Submitted by As much as I dislike Unity, I commend the Ubuntu team and Shuttleworth for having the guts to try to innovate and bring the desktop forward (pretty much the exact same can be said of KDE4 and GNOME3). Shuttleworth has just announced yet another significant change for Ubuntu, and it’s all about replacing the menu with a search interface dubbed the HUD.
Back when I still wrote my series on Common Usability Terms, I also wrote one about the menu. The menu is a core element of the graphical user interface developed by Xerox, and it has been adopted by virtually all popular computing environments ever since. Even in this supposedly post-PC world, the menu is still very much alive and kicking – they may have remarketed them as pop-overs or “touch selection experiences” or whatever, but don’t be fooled by that nonsense. A menu is a menu.
Shuttleworth seems to believe it’s time to retire the concept entirely – or at least offer an alternative. Menus are awesome in that they’re generally in the same place, there’s a fair level of consistency (even cross-platform), and, well, they’re familiar. They have downsides, too, though; it’s hard to find something within menus and nested menus have a tendency to close accidentally.
The HUD does things differently. As complicated as Shuttleworth’s long blog post makes it out to be, it’s just a search field which only searches within menu items of one application. That’s it. In all honesty, it’s actually quite brilliant, and I’d love to have it on my applications right now.
The big issue that I see, however, is that it doesn’t look like a replacement just yet. Only when you specifically know what command you want to invoke is the HUD useful; otherwise, it offers no discoverability features. In that sense, it’s the exact opposite of Microsoft’s ribbon. Luckily for us, the HUD will supplement the traditional menu at first, but Shuttleworth does plan to abolish the menu altogether eventually
They’re still working on the HUD, and Shuttleworth acknowledges the discoverability issue – they’re still working on a solution. I’m curious where they’re going to take this idea, but I’m happy they’re trying.
First to post
I guess I am old School I do not care for the news stuff like HUD and unity much. I like the old fashion menu
Edited 2012-01-24 23:06 UTC
Its still there “old School” – Fret not.
Yeah… as much as I like Ubuntu, I see that lately they are doing everything possible in order to make me change distro.
Right. That is the feeling. When I just thought Unity was too much, now this… They are working harder to make people move away, it seems. And we will move away. Ubuntu will become a laughable toy, a reason for people to mock around how computing had to dumb down so low in order for people to operate a computer.
What we had 2 years ago was better than Unity or HUD. Plain simple Gnome with Ubuntu look and feel. Much better, easier to use. I prefer using my mouse (1 or 2 clicks) than having to type on my keyboard.
Replacing clicking with typing? They serve different, complimentary purposes, and both can be accommodated in the interface. So are these guys idiots or what?
Read the original article – it seem OSAlert din’t before paraphrasing.
What they’re proposing replacing at _this_stage_ is the “tap [Alt]” to drive menus with the keyboard.
Mouse-driven menus remain – they’re just providing a search-oriented interface to discover menu items when you don’t know where to click. The results will show the menu option that delivers the result you’re after, and then after that you’re free to mouse-click away.
Replacement of the menu is on the cards – _eventually_ – but only once they come up with a suitable alternative. At the moment all that’s being replaced is “tap {alt} to drive your menu via a keyboard”.
Well the original article is unclear (for the alt-tap thing, you have to look in the comments), and in the screenshot the menu is gone, giving a false impression. but if the menu is kept, this is actually a very good idea, one that I have been thinking of implementing for Krita and never done so by lazyness. And something that is actually allready existing in many professional application, such as CAD.
However, I am unsure if simply taking the actions from the menus will be the most usefull for users. I would like to be able to do things like “blur 5px all layers” would be even better. Or “show pictures last vaccation” in a picture management application.
I don’t think the menu is gone. They are hidden by default in Ubuntu now. It’s kind of annoying.
@Luminair: “what”
Edited 2012-01-25 07:51 UTC
I personally like the idea. As far as I see they are not going to replace mouse driven menus yet. They are going to introduce an alternative to [ALT]+{something} here.
This reminds me of reSharper for Visual Studio. I really love it because it takes away the pain for using mouse when navigating solutions. I see similar advantage with HUD too. In my ‘relax’ time I really hate using touchpad on my laptop. My index finger starts to hurt after a while with all the scrubbing (-. So I welcome every solution that does not require using touchpad, trackpad, ‘external’ mouse and so on. IMHO keyboard should be enough for computer usage. Everything else should be just another way to achieve the same or allow non-keyboard-centric and shortcut-ignorant people to do what they want.
P.S. I know that there are applications that does not apply to this (e.g. CAD software), but I do not use them.
People are really going to type Undo? I am for making UIs keyboard friendly but this is ridiculous.
Maybe if they encounter an app that doesn’t use [Ctrl][Z] and doesn’t have a menu option for “Edit > Undo” then yes, but granted, in most cases, no – its just an example. This is one way to supplement meandering menu hunting by mouse, with a direct shortcut to the destination.
I agree and disagree…I agree people are not going to type undo, they will use the keyboard shortcut. However, if I am new to an application say Gimp/Inkscape and I want to know how to add effects to my drawing I know what it is called but it is hidden in menu’s. The HUB allows me to type what I want say Gaussian Blur and I can learn where that exists in the menu. I think implementing this with the normal menu’s we are all used to is a brilliant idea…maybe then in a few years after usage studies they can migrate to the HUD and understand how people use it and make it a better experience. Ubuntu is trying to take the Apple approach and tell us what we need.
Conversely if you know what you want but don’t know what it is called having a command line in front of you isn’t very helpful. What you would need is nested menus so you could drill down to find what you want.
That was my point they should co-exist this gives the most flexibility and easy of use.
Of course not, they’ll simply press ctrl-z like they always have. But when you’re looking for an option you rarely use being able to type the first couple of letters in it’s name beats the hell out of clicking and reading through every menu and sub-menu until you find it. Houdini (www.sidefx.com) for example has had this feature forever and I find it incredibly useful.
So we are back to the command line? Everything old is new again.
More like controlling a currently running graphical application with a command line interface, something which is reasonably novel.
The fact is that command line interfaces aren’t good for everything. Amongst other things, they are poor for visual operations, poor for random selections (where there isn’t an obvious pattern). They are also horrible for discoverability. Thus we need graphical applications.
It would, however, be awesome if you could supplement it with a very quick command line interface.
I.e. if you could type “run_query (“select id from songs where bitrate<128″) | delete” straight into your music application and it pops up a list of songs selected for deletion with a “Delete” and “Cancel” button.
AutoCAD has had a commandline for years (early nineties) with the graphical interface.
Deluxepaint used the keyboard in the late eighties.
As for Ubuntu, I tried Fedora 16 lately, it felt pretty snappy with the LXDE interface but I could not adjust the brightness of my laptop screen which was a deal breaker. Lubuntu does manage those keys but it’s a bit slower on shuting down.
Very interested to see whether this sinks or swims. I use ratpoison as my wm w/ Pentadactyl extension for FF, which makes my machine completely keyboard operable, so I’m an extreme part of the demographic. Still, I bet others would adopt it if it’s implemented correctly. (I foresee menus disappearing but toolbars and keyboard shortcuts remaining.)
My computing habits are similar to yours (tiling wm, vimprobable/uzbl…etc) but I don’t really know what to think of this yet.
Chapter III: Accessibility seemed like it made some sense. The Banshee and Inkscape bits looked clunky and a tad jarring.
Looks like a dmenu for the Unity interface. No idea whether that’s a good or bad thing (I don’t use Ubuntu or Unity).
The concept is simple and cool. Imagine this menu powered by some kind of fuzzy search (think Wolfram Alpha, you can write anything but the machine understands you), and, suddenly, you can use this HUD in nearly any program, as long as you have a remote idea of what you want to do. Another thing this HUD needs to have is shortcut support. If I write a single ‘x’, the system has to highlight the ‘cut’ option before any other options beginning with an ‘x’.
Discoverability remains a problem. It’s an important drawback, but there is time to test a lot of solutions. Some quick ideas:
– Help slideshow: illustrations showing the available actions.
– Grouped actions: Instead of menu items, the HUD brings out buttons, like Microsoft ribbon pieces. This way we see some related actions each time the HUD is used.
Anyway, I think this feature can attract both novice and power users. I’d love to select some files and type ‘group in folder My files’ to create a new folder named ‘My files’ and move the selected items into it.
For discoverability, why not combine this with the right-click-wheel I had suggested many years ago when writing about OS interface paradigms? You right-click anywhere in an app (or on the desktop which is an app in some OSes) and you get a wheel with concentric rings. The innermost ring, closest to the cursor, contains the most used commands like save/open/print etc. The next ring has less common commands, and the third ring would exist in complicated programs like photo editors and would invoke filters and such that are unique to that program.
There are two distinct advantages to the wheel concept: One, you don’t have to worry about where the menu is, as it is always where the cursor is. Two, you can have a very complex menu system that is still presented in a simple and familiar fashion across apps.
Of course, I didn’t come up with this design on my own; I was inspired in part by a fictional interface from a 1990s anime. I expanded on it and made some mockups using the power of Stardock customization apps. It worked pretty well for me, but due to my lack of coding and subsequent dependence on Stardock (and therefore Windows), I walked away from it.
I’d love to give it another shot one day though!
I think you’d love Quicksilver if you owned a Mac.
http://qsapp.com/about.php
Oh, don’t worry, I know Quicksilver fairly well. But that is covered in the Gnome environment by Gnome Do. This type of programs are just good launchers that mix in some common actions. The HUD concept is application-specific and it should cover all actions available.
There^aEURTMs still a lot of design and code still to do. For a start, we haven^aEURTMt addressed the secondary aspect of the menu, as a visible map of the functionality in an app. That discoverability is of course entirely absent from the HUD; the old menu is still there for now, but we^aEURTMd like to replace it altogether not just supplement it.
Surely, I can’t be the only person who thinks that an outright replacement of menus would be a mistake, if for no other reason than the lack of discoverability mentioned by Shuttleworth in his blog.
I can’t see a reason why they can’t keep both. Don’t know if this will come to the upcoming 12.04 release, but sure hope not. Another new and not properly tested way to navigate have nothing to do in a LTS-release imho.
And another new and inadequately read article. Jump to shoot your mouth off and accuse canonical of jumping without researching properly – maybe you should heed your own advice – read up before talking.
I usually have to go to a church to see that much hypocrisy!
You can. Bypass OSAlert, read the source.
xx
Now, imagine this same thing with a Siri-like AI program + voice recognition.
I think this is awesome!
Although it seems logical to put this at the top like traditional menus, I think they should try putting it at the bottom of the screen.
They already have the similar looking Dash at the top, and displaying the HUD at the bottom would make it less likely to obscure things you need to see (which is not an issue for the Dash because you are switching apps anyway).
…So now instead of a flick of the wrist and a click with a finger you have to type stuff. Much better. (Well probably don’t HAVE to but…)
.. in 2010:
http://www.afiestas.org/improving-kde-applications-help-menu-action…
but so far they weren’t really fast at integrating it or the Plasma gods put their thumbs down or something. IDK. Maybe it lands in 4.9, who knows.
How many programs actually need more than a couple of buttons? For the most common programs I use (text editor, file browser, web browser, image viewer, IDE, etc.) all the features I use are buttons (or keyboard short cuts.) So I’ve never seen a need for a menu system, they just take longer than a button or shortcut.
There’s advantage if there’s a menu system. We know what (the features, options, plugins, add-ons, etc.) exists/available in that application, i.e., In linux -> gedit, I know there’s find, replace, select all, in ‘edit’ option. Without the menu, I just can guess what’s edit options that available..
What made me happy about this is: Voice is the natural next step. Imagine we just speak, “edit, cut”, or just plain, “cut”, and it will be done.
Edited 2012-01-25 03:05 UTC
find, replace, select all are all implementable on a toolbar. Geany does for example (well not select all but that’s ctrl-a.) If you’re worried about discoverability, a help menu is all that’s needed (that includes all the shortcuts.) Most shortcuts are universal, so a user can quickly learn shortcuts.
Voice is a horrible interface for computers. How do I know what voice commands are available? Also, a keyboard shortcut is much faster than saying a two syllable word (which will be most of the commands.) Consider the case of an image editor, how would you specify cropping? Making a selection, copying, and pasting it?
With voice commands, just imagine someone screaming “format hard drive” in an open space ;P
You mean scream ‘sudo format hard drive”.
The computer can’t hear ya! Too much noise
. And at that time, I think there’s some security about whose voice can be used to operate the computer.
And for sensitive operations, we can use confirmation.
Well, we have keyboard, mouse, screen, and mouth
. In not-too-distant-future, I imagine that we can use our mouse to select and then we can use voice command ‘crop’, while then our hand pressing shortcut to flip the image. I thinks that will be more easier than just using keyboard + mouse, right?
Have you skipped the part of the video where they talk about nested menus? I for one would welcome a faster access of the passwords dialog in Firefox than Preferences -> Preferences -> Security tab -> Saved Passwords.
But of course, I haven’t used the start menu for years, preferring instead Alt+F2 in KDE 4 (and the application that did a similar thing before but whose name I’ve forgot). It also works with System Settings, so if I want to open the printer configuration dialog, it’s just Alt+F2, type ‘pri’ and enter. Very convenient, and I would certainly welcome a similar function in my applications as well.
You are right in that nobody will want to type ‘undo’ instead of pressing Ctrl+Z, but I don’t think Shuttleworth wants to get away with shortcuts too.
Complex dialogue windows, such as a preferences window, do need something. And I will agree that a search feature would be greatly appreciated.
However, my point is this: If you are a simple program, why do you have any need for a menu in the first place?
A text editor only needs a couple buttons to implement all the features it has (textual shortcuts are generally well known.) I know this, because I experimented with a writing a text editor that only had a single toolbar and a couple of buttons (new file, open file, save, save as, print, find, replace, word wrap on/off, and choose font captures most of the functionality of gedit for example.)
For something more complicated like inkscape… something like the HUD would be practical, but more so if it encouraged learning shortcuts.
Ubuntu has gotten the same exact disease Microsoft has: MS couldn’t think of anything compelling to put into Office, so they created the Ribbon: change only for the sake of change.
This thing is a usability nightmare. Menus have become too complicated to use? What nonsense is that? Will they take away keyboard shortcuts too?
Nobody has any ideas anymore to make their products “upgradable”. More and more it feels like the software world is regressing. Everything has to be dumbed down to the level of an iPad interface.
Are you just blathering to make a noise, or do you have something useful to contribute? You haven’t raised a single, testable, debatable point.
State a problem, debate it on its merits, and maybe contribute something. All I hear is blathering bluster and BS.
Read Mark S’s original article and you’ll see its more than “change for the sake of change”.
I’m thinking “talk for the sake of talk” is the motto you roll by.
xxx
I agree and disagree. While it took me hours of sweat and tears to wrap my mind around cluttered Pre 2007 office menus and I don’t really want to go that route again (why I’m a happy Libre user now), I must attest that ribbon may be way easier to grasp for freshers without past experience.
… for Mint.
I’m sure I’ll be modded down massively for this, but I don’t care. Ubuntu has become Shuttleworth’s toy.
Never mind that there are people out there trying to do work with it, and having to learn a new interface every time Shuttleworth has one of his “bright ideas”.
What I love about Mint is that the devs LISTEN to the users, and in Mint, the USER comes first, not the devs. That is how it should be.
On the other hand, if devs never tried anything outside what users claimed to want we’d never see anything particularly interesting or revolutionary come about. Case in point, I remember the heated discussions back in the day about how the newfangled mouse and “gooey” interface were a joke and would never catch on with serious users.
Not saying I particularly care for what Ubuntu has become, or that I ever cared for it in the first place for that matter, but at least they have the drive to take a vision from concept to end user without crumbling into the death trap that is design by committee halfway through.
While I appreciate all that Mark Shuttleworth has done for Linux, his foray into Unity and now this latest reminds me of the “Apple Wheel:”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Bipcv0WoQ
Or Microsoft’s ill-fate “Bob” interface.
From Wikipedia:
Bob received the 7th place in PC World magazine’s list of the 25 worst tech products of all time, a spot in Time magazine’s list of the 50 Worst Inventions and number one worst product of the decade by CNET.com.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
– Marx
Edited 2012-01-25 02:15 UTC
I remember when I first saw that video. My normally extremely tech-savvy showed me that, and was stunned that Apple would actually try that.
I was stunned that he didn’t recognize it as farce.
How about fixing the present iteration of Unity … before adding more fluff?
Problems with multi-monitor support (in Unity) has kept me on 11.04 + Gnome Classic.
Back porting package updates now seems to be a low priority, so I’m seriously thinking about changing to another distro.
Edited 2012-01-25 02:12 UTC
From what I understand a lot of effort for the 12.04 release of Unity has been on improving multi-monitor support.
I don’t really catch what they are trying to do :
You can type commands, and then auto-complete them with the keyboard or mouse with a list of possible choices.
Like EMACS ?
Really, they think they have discovered something ?
For many tools, an interactive command line would be great for some advanced uses and scripting.
It is available on many professional tools (electronic design, all sorts of simulation tools, …), often based on the Tcl-Tk toolkit. Tcl serving both as the interface description language and for interactive commands.
(And I hate the ribbon !)
I don’t think it is EMACS they are copying, more likely google search.
A spectacular failure waiting to happen.
but I’m sure it will suck like all other recent Ubuntu “inventions”.
Sounds interesting and possibly very useful… But I wish they would focus on stability and squashing bugs. All the nice features in the world don’t make up for all the time and work you lose when your entire Xorg session freezes or crashes.
Just give me a “Show menu” option and I’m good.
I am truly tired of Canonical’s attempts to reinvent the wheel. Every release is different… and not in a good way. This last release broke by SanDisk USB thumb drive that always worked before under Ubuntu. And now the menus have this hidden little scroll thingie that disappears until you hover the mouse over it. It’s awkward and difficult to use. I guess it’s an improvement that the Upgrade button didn’t freeze my system like last time.
I don’t bother to upgrade my Ubuntu systems any more. I’ve switched to the more stable, professional openSUSE. I think Shuttleworth & Co. spent too much time at the Windows both last time they went to a tech conference.
Killer feature if I’ve ever seen one
On a serious note, I find keyboard hotkeys very fast compared to mouse input, particularly when repeating the same action over and over again. if the menus are gone, will the hotkeys still be discoverable?
I’m concerned about the AI modifying the entries dynamically and merging global menus. This all implies that rapid heads down keyboard sequences for the HUD can’t really be learned. It seems like the HUD makes us interactively whittle our way down to the commands we want instead of executing them more directly with the mouse or hotkeys.
Also, I’m leery about overloading the keyboard for bimodal input. I do use VI frequently on the command line, there’s no doubt that toggling the keyboard between command entry and text entry slows me down compared to mode-less hotkeys. Sometimes my hands “forget” which mode VI is in and I start typing into command mode by accident. The HUD may start to introduce similar mode switch overhead for frequent operations.
On the plus side, I think it could be a great search/help tool for finding the infrequent commands that I can’t bother to learn or remember hotkeys for.
What would be awesome would be if we could use the HUD to drag new buttons onto the interface for much more convenient access. It might also give those buttons automatic hotkeys for very rapid command functions. Unfortunately though it looks like the HUD’s design goal is to remove features from the interface rather than to compliment the interface. What’s the point if we end up with huge desktop widescreens filled with whitespace?
Edited 2012-01-25 07:57 UTC
… but not that impressive.
I guess it would be OK if this behaviour were somehow user selectable.
I am thinking “feel” (as in look&feel) plug-ins or something. HUD menus would then be one option, another might be something more suitable to HTPCs (remote controls) and so on…
JustType feature from WebOs.
Wow Mark/Ubuntu, can’t you actually be original for once! Not only are you trying to clone the Mac OS X interface, now this too. Mac OS X has had this “search for a function or feature” behaviour since forever. Every application has this search under the Help menu (first item) – type some text and a nice big blue arrow points to the found item in a auto opened menu. Also search the whole OS using the Search button in the top right of your Mac screen.
I am a big fan of Ubuntu 10.04, but as usual, all releases after that are getting worse and worse.
Yes it does, but that shouldn’t be a reason to not implement it. It is imperative to copy/use good ideas in order to evolve.
I guess my problem with the latest Ubuntu releases are that the cloning of Mac features are done so badly [and blatantly], it just makes Ubuntu worse and worse. If I wanted a Mac OS X interface so badly, I would simply buy a Mac and get the real thing.
Shuttleworth should really take a look at DistoWatch. Ubuntu is spiraling down the ranks – release after release [since 10.04]. That should be a good indicator that they are heading in the wrong direction.
I like the concept of hud in the command line, but for usage with windows instead of menus, nah.. It is not for me.
Kudos for trying out the new ideas they got though.
And Ubuntu continues to slide in the rankings on Distrowatch.
I understand the concept of picking a direction and going with it but Shuttleworth is GOING THE WRONG WAY!.
He is obviously a fan of the Mac OS X GUI, and is trying to replicate it, and tries to improve it where he sees fit. There is nothing wrong with that; the Linux/GNU landscape only gets more interesting with a little more diversity.
Something tells me that Distrowatch is not a diagnostic that people who want their distros to be used by the masses would pay attention to…
I rarely use the windows start menu’s program menu any more. If it isn’t in the list of the n most used apps, I just type the name in the search box and it comes up
The MATE Desktop Environment is now looking better every day. I love my old school GNOME.
+1
I think there is a massive misunderstanding about digital inclusion. What things like this and GNOME Shell are supposed to be? Are they supposed to allow people use computers in a better way? Are they supposed to allow BRAINLESS people to use computers? Are they supposed to allow robots to use computers?
I just remember when I watched ‘Minority Report’ and thought… OMG, somebody is going to try to make this crap happen. When I saw the ‘Iron Man’ movie, I thought, OK, voice recognition is already a reality, but do I really need it? It seems as though, to some very wealthy millionaires which have nothing to do, that to create the future of what happened in the movies, is their main goal.
If you can’t use a computer UI properly, please don’t own a computer, for the love of God. Please. The more stupid you make the use of a computer, the more stupids will use it. We need to educate people and spend time on education on HOW to operate a computer. Not try to make the use of a computer as stupid as possible.
I get the HUD idea, but to me, it adds nothing. This kind of search may help in IMDB, but as a menu replacement? Even the ribbon was a better idea…
In HUD, the computer illiterate will have to learn all the words all menus have got? Kinda of stupid! Search engines are something – applications are something completely different!
I would advise Mr. Shuttleworth to worry about the rape rates in South Africa, and finance ONGs and Red Cross in territories with warfare instead of financing an operating system like Ubuntu. If Unity was the last step for many folks, HUD is definitely going to crush the distro. If Fedora doesn’t make something really stupid as it is constantly making release after release, I may finally drop Ubuntu 11.04 (GNOME 2 Classic). It will come down to a point where it will be a total dishonour to use a Ubuntu based system or even say the word Ubuntu. I thought the meaning of the word was to include people in computing, and not making devices that stupid.
You need to get this… digital inclusion demands education. Not stupid devices with apparent stupidiest usability available in the world. Wrong idea Mr. Self.
So the end-goal here is to replace menus completely with that? Not exactly what I’d call a great idea. Go ahead and try it though, …see how it turns out.
When I go to a restaurant I want a menu, very first thing. Before they take my drink even, because otherwise I’m going to ask for a Mountain Dew, and they won’t have it. Then they’ll suggest a Sprite, and I’ll tell them that’s absurd. Next I’ll ask for a Dr. Pepper and they’ll suggest root beer. At that point I’ll roll my eyes in disgust and ask for a Coke, then they’ll bring a mother fraking Pepsi, and I’ll have to try my hardest not to choke a %%%%%. Also, I don’t want to have to memorize the damn menu.
Bonus command lines, whether initiated at the top, keyboard activated or triple right clicked, whatever is fine….. as a bonus. Don’t take away or hide my menu! Also, buttons should also be bonuses since I have no idea what the “man with arms flailing” icon means. All of which should be configurable on/off whatever in settings/options/preferences.
Perhaps I’m missing something crucial here but this seems like rather a direct application of OS X’s Spotlight to the menu bar.
And the discoverability issue should be trivial to solve too. Simply allow metadata describing the effect to be stored with each possible command; combine this with some very simple matching algorithms and you’ve got the problem solved.
It reminds me of good old Lotus 123.
Also, as already commented elsewhere, of good old CAD programs (albeit it was more powerful there).
(I’m old enough as to have used Autocad 10 on a 386 for college-related work… We typed instructions, we got nifty drawings on screen).
Edit: I would like to have this for SublimeText 2 (now).
Edited 2012-01-25 21:29 UTC
After reviewing HUD and reading Canonical’s plans for implementing it I have to wonder what in the world these developers are smoking. How can typing commands possibly be easier than pointing and clicking. This is a prime example of creating a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. There’s a reason why menus go all the way back to Xerox’s original GUI interface…they WORK! I guess Canonical won’t be happy until Ubuntu loses the rest of its user base to Linux Mint and Debian.
Pointing and clicking is only fast if a) you know exactly where you want to click b) the thing you want to click on isn’t buried three sub-menus deep and c) your hand is already on your mouse. Otherwise typing will be quicker. Menus are great for discoverability, not necessarily for quick access. If you already know what you want typing a couple of letters will always be quicker than hunting for it in menus.
This HUD concept isn’t new, several apps have used similar concepts for years and having used some of those apps personally I think it works really really well.
a) Any computer illiterate won’t know commands for an specific application – there are no ‘make me bubbles…’ kind of command in their menus – but technical and specific words. So if the user won’t know the application, the user won’t possible know even how to make bubbles out of it… How can a dumb user who barely knows what an email is, figure out what kind of words are hidden in hidden sub menus? Don’t make the machine dumb-proof. Please educate people.
b) I already type too much, and I already got small synovial cysts in both hands, and I have to simmer down with typing. Now there`s this to make me type MORE? Please let Shuttleworth know that I need him to pay my medical plan.
This whole thing is like reinventing the wheel, as someone pointed out before in this thread. We DON`T need another kind of wheel. There are certain things in this world that have reached the peak of its state of art. What they want to do is to discover an algorithm that will compress WAV by 80% which is impossible to achieve with any lossless codecs.
All this talk about using the keyboard as more pratical is simply bullcrap. Come on. And it makes me feel that that guy has a huge amount of bootlickers just because of his money. His supporters are about to give their soul instead of taking one shot of criticism.
Edited 2012-01-26 13:24 UTC
Menus with more than 10-15 items or nested more than 2 levels deep isn’t one of those things.
I don`t see your reasoning valid being a systematic make-believe easy feature, from a geeky person. Do you really think a dumb will find an specific command just by searching? May suit you and the application you are very familiar with. However, the majority of people just won`t embrace this.
I still have complaints about how awful is the Windows 7 superbar window grouping behaviour. People don`t like changes.
Edited 2012-01-27 01:15 UTC
Say what? A dumb? A dumb person?
What makes you think it would be easier for this (dumb?) person to use a deep and hard to navigate menu tree?
You do not speak for the majority of the people.
That doesn’t mean we, as an industry, should not innovate new things.
Well, that is why documentation is written for. Don’t want to read the manual? Then please don’t use your product.
I just may do. Just like Linus. How many people have dropped Ubuntu after the fiasco of Unity? How many people dislike GNOME Shell? You need to realize that the indicators are saying that people are withdrawing from Ubuntu. And HUD will make just that worse. The point is that is going to be too late when they realize that.
Alright, but Windows XP itself is a proof that not even Microsoft could make it die, after innovating and introducing changes in their market. Yet, 2014 seems to be the last support year for XP. Originally this was planned way back in the 2000’s. Simple as that. Innovation is always a risk.
Edited 2012-01-27 20:54 UTC
Would you mind elaborating on why you think this?
You can know the name of the command you want and still not know where the particular app you’re using buried that command. As a concrete example I was using Arc Map (an app I use about twice a month) the other day and I knew there was a command called ‘mosaic’, but it still took me ages to actually find.
Have you used any apps that use this particular method to access menus? If so, which ones (and what particular problems did you have)? I have used such apps and find it far easier and more practical than just having menus. No bullcrap.
You better study that application, and find commands with your mouse. I don`t see how relevant finding a menu command is so important. This is just a dumb-proof hack.
No, I haven`t used, and probably never will. But you can call your grandmamma and ask her for a determined kind of blur in GIMP, like `Guassian` blur. Tip: don`t let her know the word Guassian and other types of blurring. Let`s see where she can get.
Edited 2012-01-27 01:08 UTC
That’s exactly what I did, and it was annoying as all hell and took far longer than simply typing ‘mosaic’ (or probably just ‘mos’) would have taken.
My grandma would never be able to use GIMP as it is so I fail to see what point you’re trying to make. But OK, let’s assume we have someone who knew nothing about GIMP, but knew that there was a way to blur images with it. How would it be quicker and easier for them to dig through the menus until they find the blur commands, rather than simply typing ‘blur’ and getting up a list of all available blur commands?
Out of curiosity do you use any keyboard shortcuts when using your computer?
No, I don’t. Well, usually I use CTRL-C, CTRL-V or CTRL-Z, but that’s about it.
I thought the user interface was to minimize the need of typing. I agree that searching sub-menu trees is kind of boring. I just tried to find an option in Inkscape today, and it cost me 1 or 2 minutes. However, I don’t see any kind of better usability. It’s like switching dozen in exchange for twelve. Perhaps the RIBBONS were a better idea than this, but more typing or talking to the computer is kind of pointless.
Really? Did you read them? because if you had you’d know that it is NOT a replacement for point-n-click but for keyboard shortcuts and navigating complex menu trees.
And because I didn’t spell that out you assumed I didn’t read the article? Okaaay…..
Jesus what a bunch of whiners we are.
So here’s how it goes then: OSS should really innovate more…EXCEPT if they innovate in a direction that I, the mighty expert on everything, deem not necessary or just don’t like. Then it’s so wrong it’s a miracle we made it out of the primordial soup all those years ago.
Few actual come up with a more interesting criticism than “Uh, point and click rules…cuz I say so”. Maybe this doesn’t work out, maybe it doesn’t even make it into a release but who fscking cares? Innovations doesn’t always pan out but that doesn’t mean we should stop innovating.
Maybe we should just go back to ENIAC?
Me? I hope they make something similar for KDE. I can never remember any keyboard shortcuts so being able to access them this way seems great.
Now you just got it wrong. ENIAC? I think you went way back in the past. I don’t think you measure a balance of what people are trying to say, and you respond every comment criticizing everyone back.
Innovation will be always good, when it makes sense. But I don’t think I’m interested in having sex with my own computer. I’ve seen a machine like that in ‘Minority Report’, perhaps you’re up for that kind of innovation too?
Edited 2012-01-27 21:06 UTC
Not really, no.
Apparently I and others think it does make sense.
Yeah, because THAT is a balanced comparison to the Canonical HUD…
I will admit that I’ve never really known about keyboard shortcuts, I’ve never had the need to find out. And yep, I’ve used computers since I was 12. Is that a failing on my part? Not really, I just never figured there was such a thing as a keyboard shortcut, and I never had the need to find out.
So, when I saw what Ubuntu had come up with in their HUD thingy, I thought what a good idea. First initial reaction was ‘What the?’ but after giving it a go I can see what their doing and at the moment I like it.
Certainly saves on mousing, and things seem to be quicker as well. Looking forward to the voice tech and seeing if that works well.
I don’t think it’s so bad. Some individual programs do this already. Someone mentioned Autocad. Blender does this too (hit space). Blender also has the regular menu. It’s good to have options.
That said, Wacom tablet users need not fret. If I made a program that was dependent on the tablet, or at least had a lot of users who used tablets with them (or touch interfaces), I’d make well sure my program could be used without any awkward typing with the keyboard. I think the real software developers will too.
Last time I checked, not every program had Unity menus. Plenty still had the menus in the window. You can’t really control that, or take that away from the programmer. So I think the only programs that use the Unity menus, including HUB in the future, will be those that work well with it… which will be most things.
Edited 2012-01-29 09:09 UTC