Ignore the Code

The best potted intro I know: https://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ A more in-depth look for folks with some comp-sci knowledge: https://www.scribd.com/document/377504715/Oberon-the-Overlooked-Jewel

That was it! Thank you! I thought it was something to do with Oberon but just searching for that turned up nothing. Thanks to your hint I found the post where I read about it: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ The referenced rant at the beginning is now off-line, but still available through archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20090416033922/http://stevenf.tumblr.com:8… Now, I'm not saying Bluebottle is great to work with, but the idea is interesting, and I think some of the good bits could be made to work better with modern IxD sensibilities applied to it, especially with touch-screens.

I have to agree. Every version of Skype since 4 has been an exercise in a appalling design choices, in particular on the Mac. Whereas it used to occupy a tiny window listing contacts Skype 5 switched to a large obnoxious screen filling mess. Here is an excellent summary of the mess that is Skype: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/30/skype_5/

(just saw [this article](http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2014/03/02/windows_8_surface/) on the hn frontpage which describes very well what I meant with bullshit and mess. I kind of like the metro part but as I need the Desktop part... no 'love';)

Lukas Mathis has a series of articles about Nintendo that I think is worth to read: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2013/08/29/nintendo/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2013/09/03/more_nintendo/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2013/09/05/lateral_thinking_with_withere… http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2013/09/07/where_do_people_use_portable_…

Some relevant writing on unsolicited redesigns from last year, worth bearing in mind in this context, by - Lukas Mathis: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/05/15/unsolicited_redesigns/ - Khoi Vinh: http://www.subtraction.com/2011/07/28/unsolicited-redesigns - Andy Rutledge: http://andyrutledge.com/journalism.php

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21431778 DonHopkins on Nov 3, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Evolution of the Scrollbar Open Look scrollbars would be impossible to implement properly in the web browser without using the Pointer Lock API that let you "warp" the mouse cursor position, because when you click on the elevator or cable, the elevator cab actually pushes the cursor up and down with it. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Lock_API Here's a demo of Open Look scrollbars from Brad Myers' "All The Widgets" video, which he produced for the ACM CHI 1990 conference. It also has demos of many other kinds of scrollbars and other widgets. (Sun Microsystems, Inc. OPEN LOOK, 1988): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=12m57s >All the Widgets (Fixed v2) - 1990: This was made in 1990, sponsored by the ACM CHI 1990 conference, to tell the history of widgets up until then. Previously published as: Brad A. Myers. All the Widgets. 2 hour, 15 min videotape. Technical Video Program of the SIGCHI'90 conference, Seattle, WA. April 1-4, 1990. SIGGRAPH Video Review, Issue 57. ISBN 0-89791-930-0. When I was working on The NeWS Toolkit at Sun (an Open Look toolkit implemented in PostScript), Jonathan Payne implemented the Open Look scrollbars, and I thought they had such a cool interesting 3D shape with their elevator, cable, anchors, ridges and arrows, that I carved an 3D Open Look scrollbar for him out of soap as a birthday gift. (He also…

> I hated Skyrim, the world is big but empty. There is nothing particular about the landscape that makes me want to "go there". Most of the time, I discovered areas because I was going in straight lines. I discovered the Elders Scrolls via Morrowind, then because I enjoyed it so much I was overjoyed about Oblivion coming out, and a little bit less about Skyrim. ... But these last two left me with that feeling of emptiness about the world. Oblivion had some redeeming qualities on specific quests (going into that painting was absolutely fantastic, although way too short), but felt like a drag overall. Skyrim felt like you never stop stumbling on something, encounters and quests felt evenly spaced and incredibly generic, succumbing to a Horror Vacui of sorts[0]. Also since everything dynamically adjusts in difficulty to your progress, everything is always as easy as it ever was. As a result there's no risk, no surprise, no tension. Comparatively, Morrowind had many many flaws but I just kept on wanting to explore the world more, go past this ridge, reach to that spiky thing on the horizon, enter this weird tomb, walk down that windy road... [0]: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2014/11/11/horror_vacui/

Not for people who were happily navigating with their keyboard. Not for people who were going to copy/paste anyway. Not for people who wanted to look at something in another tab before finishing your aggressively self-important webform. Not for people who will inevitably accidentally hit something in the dialog before even seeing it because they were typing too fast and it accepted their keyboard input. Not for people who will resent you on principle for stealing their focus to stop the proceedings with idiocy (google it). And certainly not for the people who are so tired of dialog boxes that they've given up on reading them altogether. What you want: User reads your dialog box notifying them to double-check their email address. What actually happens: User maybe looks at your dialog box just long enough to figure out what it is before clicking whatever they think will make it go away. A tiny proportion of anal-retentive users who would have never gotten it wrong in the first place actually do what you asked them to do. http://arstechnica.com/security/2008/09/study-confirms-users-are-idiot… > Follow-up questions revealed that the students seemed to find any dialog box a distraction from their assigned task; nearly half said that all they cared about was getting rid of these dialogs. The results suggest that a familiarity with Windows dialogs have bred a degree of contempt and that users simply don't care what the boxes say…

This how I feel about every version of Skype (for OS X) since version 2.8.x. The Skype UI had two windows - one for contacts and one for conversations. This made it easy to tuck Skype in a small corner of your screen. I think starting at version 5 they switched to one giant window and the community, pretty unanimously thought it was one of the worst UIs they had ever used (see this blog post: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/30/skype_5/). The change seemed completely unnecessary and made things very non intuitive. If I myself had trouble using it, I think it must have been even worse for people who do not use computers so often. Indeed many people reverted back to 2.8. I used 2.8 up until a few months ago when Skype finally decided to drop video support for it. I think the newest version of Skype does let you break things into new windows, but to me it seems that it should be the default. My main point is: the UI was already great, it didn't need any changes.

The Oberon interface has always been intriguing to me. An infinite zoomable window manager. https://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/

It was pretty innovative, but it also showed such incredible hubris. The famous post (now gone but referenced from [1]) about how they spend who-knows-how-long reimplementing scroll bars in the browser when the app was so janky it barely worked was the kind of thing that doomed it. The HN discussion at the time is interesting too[2] [1] http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/11/15/google_waves_scrollbars/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943947

@dang, maybe this should point to the source: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2021/10/31/honey_please_shrink_the_touch… Which has been separately submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055748

Obligatory Google Wave scrollbar mention... http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/11/15/google_waves_scrollbars/ (Damn, it's already been over a decade already since it ended?)

> TempleOS had some features that other OS's could use, too—its use of hyperlinking is actually really cool. If you want to see what doldoc and plumbing in one system might look like, check out Oberon[1]. [1] - http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/

I'm surprised nobody has brought up the scrollbars yet. The original post mentions the bespoke UI, but only faults it for using MDI. The non-native scrollbars were smart and nifty, but, at the end of the day, they were jarring to use. I don't remember many single UI features that ever made me alternate so frequently between "neat!" and "WTH?!?". And I've seen lots of interfaces on many platforms. http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/11/15/google_waves_scrollbars/

Unfortunately there are still many features[1] that Android (and iOS) haven't stolen from webOS. The few features implemented have merely been copied poorly. I still multitask much more comfortably on a Pre 3.6" screen phone than on the 12.9" iPad Pro. And while we're in the topic of AI assistants, I still think these voice-only interfaces on iOS/Android, don't match the simplicity of webOS' Just Type. You have to memorize the capabilities and/or syntax for Siri and Google Assistant whereas webOS would autocomplete/autosuggest as you 'Just Type'. That experience is still profound imo. (If any of Andy Rubin's Essential team is reading this, please add 'Just Type' as a core feature to your assistant) [1] http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2012/02/21/steal_webos_features/

It has an interesting GUI. Text is live (as in everything can be a menu), and selections can become objects of commands. See http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/

Lifestreams were/are a facinating idea but I think Gelernter and Freeman weren't really doers. I've used Lifestrams for about 2 years and it was far from stable and had a lot of bugs under Solaris. Apple's TimeMachine UI[1] seems somehow "inspired" by Lifetream's[2]. [1] https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare/images/en… [2] http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/03/17/lifestreams/

It is very interesting to see some comparisons you did. You mentioned Oberon[1], which has an explicit reference to Doug Engelbart. Seeing some TempleOS highlights reminds me a lot of those ideas, including LightTable[2]. [1]: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ [2]: http://lighttable.com/

To see another way that operating systems (could) have gone, you could read about Niklaus Wirth's Oberon system that Zurich university still uses and develops on. He & Jurg Gutknecht designed/built the system from processor & peripherals to the language and end user applications. Total stack consistency. * a better motivation: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ * Project Oberon pdf: http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ * development branch head: http://bluebottle.ethz.ch/

I may lack coding chops, but you lack imagination. Don't let the coders design, I guess. http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/03/10/designers-are-not-programmers… I replied above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5382745

A visual version of a similar analogy: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2012/09/09/progress/

From the same author as the parent article: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/07/15/the_back_button_dilemma/

Lukas Mathis proposes an interesting solution for the "visual indicator:" http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/08/01/invisible_scrollbars/

I think Lukas Mathis created it for his post "Realism in UI Design" [1]. [1] http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2010/01/21/realism_in_ui_design/

Lukas Mathis touches on this visual scrollability hint in his discussion of potential solutions to usability issues with Lion's new hidden scrollbars: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/08/01/invisible_scrollbars/ Showing a peak of extra content to indicate that there's something you're not seeing may not be deliberate, but it's definitely desirable when you've got no other permanent indicators. That said, given Apple's usual attention to detail, I wouldn't be surprised to find that this is a deliberate design choice.

It solves one crucial problem of all current tablet UIs (iOS, Android, WebOS): http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/04/multitasking/ Please, Apple, Google and HP, blatantly copy the ability to see more than one app at once!

I limit my subs to mostly tech and feeds that post infrequently but well. I go back and forth between enabling Hacker News and disabling it. It's too busy and distracting sometimes when I need to get things done and I don't want to get lost it some lengthy article somewhere. Here are my current feeds sans HN http://abstrusegoose.com http://xkcd.com/ http://cmurphycode.posterous.com http://acmel.wordpress.com http://bsdpunk.blogspot.com/ http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/blog/ http://www.cpeterson.org http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ http://blogs.iss.net http://ignorethecode.net http://blog.lastinfirstout.net/ http://linuxsysadminblog.com http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com http://planetsysadmin.com/ http://teddziuba.com/ http://toroid.org/ams/etc

> 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.