I’ve made a document based on an idea I had that might be good for some desktop innovation too. I’ve made some diagrams and screenshots to illustrate it, have a look here.
I’ve made a document based on an idea I had that might be good for some desktop innovation too. I’ve made some diagrams and screenshots to illustrate it, have a look here.
That’s currently done on winME and above… Simple habit tracking algorithims.. Would be nice on x11 or gnome or kde.. But there would be some mem implications or overhead for running a small habit tracking daemon in the background..
I hope to never see such a thing on any desktop I use. Why is it that people feel the need to “innovate” by adding more garbage that takes up screen real estate? What purpose does this really serve? Would it really make day to day use easier? Maybe .. as for me, it would drive me to another desktop.
I’m not really sure quite who the author thinks that this should be aimed at. As an experienced computer user, I setup my environment so I can perform a lot of actions quickly, regardless of what I am doing at the time, and a new user would, I would have thought, appreciate a consistent user interface. This is at least what I have found from trying to help members of my family, is it different for other people, or is there some intermediate group I’m not considering?
this reminds me to the “working folders” feature of the workplace shell (WPS) of OS/2.
Imagine you do have a work folder of your active essay: you opened a text document and a image-file within that folder:
-> if you close that folder -> its like a “i finished my work for now” and all documents are closed (and saved) also…
-> if you reopen that folder -> the wps will directly open the last opened files with its associated programms…
btw: this IS very powerfull when working on a set of different projects…
As noted by another poster, Windows already does a similar sort of thing with its “Personalized Menus” (though it’s not quite the same, Windows doesn’t change the menu according to what apps you have open)… however in Windows it’s annoying (IMHO) because it fiddles with the Start Menu itself rather than being a seperate entity, and thus means you have to click more often to get to programs you don’t use that often.
If it were related to the things you’re currently running, and was its own entity on the taskbar/whatever, I think it’d be quite useful, and this seems to fit that description.
The main problem with this is that the GUI changes. A GUI that always changes is hard to work with because you must “parse” the screen on what kind information it gives you. A GUI that always look the same, behaves the same and is predictable is way faster to work with then a GUI that tries to adjust to you. The first thing that I turn off is those god damn Personalized Menus because they always changes the GUI and I must “parse” every menu I use instead if learning how the menu looks like.
It’s kind of like those task-based remotes. You know, where the “watch a DVD” menu task turns on (NOT toggle) your television, receiver, and DVD player and sets the receiver and television to the right inputs. All that’s left for you to do is put in a DVD and hit “Play”.
Suprisingly for me, I really think this sounds like a useful behaviour… Did the original version have support for, for example, opening a “working folder” on a newly created desktop? And were these folders physical folders only, or did they also remember other apps that were running at the time the folder was being worked on?
And more importantly, is this idea protected in any way (patent etc.) or could it be implemented as some sort of option in linux desktops?
http://segusoland.sourceforge.net/
Omer Hickmen wrote:
Also of interest
http://segusoland.sourceforge.net/
Thats some proper logic in that, isnt it like what MS is trying to do with foghorn leghorn longhorn ?
it seems very similar in idea to what they are proposing but its probably one of the best sorting/finding algo’s ive seen.
It would be much better than the current kde menu system, maybe the author should enable this as another kde menu system, it kicks arse. The logic just makes perfect sence. congrats to the segusland author(s) for coming up with this.
Where I see something like this being of use would be in a Saving menu. You use Gimp and click to save and in addition to the usual menus you are presented with some known images folders, recently used folders and maybe some applications to automatically export to.
It could save to a temp folder and execute the selected application, pointed at the temp file.
This might be an interesting concept, but I can’t see it as described in the nArticle.
This self-modifying very smart algorithms might sound great but have a number of very bad side effects:
* Before you use it enough, you get dubious results at best
* People with changing behaviors (like 1 mouth of writing papers, another mounth of vacation, another month of idle hacking etc…) will get horrible usage
* People can develop memory muscle for certian apps to appear in certian places. If the app for some reason dosnt appear, they get frusterated
* A mistake in usage, accidentally clicking the wrong app a number of times, can cause annoyances till the correct choice ‘flushes’ the bad results out
Anyway, this could probably be implemented as an addition to dashboard. Just send more clue packets, and have another renderer and violla.
this one is really user-oriented.
actually, it is current-user-interest-oriented
All of those annoying “Wizards” in Windows XP that ask you stupid questions all the time ? Yah thats ideas like this at work in the real world.
I think this is a good idea. The author’s screenshots aren’t supposed to represent what it would look like in practice… they’re just concepts. I’d at least like some kind of “habit-tracking link applet” on my gnome panel that gives me some launchers based on the programs I use the most.
I don’t think this should replace standard menus or toolbars. But, if I don’t take the time to set these kinds of things myself, it would be nice to have somewhere to “look” for this kind of association.
Perhaps what you want is somethign like “the brain” (personal brain) uses with a radial memory map system.
This would require a pretty big database of links, and become quite complicated when the programs are involved are capable of many different document types adn interactions.
The basic idea is that your current activity would sit in the center, with links radiating out to available actions/interactions.
To do this you would need to thoroughly extend the idea used in windows of having a “default” email program, browser etc, to be every possible program category/purpose.
The links would then be purpose oriented, with the default application highlighted, and other options clustered near it.
For example, suppose i highlight a ftp url in internet explorer. My current activity switches to copy ftp url. The radial menu steps through to that location and the memory map and centers it, displaying linked around it, the various options on your system that it knows (by the extended registry) are able to perform interactions on a ftp link on the clipboard.
Of course, this becomes almost absurbly complex when you are talking about having an interaction for every possible action with every possible data. Not to mention programs would have to register as capable of handling the events, and generate events to the system themselves too.
In the case of internet explorer -> ftp link copied -> open site in flashfxp, Internet explorer has to advertise the event, this could be done through the clipboard itself, saying it has recieved an ftp url.
Anyway, I like the idea, provided it could be made non-intrusive… a simple semi-transparent radial menu that appears in the corner of the screen, prehaps.
Hope that gives you something to think about.
Isn’t dashboard implementing this kind of concept?
http://nat.org/dashboard/
* Before you use it enough, you get dubious results at best
You’d probably get very little unless there were some defaults setup. Otherwise, results relate directly to what you’ve done in the past, which may or may not be helpful.
* People with changing behaviors (like 1 mouth of writing papers, another mounth of vacation, another month of idle hacking etc…) will get horrible usage
This really shouldn’t effect anything unless you’re using the same programs to perform all of these tasks. I could definitely see a problem for people that use their text editor for every editing task, though, which may be more common than people understand if they’re coming from Windows.
* People can develop memory muscle for certian apps to appear in certian places. If the app for some reason dosnt appear, they get frusterated
I agree on this, and setup my systems accordingly.
* A mistake in usage, accidentally clicking the wrong app a number of times, can cause annoyances till the correct choice ‘flushes’ the bad results out
This should be handled similarly to the way the WinXP start menu handles the “most used programs” menu, and would also address memory muscle issues. If you want a program to always appear in a particular place, pin it, if you want a program to stop appearing, select “stop showing me this”, or maybe an option to reset the counter for a particular app so that it can reappear later, but won’t show up for now.
…as identified by a previous poster, looks very interesting.
http://segusoland.sourceforge.net/
I can’t imagine how it (and the subject of this discussion) could be easily integrated with the standard desktops as they are today.
segusoland, for example, is far more than a file manager (from what I could see). It’s more like an Action manager.
Disclaimer: I only glanced at it.
But at first it make me think of the following situation:
User opens up a browser and navigates to Slashdot.
A little paperclip appears on the screen.
“It looks like you’re procrastinating! Would you like me to:
” Open OSNews too,
” Check if any new episodes of ‘fullmetal alchemist’ have been released,
” and check the latest tech news from Google?”
However, such a thing could work if implemented nicely. Except it can’t be automatic and/or obtrusive by default, because that drives people insane.
You only need one thing in the computering world…’screen’. Before you attack me, I am not talking about a computer ‘screen’
There’s something similar on Windows known as the customized menus which a few people have touched on as being bad. But there’s also another similar feature on Windows that I see as good, which is the task pane. When you click on a file, the task pane gives you options like “burn to CD”, etc. The difference between the two being that menus function when the user is seeking to perform an action and the task pane functions to suggest possible actions. Both are complementary and equally accessible. As long as this AI idea is implemented unobtrusively and doesn’t interfere with the normal “action seeking” paths of the user then I think it’s fine.
I think this is a great idea. I would love to have it on my desktop.
Hate it. Make it an OPTION if you want, but leave me out and leave it OFF by default.
Hi! I’m Clippy. It looks like you are trying to take over the world. I can help you with that.
Would you like to:
Attack the World Bank
Initiate an arms trade
DDoS SCO or Microhard
Launch Nukes
Other