my swiss army knife (Cuis). > > In a scalable UI, this pocket (dock/taskbar) could be a place where the visible objects I want to remember and have with me are in the same scale and access location. So I think of morphs (which could be windows, movies, worlds) just scaled to fit into a taskbar. Live icons if you will. In the Taskbar, the "iconized window" is just the full window scaled to fit rather than just a thumbnail. > > We have the World menu, which is great for things which organize linguistically (cognitive structure based on concept hierarchies). > > I think the Taskbar should be like this for the visual cognitive realm. > > How do I visually distinguish scaled down things which look similar? The Mac dock comes to mind, just enlarge slightly the image under the cursor. How do I group things? Squeak's world thumbnails come to mind. How do I find things? ... > > > Just some ideas to play with.. > -KenD > > > _______________________________________________ > Cuis mailing list > [hidden email] > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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On Thu, 31 Oct 2013 08:44:09 -0700
Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote: > Iconic representation of "task" (or really, "activity," task is so age-of-productivity and we're quite over that for the most part I think) to my mind is still of value. The hard part is to decide when to use an iconic symbol and when to use zooming. Obviously if having zoomed out, one can't make sense of the zoomed-out thing by looking it, the zooming strategy has failed. Beyond that, it's hard to think about, because I've never used a zooming interface before. I think of two main metaphors or roles for a Taskbar: [1] A historical set of visual "bookmarks" to take me back somewhere (bread crumbs/Adrian's thread). [2] A Dashboard -- instruments reflecting my current focus in the world. As to place (Where are we?) there are two main parts: [A] Location (<X/Y/Z>, <E-W/Up-Down/N-S>, <Rho/Theta/Depth>, <transforms>...) relative to an origin <0/0/0>. [B] Scale/Magnification ( <ratio>, <percent>, ...) and possibly [D] Direction of view So I have a current location relative to some "center of the Cartesian universe" seen through zero or more transforms. One can think of describing a camera position with a lens which magnifies/reduces/... Things I might want on my dashboard include a clock/calendar, current location (map & compass, altitude, pressure, weather forcast), topical interests (stock market, ocean temperatures, list of current tasks/to-do's, ...), heartbeat (VM is alive and sending steps), connections, ... Given these two basic orienting viewpoints (dashboard, visual locations) I need a way to get to my toolset and a way to (re)configure the Taskbar. Back to current Cuis and setting the stage for the future: we have a baseline scale (1) and location (pixels=X/Y, delta-Z=0) for graphical entities. We have morphs for which we can display thumbnails. As the morphs are live, today they might broadcast a #appearanceChanged event which means "Taskbar, update my icon". Note that some morphs might like to display themselves differently at different scales. E.g. a Clock might go from analog to digital format when displayed at a small scale. A clock could "triggerEvent: #appearanceChanged" every minute/second to update the clock display. Where am I? What can I do here? Where have I been? What can I do/Where can I go (planning)? The Taskbar can be a meta-compass to help orient and remember. What is the simplest thing that will work? -KenD _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
-KenD
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In reply to this post by KenDickey
Another thought is that an "iconized morph", as shown in the Taskbar, is like a Croquet portal into another world. In our current case, it is a portal to a <location>+<scale>.
$0.02, -KenD _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
-KenD
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In reply to this post by Casey Ransberger-2
On Thu, 31 Oct 2013 08:44:09 -0700
Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote: > Beyond that, it's hard to think about, because I've never used a zooming interface before. What? You've never used Google Earth !?! :) ;) :0 -- Ken [dot] Dickey [at] whidbey [dot] com _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
-KenD
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I wasn't counting true 3D UIs, but yeah. My favorite example is the Croquet yellow triangle which works a lot like a full screen button on a window but backwards, where it zooms your avatar to the ideal point of view.
On Oct 31, 2013, at 9:52 PM, Ken Dickey <[hidden email]> wrote: > On Thu, 31 Oct 2013 08:44:09 -0700 > Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote: > >> Beyond that, it's hard to think about, because I've never used a zooming interface before. > > What? You've never used Google Earth !?! :) ;) :0 > > -- > Ken [dot] Dickey [at] whidbey [dot] com > > _______________________________________________ > Cuis mailing list > [hidden email] > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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Ken these are all great ideas. I think we should worry less about zooming until Morphic 3 ships. In the meantime, I think focusing on more pedestrian interfaces makes sense. Any yes, I'm back on the internet :D
Casey On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 2:51 AM, Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote: I wasn't counting true 3D UIs, but yeah. My favorite example is the Croquet yellow triangle which works a lot like a full screen button on a window but backwards, where it zooms your avatar to the ideal point of view. _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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Hi Folks,
This thread is great. I've been to the Smalltalks conference in Rosario, and busy with work and stuff. Apologies for not answering before, and not helping with ideas right now. Anyway, please keep thinking, discussing and implenting stuff. Please don't wait for Morphic 3! It will come out eventually, but don't refrain to fix and enhance stuff in the mean time. Maybe you don't want to spend too much time fighting with a limited drawing model... But finding good ways to interact with stuff on the screen is very important. WRT ZUIs, don't forget about Prezi, most likely the zui with greatest impact right now. I dream of being able to build something like Prezi with live morph and live Smalltalk programming everywhere in Morphic 3 :) Thanks, Juan Vuletich On 11/2/2013 8:43 AM, Casey Ransberger wrote:
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In reply to this post by KenDickey
Hello Ken
I just read the code of your taskbar implementation and re-read your post below. It is amazing that you managed to implement it in two classes only with just 110 lines of code. A good illustration how to use the Morphic implementation of Cuis. See my question about the dash board below. Regards Hannes On 10/31/13, Ken Dickey <[hidden email]> wrote: > On Thu, 31 Oct 2013 08:44:09 -0700 > Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote: > >> Iconic representation of "task" (or really, "activity," task is so >> age-of-productivity and we're quite over that for the most part I think) >> to my mind is still of value. The hard part is to decide when to use an >> iconic symbol and when to use zooming. Obviously if having zoomed out, one >> can't make sense of the zoomed-out thing by looking it, the zooming >> strategy has failed. Beyond that, it's hard to think about, because I've >> never used a zooming interface before. > > I think of two main metaphors or roles for a Taskbar: > [1] A historical set of visual "bookmarks" to take me back somewhere (bread > crumbs/Adrian's thread). > [2] A Dashboard -- instruments reflecting my current focus in the world. At the moment there is a clock in the dash board. There is an instance variable for it but it is not used (currently nil). Taskbar>>initialize super initialize. viewBox _ LayoutMorph newRow. "add dash board" self addMorph: UpdatingStringMorph initializedInstance layoutSpec: (LayoutSpec morphWidthProportionalHeight: 1.0). "viewBox contains the minimized windows called 'TaskbarTasks' " self addMorph: viewBox layoutSpec: (LayoutSpec proportionalWidth: 1.0 proportionalHeight: 1.0 minorDirectionPadding: #right). viewBox separation: 5 The question is -- what else could the dashboard be used for? > > As to place (Where are we?) there are two main parts: > [A] Location (<X/Y/Z>, <E-W/Up-Down/N-S>, <Rho/Theta/Depth>, > <transforms>...) relative to an origin <0/0/0>. > [B] Scale/Magnification ( <ratio>, <percent>, ...) > and possibly > [D] Direction of view > > So I have a current location relative to some "center of the Cartesian > universe" seen through zero or more transforms. One can think of describing > a camera position with a lens which magnifies/reduces/... > > Things I might want on my dashboard include a clock/calendar, current > location (map & compass, altitude, pressure, weather forcast), topical > interests (stock market, ocean temperatures, list of current tasks/to-do's, > ...), heartbeat (VM is alive and sending steps), connections, ... > > Given these two basic orienting viewpoints (dashboard, visual locations) I > need a way to get to my toolset and a way to (re)configure the Taskbar. > > Back to current Cuis and setting the stage for the future: we have a > baseline scale (1) and location (pixels=X/Y, delta-Z=0) for graphical > entities. We have morphs for which we can display thumbnails. As the > morphs are live, today they might broadcast a #appearanceChanged event which > means "Taskbar, update my icon". > > Note that some morphs might like to display themselves differently at > different scales. E.g. a Clock might go from analog to digital format when > displayed at a small scale. A clock could "triggerEvent: > #appearanceChanged" every minute/second to update the clock display. > > Where am I? > What can I do here? > Where have I been? > What can I do/Where can I go (planning)? > > The Taskbar can be a meta-compass to help orient and remember. > > What is the simplest thing that will work? > > > -KenD _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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On Wed, 1 Jan 2014 14:58:04 +0000
"H. Hirzel" <[hidden email]> wrote: > The question is -- what else could the dashboard be used for? Any kind of status/control which one wants to keep visible. Current weather Laptop battery charge status Sound level Media playback control Network status/activity eMail/IM arrival CPU/Memory/Disk/.. capacity We just have to write enough interesting things to show off. ;^) -KenD _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
-KenD
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In reply to this post by Hannes Hirzel
On Wed, 1 Jan 2014 14:58:04 +0000
"H. Hirzel" <[hidden email]> wrote: > I just read the code of your taskbar implementation and re-read your post below. > > It is amazing that you managed to implement it in two classes only > with just 110 lines of code. A good illustration how to use the > Morphic implementation of Cuis. Note that Casey, Juan, and I am sure many others contributed to this code -- and to making it smaller and more concise. Thanks for the praise, but as with most code this is a group effort. The great thing about community is that you don't have to do everything yourself. Standing on the toes of giants, -KenD _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
-KenD
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In reply to this post by KenDickey
2014/1/1 Ken Dickey <[hidden email]>
I remember several years ago trying to use Squeak (I do not remember the exact version) as the window manager of LinEx (A Spanish Linux, from Extremadura government). It worked at a minimun, but still we needed applications to control the sort of stuf that Ken mention. Anyway, using OSProcess we were able to launch common Gnome apps.
We just have to write enough interesting things to show off. ;^) Hehe, or go ahead with a sort of stuff as CuisNOS (imitating SqueakNOS) :)
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