Everything Else

Well, I'm sure you'll be curious about the subject!
The matter is: I want to try to stablish with this post some kind of reference for myself about the worst/better designs related to Graphic-User-Interfaces on the history of software.

So; what do you think? ...What is in your oppinion the worst GUI? ...What is in your oppinion the better GUI?

If you're still curious about the subject, I only can say that I'll try to learn things from those potential results of this post to use them on my next project of software... but hey! ...it is too secret !

Come on!; don't hold your emotions!; bring to the outside your critic inside!

This is a good start:

http://www.rha.com/ui_hall_of_shame.htm

Hmm,

maybe not the worst, but when I saw SoftImage in 1997 the first time on an sgi workstation I really wondered about the ugly gui. Though I have to admit that I never used SoftImage, so I cannot say if it was impractical to work with.

Matthias

GeneratriX wrote: I want to try to stablish with this post some kind of reference for myself about the worst/better designs related to Graphic-User-Interfaces on the history of software.

Although I don't want to discuss individual GUIs, I feel your thread gives me a good opportunity to let some emotions out: for /me/ the worst /design/ related to GUIs in the history of software is /MS Windows/ as we know it today. What I mean is that - while there was a time when Windows was an /add-on/ product [allowing you to run /another/ window manager if you wanted on top of DOS (I used a lot GEM which, in my opinion, was better than Windows anyway)] - Microsoft's decision to /include/ Windows into the OS itself plainly was horrible (many people actually only mean the GUI when they talk about /Windows/). For simple home-usage that might be ok, but, since so many production servers nowadays run W2k or later, it is frustrating to watch even sysadmins just clicking around - many of them don't even use the command line anymore

Of course, what the best/worst GUI is, depends very much on personal preferences and I'd not be surprised if this thread leads to some friendly flaming (I myself don't like the Windows-GUI, but I like the standard IRIX desktop or KDE)

That phone. LOL.

My vote goes to Apple's gratuitous use of brushed metal in random apps. Yeah, so we'll have a metal web browser, but a stripy network utility. That's consistent, and makes so much sense, and makes eveything so much easier to conceptualise.

Maybe this irks me so much because they wrote the book on consistent interfaces (Inside Macintosh) back in the 80s, then tore it up for OSX, which is in many other respects quite a good desktop unix - nicer than Solaris/CDE or Gnome/Linux.

By far not the worst offender, but I find the Discreet suite (FFI, etc) to be less than user friendly or intuitive.

hm, is this only about the looks or interaction as well? the most annoying UI i got to know in recent times was/is Windows XP - not because of the looks, but because of how the user is being constantly bugged, reminded, has his focus stolen from him, has files hidden from him, well he's almost being terrorised while using that thing.
recently had to install it on my new machine after a long happy life with win2000 because the latter doesn't perform well with hyperthreading. my, what a different experience...

apples OSX would be a rather close second though - not only are the looks highly overdone to a point where it's no longer enhancing but degrading the whole experience, the thing is also rather restricting, won't adapt well to a user's needs and steals alot of system resources for it's polished cr*p. i'd rather put the mouse aside and use the shell on that one.

third place goes to the standard unix app filebrowser dialog. yes, damn inconvenient, yet a common guest on my screen. go away, thing.

summary: let the user customize your gui, design it with that in mind. different users = different tastes. make it so, that wizards and notifiers and similar annoyances can be turned off permanently.
a pretty gui might attract some, but in the long run, only functionality counts. for those who pretend to work, at least don't overdo it and save up those precious resources.

good GUI example (in my humble opinion): apple (in fact, nothingreal) shake - flexible, attractive, fast (not on o2, though), compact, not cluttered, open and easily customizeable. does a good joob at vanishing into the background and leaving the focus to the actual work. no spacewaster either.

good but somewhat strange GUI example: nichimen mirai - minimalistic, puts total focus on the work, very generalised - once you have learned it, you won't feel lost in any place in that program. but since it'S so different, it takes a lot of time getting used to.

mediocre GUI example #1: alias maya - open and customizeable but also quite slow because of that, cluttered to the extreme because of all the legacy it carries with it, mix of some different usability concepts - why?

mediocre GUI example #2: 3ds max - very customizeable and reasonably fast. compact screen size. quite cluttered plugin-host: know one area of the program, have no idea what to do in another, a lot of different concepts (read: plugins from different vendors) in that one.

confusing GUI example: pixologic zbrush - awesome program with one of the strangest UI's on earth. fast, refresh-issues, lot's of tiny text and hard-to-grab micro-sliders, uses a lot of it's own non-standard terminology to confuse you even further. has gotten better in recent versions. for a really strange experience check out versions 1.23 or 1.55.

GIJoe wrote: hm, is this only about the looks or interaction as well?

My interest is, in order of priority of importance:

1) How easily you can learn to use it.
2) Work-Flux efficience.
3) Predictability on interaction.
4) Known issues. I.E.: refresh problems, buggy callbacks, etc.
5) How well it feels, in general.
6) How well it looks, in general.
7) Flexability for user customization.

Of course I'll be happy with those more emotive posts too, and answers in the lines of: "-I hate this stuppid app from FooFoo Co.!"

Brombear wrote: Hmm,

maybe not the worst, but when I saw SoftImage in 1997 the first time on an sgi workstation I really wondered about the ugly gui. Though I have to admit that I never used SoftImage, so I cannot say if it was impractical to work with.

Matthias

Softimage|3D had the better GUI i ever used at the time ... and still I enjoy some cool stuffs have been ported to XSI too .. (middle mouse click is just one example)..

Softimage|3D wasnt able to run on dual screen tought.. which was odd.

Maybe the "look" wasnt nice to many people but it was fast and reliable.

cheers.

sum][one wrote: Softimage|3D had the better GUI i ever used at the time ... and still I enjoy some cool stuffs have been ported to XSI too .. (middle mouse click is just one example)..

...Well, I've never worked too deeply with Softimage|3D, but I can recall a few times playing around with it on a local TV Channel. Nothing to complain on it by those days. Or at least, it was a lot more friendly and intuitive than what I recall about the suite Avid MediaIllusion/Matador !

Better GUI?

That is tough, because readline and dialog in console seem to be my favorite. I would have to say that the software manager in Irix has got to be the best GUI, it has predictable options in a easy layout. It is not whiney (like XP), only stubborn (like a woman) when it comes to dependencies.

It is simple. Straight forward, and has some neat little options hidden for console use (ie. forcing...)

Worst GUI? well, hmm. The "new" control panel in XP. Overly simplified, which assumes you have no fucking clue what you are looking for (thus hiding shit from you in "categories" that make no damned sense), etc.

The best GUI I have ever experienced:

Simplicity, ease of configuration, obvious options and clear dialog with the user.

Software should allow the machine to communicate with the user, without having any anthropomorphized traits.

The software manager in Irix gives me this.

GeneratriX wrote: Well, I'm sure you'll be curious about the subject!
The matter is: I want to try to stablish with this post some kind of reference for myself about the worst/better designs related to Graphic-User-Interfaces on the history of software.

So; what do you think? ...What is in your oppinion the worst GUI? ...What is in your oppinion the better GUI?

Hmm, a chance to tout the Workplace Shell again ..... altho it's an ooui rather than a gui. Maybe OO didn't work out in other places ( Triumph of the Object ) but it sure makes sense in a desktop shell. Logical, consistent, highly extensible, easy to customize in any direction one could want without adding bazillions of crappy little scripts ... great concept. I also wish the direction IBM and Apple were taking in the late eighties - OpenDoc, CUA, making the desktop task -centered rather than application-centered, all the good stuff we lost out on because of Microsoft and stupid consumers .... ah well. And now Irix is going down the tubes, to be replaced by the half-ass wannabe Windows-clone of Loonix. Now I know why olde fartes always babble about the goode olde dayes

Dear god! dude I just shot fucking Warsteiner out of my nose!

Well, almost. The executable was so huge, it took five minutes
to load, on an HP workstation, with 128MB of RAM. Then it ran
like molasses. Actually, I thought this would be a major
stumbling-block, and I'd get found out within a week, but nobody
cared. Sun and HP were only too glad to sell enormously powerful
boxes, with huge resources just to run trivial programs. You
know, when we had our first C++ compiler, at AT&T, I compiled
'Hello World', and couldn't believe the size of the executable:
2.1MB

If only this was true...

The most irritating thing is in Mikroschoft Windhoos XP, when you logon en just make one little typo, it directly sais:

DID YOU FORGET YOUR PASSWORD?
(But not in uppercase or bold, of course.)

And then, It's going to explain that you can get help for if you forgot your password, and that you can't use to much weird characters.
Does m$ think we're all idiots and have forgotten our password if we make just one typo?