Re: Changes I've been thinking of...

[Robert J. Slover]

On Oct 10, 2009, at 5:03 AM, Michael Thaler wrote:

> The NeXTSTEP GUI was designed fifteen years ago when it was  
> basically not
> possible to have round buttons, gradients, transparency, shadows  
> etc. because
> the hardware was not powerful enough for that. But the world moved  
> on and
> today almost nobody wants to have square buttons, no gradients etc.  
> (There are
> certainly people today which would prefer to have a masterpiece  
> carriage
> instead of an ordinary car, but most people that just need something  
> to go to
> work would certainly take the car).

In all fairness, the very first places I ever saw a user interfaces  
using round controls, transparency, or gradients inside windows and  
buttons was on NeXTStep.  PCs were still running DOS, for the most  
part, and all but the very expensive Macs were still grayscale at  
best.  The round control was inside Fractal Painter (if I remember  
correctly), transparency was something that was demoed for the "wow"  
factor to show of the NeXTDimension (dragging a picture of a sports  
car onto a beach scene, and pasting it there, and the beach showed  
right through the windows of the car, with varying degrees of  
transparency relative to the curvature of the windows -- damned cool  
at the time ('90?)).  And I think Radical News was the first app I  
ever saw making use of gradients in controls, but there were probably  
others.

As well, given that the NeXT debuted October 12, 1988, the NeXTStep  
GUI was designed over 21 years ago.  It did indeed make concessions to  
the limitations of video hardware -- the GUI looked great in 2-bit  
grayscale.  It also looked great in 32-bit color with the  
NeXTDimension video board, which cost more than the machine itself.

At any rate, what does and does not look good is totally a matter of  
taste.  I do not find the NeXT look boring at all.  Keith Ohlfs ( http://www.ohlfs.com/keith/self/next/next.html 
 ) was and is an extremely talented designer, and having a single  
person responsible for so much of the interface really made it  
consistent.  I love the contrast, and the lack of overly bright  
objects.  If I could tone down Mac OS X I would.  It is too bright for  
my tastes, worse even than the original MacOS.  As well, buttons are  
too small, and having a single top-of-screen menu bar is a pain in the  
rear when I have 3 very large monitors and I happen to have the mouse  
on the "wrong" one.  Even after years of use, having right-hand  
scrollbars in browser mode never feels natural.  And I miss the  
shelf.  My opinion, of course, is no more or less valid than yours --  
which is why people are so interested in theming.  I would agree with  
GNUStep having a more modern default theme, but only to distinguish it  
as a project that stands on its own, rather than relying on NeXTStep  
nostalgia (but of course, I'd immediately switch back to the "old"  
look :-) ).

As for the definition of a professional interface -- I would say it is  
an interface that gets the job done without being in the way.  In that  
way, XP out of the box is a major failure in my book, and I  
immediately turn off all of the gooey colors, animations, collapsing  
menus and other crud, adjust the colors to something more subtle with  
better contrast, then install VNC and remote into my Sun desktop  
running WindowMaker, which does a better job of not getting in my way.

--Robert