Re: GUI of Windows2001 (my gut reaction, then something for consideration)

[Paul Dorman <pdorman ihug co nz>]

I think I wanna ... I think I wanna ... I think I wanna PUKE!

Strange that MS seems to insist on corralling its customers into one
particular GUI flavour when open source GUIs  - which reflect the
*actual* desires of the users - are heading towards unlimited
flexibility. MS Gives you 'Neptune' (OOOOoooop, here comes a bit more!),
Gnome/Enlightenment/KDE/[...] gives you 'the Neptune Theme'.

Actually, is there a project looking at the full range of GUI
sophistication anywhere? At the moment the Gnome community is working
for itself, and new features for newbies are added at a rate which
(presumably) reflects the rate at which new users come to Linux and the
other OS's which use these GUIs. I'd like to see the theming ability
which exists now be extended to system wide themability. That would
enable the development of, for example, a 'training' interface for
Linux, which starts users off with a very simple just-get-the-work-done
kind of interface, and then takes the user through tutorials whereby
they learn about Linux (I'll just stay with that if you don't mind - I
recognise and applaud all the other OS's working with Gnome, but it's
just too much typing...) at their own pace. As they do each tutorial,
the sytem gives them access to more of the OS. So they are started off
with links to just the productivity apps they use, and very little of
the file system. The GUI also presents them with a list of tutorial
subjects they can go through which would, once done, give them access to
more features. They could of course at any time go back to an earlier
stage.

To do this I think we would need to modularize the theme capabilities
(if it hasn't already been done), work it so that many GUI and system
components and tools from various projects can work together,  and allow
themes to govern access to things like the filesystem, network
resources, configuration dialogues, etc.

If work was done to get this sort of capability we could have a gui
system much better than 'those other people' by, say, half way through
next year. Mighty Morphin Power GUI!



Eduardo Silva wrote:
> 
> Just found a link to the possible User Interface from
> Microsoft's "vaporware" 2001:
> http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/dvorak/jd990222a1a.htm
> In 2 years, when 2001 comes out, will we have a
> next-generation GUI to top it?
> 
> Eduardo