What can we do to make the Windows desktop GUI more efficient? I admit that I’m addicted to “tweaking”, which is what I consider to be finding new ways to make myself most efficient with standard tools from Microsoft.In this opinion, with a few simple changes, the Windows GUI feels must more usable and efficient. Just a side note, I’m not speaking of adding 3rd-party applications to increase usability. If for no other reason, most security-conscience users are not going to want to install these applications to accomplish things that these users can adapt to without too much hassle, but that’s for another topic.
Let’s start with the taskbar. The quick launch toolbar is far too small for it to be effective. Most people rarely know it’s there and very few use it. This is a huge disadvantage for users. Research has shown that users recognize pictures, whether they are metaphors or idioms for a program, extremely quick. A change that I encourage users to make is to double the height of the Taskbar, and put the quick launch toolbar on the top. Change the icons size to ‘Large Icons’, which can be tricky to find (unlock the taskbar, and right-click on the separator closest to the Quick Launch bar. Go to View, that the check ‘Large Icons’.) Since our resolutions have become so crisp and allows for so much data on the screen at once, this doubling the task bar does not devalue screen real-estate space.
Next, with multiple windows open, how does one access files on the desktop? The ‘Show Desktop’ button is an acceptable answer, however, sometimes windows do not restore to where they were originally; but more importantly, we shouldn’t have to minimize all windows to do this in the first place. Instead, add a ‘Desktop’ toolbar to the taskbar and squish it so that only the ‘Desktop’ label is present. Now, if you want to access items on the desktop, simply click on this menu to access it.
Next, Microsoft PowerToys is a program that most users don’t take full example of. There are many tweaks that a user can do in there, and I won’t comment on them all but I will mention one which I think is crucial to improve usability. That change is ‘Activation follows mouse (X-mouse)’. If for no other reason, most people I’ve showed this to love it because you can type a Word document while watching an Instant Message window. Again, I believe that this change reflects a usability model that we use on a daily basis; mouse-over to select, click to execute, and right click for properties. That model is the World Wide Web.
Single clicking on hyperlinks has been the default standard for using the Internet for as long as I can remember. If most people use a computer for the Internet, it would probably be smart to have consistent models across the entire computing platform. Why do we double-click on things in the first place? How did the double-clicking come to be the standard? My only guess was that since it used to take a long time for applications to open, accidentally clicking one could be costly. This isn’t the case anymore though. So, by changing your system to a single-click system that imitates the web, the computer feels slightly easier to use. Again, we follow the WWW model for selecting an object, execution, and properties. To me, it seems as though the GUI is more efficient, or at least consistent, since there are very few programs that ever needed a double-click to complete a task.
To add some more snazzy-ness to the desktop, download ‘Alt-Tab Replacement’ from the Microsoft site. It adds a nice little screenshot of the document you want to switch to. I also use ‘group similar items’ on the taskbar because I like to keep consistency with my applications. Since applications developers have moved to a Single Document Interface (SDI) from Multiple Document interface (MDI), opening extra instances of that program (ex. Mozilla with tabs enabled) should still be grouped in ‘Mozilla’ even though they are two separate entities.
Some of these little tricks cause some hang ups here and there, i.e. single-clicking causes a headache when trying to select multiple files NOT in order (which I have some great thoughts about how to fix it if anyone is listening) but there are ways around it.
Does anyone else have any tricks that they feel allows their GUI to be more usable then the default installation? I’d love to hear from Mac and Linux people too.
Make it so I know where my damn mouse cursor is on 2 big monitors, this is my biggest curse.
Why can’t Windows do what the Mac did 20yrs ago, remember where I put files in each window under “small icons” so I can organize groups of files geographically, ie my cpp’s, my doc’s, my .txts. without it always losing the x,y cordinates, and why can I not snap them to a grid, why can’t I color them,
I could add another 100 items to list but all I expect is 1000 changes that have nothing to do with usability.
And no I can’t go back to Mac, it won’t run the apps I need:-(.
The only thing i can suggest is disable all the Startup programs that you don’t absolutely need. A freind of mine complained about how slow his machine was. After a little poking around a little the porblem was obvious half his RAM was being used up by useless TSR’s so open more then a few programs and swap was being utilized. Not to mention his boot time was mesure is minutes not seconds. Most can be disabled via startup but alot of them you have to edit the registry to get rid of(like damn MSN messenger) http://www.regedit.com
I love that line “Studies Show”. Which studies? I have been convinced that text is easier to process than Icons. Your ideas are good but your reasoning is invalid. If I were you I would have said this is a cool way of doing so and so and not try to make it sound like I have “studies” to back up my opinion.
Another example is the right click idea. I love right clicking but calling it an “internet” concept is silly. Hyperlinks are used by left clicking. Just because most browser have context menus for links doesn’t make context menus an internet thing.
Lets keep opinions and ideas separate from valid research.
I’d recommend trying out several of Microsoft’s own PowerToys. These aren’t third party programs, just non-supported MS ones. There’s a Virtual Desktop Manager among other things.
Don’t waste time messing directly with the registry — there are too many places where apps can be set up to run automatically.
Get Autoruns (it’s free) from sysinternals (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/autoruns.shtml). It shows you everything that’s set up to run automatically (registry keys and startup folder), lets you disable the ones you don’t want, and backs up your config.
I mentioned the powertoys things. Although, I find virtual desktop manager to be useless. Plus, it always removes my wallpaper!
“Studies show…” you know, “those studies”. Kidding. I wanted to just make this an ‘opinion piece’ instead of a ‘research peice’ which was what I was doing in the first place. I obviously forgot to take that line out. My bad.
There’s a setting somewhere (maybe it’s in a PowerToys) that allows you to click the ‘CTRL’ key and a circle will appear around the mouse pointer. It might help you, even though I use it and it and still can’t find my pointer!
Autoruns? Why not just use ‘msconfig’ it has a tab called something like ‘boot’ which lets you do the same thing. I can’t check what its actually called right now because I’m on a mac
Sysinternal.com is a great site and for those of you who love looking at what’s going on inside the computer. Download their process explorer as a substitute for Task Manager. It has loads of great information, and is even supports transparency GASP!
wouldn’t it be nice if we could just “rc-update del msnmessenger default” instead of typing msconfig, going to startup tab and unselecting it only to see that it still starts up.
The sysinternals app allows you to see the startups for any user, and backs up your current config. msconfig works OK, but the sysinternals guys write better software for Windows than Microsoft ever will.
the Windows GUI feels must more usable and efficient
Yes, I agree, the Windows GUI feels must more usable and efficient.
re: nice
I’m a Linux zealot.
Mabe so, but how many people want to memorize things like that? There probobly is a way to do it in the command line anyway, I knew a sysadmin who was able do anything you could possibly want with batchfiles.
http://www.autohotkey.com
It finally gives windows the power of alt+mouse click to drag & allows you to set “win+I” to do firefox
or whatever else you wanna do.
who is “we”???
you mean: how would i like to adjust some gui so i can make better use for it?
the only good gui is one that can adapt to the user.
Don’t put text under icons. The icon + it’s position should be enough of an identifier. If text is desperately needed to differentiate between two icons then have it as a mouse over tip. Having both text and icons forces people to try and gather information from two different sources simultaneously.
It goes without saying that icons need to stay where the user puts them.
Anyone with a hatred to the standard Windows UI might give alternative shells a try.
I particularly love Geoshell.
I wouldn´t recommend throwing half a dozen rather heavy-weight shell enhancements at your Windows.
Why does everyone automatically assume that we all have massive screens? I have a 12″ laptop at 1024×768. I rarely, if ever, see people talking about screen real estate (unless they’re complaining that KDE defaults are ugly), but plenty of people dismissively assume that every screen in use today is similar to the ones they buy. These people, being rabid geeks, own 21″ widescreen flat panels.
The first thing I usually do is turn off the “designed by playskool” default GUI whenever I use a windows box, and go back to the classic style, it may not be flashy but at least I can stand to look at it for long stretches of time.
My suggestion would be to use shortcut keys to full advantage. I’ve never used the “show desktop” button, I’ve always used Winkey-D.
I have my Start Menu setup so that I can type out the program I want to use. Winkey, P, C, N starts up Nero. The programs are very nested. Very awkward to browse my start menu with a mouse but I can launch a program quicker than any mouse user. I’ve also thrown in many of my own folders and shortcuts to directories and common files into the start menu.
Command apps get their own shortcut Ctrl-Alt-I starts Maxthon and will switch to it will it’s running. Ctrl-Alt-N starts up a metapad and a new instance if it’s already running. [cmd.exe /c start “metapad” metapad.exe] in the shortcut is what causes a new instance instead of switching to an already running instance. Also [cmd.exe /c start /high] is great for starting in high priority without having to change in task manager.
I have a global hotkey plugin for Winamp so it just stays hidden in the systray.
There’s many more program specific hotkeys out there. I think Windows does hotkeys/shortcut keys better than any other OS.
Personally, I like to move the taskbar to the top of the screen. I just feel more comfortable with it that way and it seems easier to use the start menu with it hanging down rather than going up, but maybe that’s just me.
I also hate the way that Windows make windows move to the top when you click on them, but I don’t like focus follows mouse either, is there a way to make Windows not bring a windows to the top when you click on it?
In general I prefer the way I can get linux to work almost exactly the way I want it, but for when I have to use Windows (i.e. it’s not my machine), it’s nice to make it as comfortable for me to use as possible.
How about making it not look like some sort of Hollywood scifi knock off. You also help if you added workspace metaphores and got ride of the start menu.
The windows gui is very usable in its default state.
Its really hard to imagine anything more “usable” than Forest Gump user clicking on the start button and picking “AOL” . After that, its a passion-based desire to “improve” the gui. The GUI is a means to an end, not vice-versa. When folks start talking about making the gui “more usable”, this is typically driven by a desire to customize the system to make it personalized. The underlying reason is to feed a passion for computing.
That’s precisely why Linux (especially with KDE) has such a passionate following. It’s a treasure trove of tweakability, gui and otherwise. I am so proud of my KDE 3.4 with Superkaramba toys. Even my wife (who runs OS X) comments on how beautiful Linux is. It really is. I love it and XP can’t touch it. Bottom line.
really, just throw it out, i never understood why it was there in the first place. the mac also has the double click which makes me wonder, is there some secret advantage i don’t know about? on windows you can enable the single click modus, on the mac you can not (wow, windows is better gui wise than mac
)
also get rid of the horrible explorer and replace it with something more norton like (the dual plane rocks). having the source and destination of your files in 1 window really helps.
you can also draw a lot of other stuff to the taskbar, i have a file with notes/todo list there for example.
Quoting Dave: “I love that line “Studies Show”. Which studies?”
You know the old Kids In The Hall skit “30 Helens Agree”…? 😉
Hehe. At any rate, I think Windows GUI would greatly benefit from a straight-forward and easier-to-use Startup Control Panel.
I never use a taskbar, but order applications by virtual desktop (linux). Something like this would help Windows to prevent the mess you get when opening 8 applications in the same desktop. Some people have up to 30 open windows, care to find the word document you were editing five minutes ago? Perhaps there are power tools available for download, but they should be part of the system already. Actually I expected a complete new interface for Longhorn to overcome the problems of the old interface, but judging from the screenshots I have seen nothing changes. The default taskbar and menu for XP is more confusing than helpfull, apparently Longhorn will continue that. You really should have asked what users want to get fixed and not tell them to download some tweaking toy.
”
simply click on this menu to access it
”
If you want to access the desktop, use shortcuts. windowskey+D
or windowskey+m
Most stuff you describe are not things that make windows more usable. It`s just a matter of preferences.
And double click is faster than single click to navigate and less sensitive for errors.
“And double click is faster than single click to navigate”
ROTFL!!
Maybe you should start triple-click everything, cos then it would be even faster!!
ok here goes, simple stuff first :
Problem 1) I hate the way my sys-tray seems to get hijacked by every tom,dick and harry program I install. Not MS’s fault? Hmm…
Why not have some other indication of :
i) running tasks (background – ie. firewall, virus scanner)
ii) quick-shortcuts (ie. screen res, printer status etc)
(I think KDE has a good handle on this already, and Gnome is catching up, Zeta and Haiku seem to have this sorted)
Problem 2) single desktop (on XP) where are multiple desktops?
(BeOS, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment et al – do it right.)
Problem 3) Start menu – conventions need establishing to determine where apps go! …WHY do Excel and Word install in to the root of my “All Programs” whilst other apps sit inside a folder for their maker, ie. Ahead->Nero
This confuses the crap out of people. I also like my taskbar at the top of the screen (so menus hang down – just like they do in app windows), AND I HATE the word “start” in my taskbar too! (!)
(KDE wins here, again Gnome does well and BeOS flavours too.)
So, just three simple things which most users have issues with, standardise those menus, add those extra desktops, and PLEASE sort out that systray!!
double clicking exists because single clicking establishes a selection, upon which various commands can be executed. Opening the item was the most common command, so it was assigned the double click shortcut. With Microsoft stuffing all the commands into the contextual menu, it’s less common now for users to click on an icon and then use a command from the menubar, but that’s how it used to work. 🙂
Very interesting. I wasn’t aware of that historical fact.
But don’t you think a selection could simply be a mouse over? A single-click selection is kinda pointless since the desktop is two dimensional. Pretty trivial point, but fun to discuss.
“The first thing I usually do is turn off the “designed by playskool” default GUI whenever I use a windows box, and go back to the classic style, it may not be flashy but at least I can stand to look at it for long stretches of time.”
I go a step further. Since I must deal with the XP gui at work. I immediately go into services and stop the Theme daemon (service). Then I completely disable it. Next I run the good ‘ole Service Installation Wizard (srvinstw.exe) to remove the Theme daemon (service) from the system completely. It immediately improves system performance on older systems and I can only imagine what kind of performance enhancements other people are using to improve the “perfect” operating system..
Make windows more flexible.. If I want to remove the start button,, well let me,, If I want to have the task bar take up only 30% of the screen’s top or bottom… Or How about allowing me the quickstart taskbar with the start button and my fav apps at the bottom and the taskbar w/clock icons at the top..
Whatever the user wants to do..Let them do it..Check out user’s screenshots at OSDir.com to see how many options people choose under Linux..Windows should follow this example..No troll intended..
MrX
…run it on top of a Unix platform.
Never heard of that site. I’m gonna check it out now. Thanks.
Some of those ideas were truely horrible.
1st of all, I don’t want my screen taken up by rows of large icons on the quicklaunch bar, OSX’s launcher would be better.
2ndly I can’t stand single click links within windows. Worst idea ever. Windows is not the interweb – I want to select that file, then drag and drop it, not click it once and run it.
There are fundamental differences between the two interfaces in how users can interact.
I’m surprised at your observations and conclusions regarding this. Have you checked back on these people 2 weeks later?
In my experience, everyone to whom I showed “focus follows mouse” to has either stared at it in confusion, or thought it was nifty but within a week had it back the other way.
It isn’t that it’s not a neat idea, but that for a typical user it breaks a very, very important paradigm – the window on the top of the other windows is the one I’m doing things in. It’s only included as part of tweakui to appease some old Unix guys, even though most of them don’t like it either.
Personally, I think the only thing it’s useful for is to fix two broken things in windows: an inability to make a window partially transparent so you can see what’s under it and the learned behaviour from 1994 to always run each application maximized so you can’t see anything else anyway.
http://lsinstaller.loose-screws.com you’ll be able to do any gui you can imagine with it.
Does anybody else here use the ‘group icon’ setting in the taskbar? Personally, I find it extremely annoying. And I think the side of the quicklaunch icons are fine. I have the taskbar double-sized as he suggests, but my icons are small – I have so many icons that even when small, they span almost the entire bottom of the screen. And as for a single-click interface, IIRC, that was the default in Memphis (the Windows 98 beta) but MS changed it back to double click by default because people hated it so much. Focus follows mouse … puff, puff PASS!
And not using 3rd party applications to enhance the desktop experience – ARE YOU MAD??? 3rd party applications are EXACTLY what givee Windows all its power. If you want to become more efficient and you’re not afraid of power, the first thing you do is to install Directory Opus:
http://www.monroeworld.com/reviews/dopus8/1.php
It’s quite pricey for a file manager, but DAMN it’s like the best file manager on earth … nothing else can touch it. If you do install it and play with it for about 30 minutes, you would guess it was a Powerdesk clone, but you would guess wrong
It’ll probably take you a couple of weeks of tweaking to even begin exploiting its true power, but it’s usable out of the box, so it’s all good.
Another good app to get is RBTray – right click on the minimize button to minimize to the system tray. Then you can turn off all the Fisher Price interface and a bit more of the crap, and you get a MUCH faster desktop experience.
There is something that I’d like to see, however. The one thing I miss from Gnome (actually, the only thing I miss from Gnome, besides the little weather applet) is the drawer thingies – where you could make an icon on the quicklaunch toolbar that was actually a drawer that when you clicked on it, a group of icons would pop out. Now THAT would kick ass
I hate the way Search works. There should be a little textbox with completion to where you want to search instead of having to drill down in the gui. Also, if i’m in Explorer, bring back the treeview on the left after I’ve started my search. Don’t make me manually have to bring it back.
In my experience, the easiest and best way to improve the experience of using Windows is to disable as many of the visual special effects as possible. Here are some of my favorite optimizations (for WinXP)…
In Display Properties -> Appearance -> Effects…
– uncheck “Use the following transition effect for menus and tooltips”
– uncheck “Show shadows under menus”
In System Properties -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Visual Effects
– uncheck _everything_ except “Show window contents while dragging” and “Smooth edges of screen fonts”
In Internet Options -> Advanced
– uncheck “Use smooth scrolling”
…and if you want a seriously quicker experience with Windows Explorer…
In Folder Options -> General
– select “Use Windows classic folders” instead of “Show common tasks in folders”
…this last tip makes the biggest difference on older hardware (my 300MHz laptop), and I’d especially recommend the corresponding change in Windows 2000 (it has a slightly different name, I think “Web content for folders”) because it also disables the disgustingly slow in-folder Windows Media Player auto-preview feature (which makes a huge difference, even on high-end machines).
As an aside, I keep my taskbar on the right of my screen, which means that no matter how many windows I have open, their names are always readable– fixing a problem that bothered me a lot with the bottom-oriented taskbar. Quick scrollbar access isn’t an issue, since I’m trained on the scrollmouse. But I’m not sure I’d recommend this to everyone.
First thing I do on a Windows XP computer is revert back to the classic theme and then I modify the horrid XP Start Menu to the Classic Start Menu. That “tweaking” makes my Windows experience much better and more efficient.
Instead of the half baked Microsoft Oh-I-want-to-be-like-MacOSX-Aquafied too wannabe theme and then change my name from skipping the year based schema to include the cool “X” factor. Look guys I have an “X” in Windows “X”P !
The HCI in Windows XP is not that great and could gain from stealing from the best ideas of NeXTStep, Mac OSX, Be OS, Gnome …
You mean that Microsoft trying to put the Windows GUI on top of DOS is somehow better?
For those that very much dislike the default blue theme on Windows XP. I dont know who designed that but he needs to be fired immediately. If you wan the royale theme, also called the Energy Blue theme, you can get it here
http://www.bentoll.com/~rjdohnert/energybluetheme.exe
I run an app called TrueLaunchBar (http://www.truelaunchbar.com – $20) plus two other apps they offer for free, Start Killer and Press Start. I use Start Killer to kill the Start button and then use Press Start to give me the functionality of the start menu through an icon. I also have my icons set to 32×32 and run a few plug-ins for TrueLaunchBar which give me quick access to opening my CD or DVD drives, one (well, actually three copies of the same plug-in set to different options and assigned an icon for each) plug-ins that allow me to logoff, restart, and shutdown my computer, as well as a clock plug-in that offers a much easier to read clock with date. All this in addition to the ability to create my own custom menus for accessing applicaitons similar to the way drawers work in KDE and Gnome. This is the best app ever and realyl improves functionality in the Windows shell.
I run an app called TrueLaunchBar (http://www.truelaunchbar.com – $20) plus two other apps they offer for free, Start Killer and Press Start. I use Start Killer to kill the Start button and then use Press Start to give me the functionality of the start menu through an icon. I also have my icons set to 32×32 and run a few plug-ins for TrueLaunchBar which give me quick access to opening my CD or DVD drives, one (well, actually three copies of the same plug-in set to different options and assigned an icon for each) plug-ins that allow me to logoff, restart, and shutdown my computer, as well as a clock plug-in that offers a much easier to read clock with date. All this in addition to the ability to create my own custom menus for accessing applicaitons similar to the way drawers work in KDE and Gnome. This is the best app ever and realyl improves functionality in the Windows shell.
One of the things that I hope will get fixed soon in Windows is having background dialog boxes out of focus / faded, and not just the title bar change a colour.
I know Firefox does something similar when using tabs, and I’m sure I’ve seen an OS that does the same thing but I can’t remember where I saw it. Any ideas?
There is something that I’d like to see, however. The one thing I miss from Gnome (actually, the only thing I miss from Gnome, besides the little weather applet) is the drawer thingies – where you could make an icon on the quicklaunch toolbar that was actually a drawer that when you clicked on it, a group of icons would pop out. Now THAT would kick ass
There’s TrueLaunchBar ( http://www.truelaunchbar.com/ ), it’s shareware though.
I use Blackbox simply because it has a decent virtual window pager.
Everything that I can get for free to use with Explorer has something I don’t like. The toys pager doesn’t show the apps in each window, and neither does the one that comes with the Nvidia driver. jpager doesn’t work with some other utils, and the ones that do work well cost money.
I don’t know why so many don’t like the double-click. I always switch my Linux desktop to double-click, else when I click on an application window to give it focus, too often I also click on some icon or command which was not wanted.
And let’s get rid of the damm icons. There are so many that I can’t keep track of what each one means, and mouseover boxes are a pain when not wanted. Text explains it so much more clearly.
Wow.
People here actually think you can’t do Virtual Desktops on Windows? You can do it with Microsoft’s own FREE software. Jesus christ.
Half the crap people here bitch about not being able to do in windows, you CAN do, and for FREE.
Please, do some research before spouting out FUD.
Ever used that software? It’s not virtual desktops, it’s an abominational hack. It makes the Mac virtual desktop hacks look smooth….
Nice that this guy tried, but it seems to me to be a bit of a stretch.
“Again, I believe that this change reflects a usability model that we use on a daily basis; mouse-over to select, click to execute, and right click for properties. That model is the World Wide Web.”
I don’t see that at all. What exactly do you mouse-over to select on the internet? You single click on hyperlinks, yes, but that’s because there’s no need to double click on things – there IS no selection. You don’t select a hyperlink in order to rename it, or go and select some others to delete them all.
It seems to be a common misconception that we have to follow web browsers – probably one Microsoft’s been responsible for.
Let’s face it, navigating through pages of text bears NO resemblance to organising files, or applications for that matter.
He failed on a couple of others too: Grouping similar items isn’t so hot because it’s harder to get to them. It’s okay at 800×600 but at a decent resolution you don’t need it.
I like the way he talks about application developers moving from MDI – Windows is the one place this isn’t encouraged. Office for example is still rabidly MDI and it’s a pain in the ass.
Personally, I haven’t really gotten the point of virtual desktops. To me, it reminds me of a taskbar button that switches you to another desktop and ‘hides’ all the applications you have open – how annoying is that? If I have an application open, I’m probably using the damn thing
I am visually impaired (read – half blind). I run at a max resolution of 1024×768 and almost all my apps are run maximized. It’s generally not normal for me to run more than 3-4 apps at once (like I could use the many at the same time). I may have as many as 7-8 open on rare occassions, but even then, the taskbar is more than big enough to handle all the open application icons. So, unless you’re running at insane resolution or have more than 10+ apps open at once, what exactly do you use virtual desktops for?
I don’t know what software YOU used, but it worked perfectly fine for me.
BTW: That TrueLaunchbar app looks kinda sexy – I’mma have to check it out
I always install keylaunch on a new Windows installation (http://software.xfx.net/utilities/kl/).
IMO the webpage is a bit misleading, because it’s not really best used as a file searcher — where it comes into it’s own is as an app launcher. I haven’t used the start menu, quick launch bar, or any other means to fire off an app for the last two years.
Fast, simple, and a great usability improvement over any other means of starting apps I’ve seen. Simply excellent.
“What can we do to make the Windows desktop GUI more efficient?”
All in my opinion: Considering Windows is closed source, good luck. IMO it’s “like putting perfume on a pig”, to borrow a quote from the movie ‘They Live’. Honestly, I used Windows from 3.11 on up to XP and I can tell you in my opinion there was little to nothing you could do it make it more usable other than stacking broken/poorly 3rd party tools into the picture which would just add additional problems/bugs. I switched to Linux and haven’t looked back. Good luck in your quest.
Pinning my top 10 apps to the start menu…works just as good as drawers. Then I organize the rest of my programs menu into proper categories, with 4 quick launch icons for browser, show desktop, email and windows explorer.
I always liked the fact that I could run my Amiga with Dopus 5, and still not use up more than 2MB of RAM.
The computer industry has lost that.
I use linux everywhere now, except on my laptop which is a mac running panther (and I prefer gnome to aqua). However, when in jobs where I’m forced to use windows there are several things I do to make it more usable.
Firstly – put items in the start menu, each starting with a different letter. That way when I want to run Excel, I can go “Start -> ‘E'” and it fires up. Putty is “Start -> ‘T'”. I also install firefox, remove the quickbar altoghether, and use windows key + r to fire up any apps I need. Then I install vmware, put a linux distro on it, use samba to mount my windows drive and minimise it. With putty I can now do everything I like to do in linux via putty (which can run full screen). You can speed up logins by using ssh keys, which putty supports well. If you need X (although I don’t bother with it), there’s a nice server called xwin32.
You can’t replace Explorer at all. No siree, you can’t. You’re stuck using it.
Well, how about third party apps that do in fact work quite well? What? You have to actually DOWNLOAD them? Most for FREE? Screw that!
“The quick launch toolbar is far too small for it to be effective. Most people rarely know it’s there and very few use it. This is a huge disadvantage for users. Research has shown that users recognize pictures, whether they are metaphors or idioms for a program, extremely quick.”
That’s rubbish. The thing that it’s small makes it’s damn useful to me, it doesn’t occupy a lot of space. That’s point. On the other hand, when I use GNOME I’m so annoyed of the size of the panel and the icons sizes. Bringing the size down doesn’t work, it looks bad. “and very few use it.” do you a proof of that? You know, there are people like me which just cannot live without the quick launch… So please don’t make such jugdements or just keep them for yourself.
my words to every one …. you cant make everyone happy
I can’t live without this:
http://www.codeproject.com/dll/wm.asp
I don’t use any extra laucher, because it is possible to drag folders to the taskbar, and create subfolders in it, place shortcuts in it, and this is enough for me.
I am missing a good and fast file manager like http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/ROX-Filer .
http://www.mingw.org/msys.shtml is a good shell replacement.
Funny thing about research. I have yet to read any of “research” which actually fit my usability habits. Icons … they’re useful for two things – saving space, and internationalization, and giving me a nice warm fuzzy feeling. I guess that’s three things. As for pure usability, I don’t like to value them above words and text. They might have a slight benefit if they’re completely different, but mostly they don’t speed me up… at least not in the long run. Sooner or later I grow accustomed to the location of the function/feature.
When it comes to GUIs, I’m not a zealot. I actually like the Windows 4/5 interface fine (Win1-3 pretty much sucked, but they were just getting the hang of it.) However, the typical *nix GUI is superior in terms of true, functional multiple desktops, setting windows always on top (or not), layers, focus follows mouse, window snapping, and so on. Just a lot of nice touches and flexibility – or maybe ‘precision’ is more to the point. You can be more specific about what you want.
So, naturally, for Windows, I get TweakUI and enable focus follows mouse and throw on MSVDM even though, as a previous poster noted, it’s a weak hack. There are no ‘send to desktop foo’ functions for instance. But you can at least start your local stuff on one desktop and your full-screen browser and web stuff on another and so on. And add the ‘command prompt here’ function to Explorer. Even now, command/cmd is handy to have around compared to an exclusive GUI, though they aren’t good shells.
I originally *hated* the Luna interface (and still do hate the blue one) and reverted to ‘classic’ Windows but that was at 800×600 (because I had a tiny monitor) and it’s monstrous. The silver thing at 1024×768 isn’t too bad. One essential thing to do is expand everything. The start menu tends to have a ‘control panel’ and ‘my documents’ you click on to bring up a window. This is poor. The cascading menus where you can go right to the particular item you want by just tracking the mouse without clicking in the meantime is a big plus. Related to this, I like putting a ‘my computer’ on the taskbar, scrunched over, somewhat as the article mentioned. Another thing is to create a new toolbar on the top set to always hide/always on top. You can put your favorite apps, key documents, additional menus up there without losing any real estate and can largely dispense with the only semi-configurable Start Menu. You can create links from control panel elements and create your own cascading menu control panel with everything arranged exactly as you like it, which includes putting some of the Accessories > System Tools in your personalized ‘control panel’.
The idea of double-sizing the taskbar is awful (just to me – if it floats others’ boats, great) and is not at all necessary with the second toolbar.
I don’t say this as a smartass Linux zealot, but I *do* add Cygwin and another file manager. Explorer’s actually a fine file *browser* but lacking as a file *manager* and adding the sed/sort/uniq/grep/awk-type tools to Windows makes things a lot better.
And you can configure the systray items – set a lot of them to ‘always hide’ and most of the rest to ‘hide when inactive’ and clean that up without even going to registry hacks to remove the items the completely.
I gather this is about interface enhancements and stylings with MS tools mostly, so I’ll stop there. 3rd party enhancements and performance hacks get into different territories.
But I’d conclude my blather by saying that Microsoft would do well to swipe some stuff from *nix. *nix GUIs are hard to configure and often flaky so I wouldn’t steal everything. Windows is pretty easy to tweak, as far as it goes, and is surprisingly a bit more consistent in the results. For instance KDE/Gnome menus *suck* and the Windows links or wm text files are much better for handling menus. The KDE graphical menu editor *never* fails to garbage the ridiculous XML files it uses and I’ve *yet* to be able to trace out all the locations and includes and .desktop files and XML syntax to do it manually. And Gnome doesn’t even *have* a menu editor at the moment. I’ve never had Windows eat its own menu. So, basically, they’re both pretty usable but *nix is much more featureful and I hope they keep stealing from each other.
…Really, please take that just a consideration, but I feel like many of the requested tweakings the author asked for, are something that really is needed for normal ( not even power) use of the GUI.
The curios fact is that three quarter of the things he asks for, if not native can be accomplished in KDE with a single selection.
I do work in an office that uses WIN2000 and have MDK10 on my laptop, thus I daily use both. The switching from one to teh other is frankly unsettling.
Mind me, not because I detest WIN2000. I never used it before coming to this office and I’m frankly surprised by the stability over 95 or 98.
The point is that I really feel more comfortable with all the tweakings over here, thus I prefer KDE. Just my taste, mind me, but it is curios that after all the debate over the GUI of Linux not being ready, user friendly and all, a windows user asks for something that can be done under linux.
No flame please, it is just my taste, as I said.
http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/
It is simply the best tool available for Windows. The MS virtual desktop powertoy is a joke compared to this..
Abandon all what’s windows now,look carefully at MacOSX and do something as bold Apple did.Maybe MorphOS on a hardened (OpenBSD) kernel.MS has potential to pull that one through with all the resources (hardware specs,drivers,money,knowledge..) they have.
http://www.morphos.net/
You can’t replace Explorer at all. No siree, you can’t. You’re stuck using it.
I have to say you’re wrong, Bill is wrong (and a liar/perjurer too) because you CAN remove explorer. Of course MS has ‘hooked’ auto-update into it, but you can still download hotfixes/SP’s manually.
I have done it for many years… ever since the win95 update added the active desktop and slowed down my 486, I’ve been pissed with HTML/DCOM on my desktop.
http://www.litepc.com
Litestep is a good GUI as well, very configurable, and themeable. But not for the new user… a good site for alternate shells is:
http://www.shellfront.org/
Enjoy.
When you turn on single click in explorer, when you start clicking on an item, you`ll have to wait before something opens. And i can click faster then that time-out. You probably too…
>Make it so I know where my damn mouse cursor is on 2 big monitors, this is my biggest curse.
Just open Control Panel, Mouse, Pointer Options:
Check “Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key”.
That might help… altough the visual indication isn’t as good as it could be.
Why can’t Windows do what the Mac did 20yrs ago, remember where I put files in each window under “small icons” so I can organize groups of files geographically, ie my cpp’s, my doc’s, my .txts. without it always losing the x,y cordinates, and why can I not snap them to a grid, why can’t I color them
Try Gnome: it features spatial filebrowser (the x, y parts — and it was a bold move away of the windows mind-bending explorer) and emblems (instead of colors).
Sorry, but there’s so much oversimplification and flat out mistakes in this article that it makes me want to cry.
“Research has shown that users recognize pictures, whether they are metaphors or idioms for a program, extremely quick.” Not only it entirely depends on context, pictures, their relationship between each other, etc. (in some cases words are recognized much quicker), but what the change will accomplish has more to do with the ease of pointing to and selecting the button. The icons do not have to be huge to be easily recognizable.
“[With Show Desktop] (…) however, sometimes windows do not restore to where they were originally” I don’t use Show Desktop, but [Windows key]+D never behaved like that on my system. Everything’s back in place when I press it twice; same goes for Panther’s Expose.
“(…) more importantly, we shouldn’t have to minimize all windows to do this in the first place.” Why not? What about the spatial properties of things lying on the desktop, that was its major advantage since Day One (1981, Xerox Star)? Accessing the Desktop via the menu gives you a completely different representation of your stuff, and the time you’ll spend on manual mapping is detrimental to usability.
“Again, I believe that this change reflects a usability model that we use on a daily basis; mouse-over to select, click to execute, and right click for properties. That model is the World Wide Web.” Remember Windows 98 and its one-click model for desktop. There’s a reason Microsoft backed out from that. Many reasons, in fact.
Also, “mouse-over to select” is not entirely true for websites. As I am typing this, I am moving my mouse around, highlighting links, etc., but I never lose focus. So much for the analogy.
“Why do we double-click on things in the first place? How did the double-clicking come to be the standard? My only guess was that since it used to take a long time for applications to open, accidentally clicking one could be costly.” Seriously… you should brush up on your GUI history. Your theory’s not even close. And yes, it’s all very well documented.
“To me, it seems as though the GUI is more efficient, or at least consistent, since there are very few programs that ever needed a double-click to complete a task.” Consistency is not a Kool-Aid that will make the world better. Artifically applying consistency to things that are not similar might cost you a lot (most well-known example: dragging media to Trash to eject them on Mac OS).
“I also use ‘group similar items’ on the taskbar because I like to keep consistency with my applications.” In some cases, grouping similar items is detrimental to usability. You end up having to do two clicks instead of one, and you can’t even see what’s grouped before the first click. Considering the screen real estate we now have, enlarging the taskbar to two or three lines might work better for some people. (Of course, manual or automatic moving things around in the taskbar would be even better, but is not available.)
“Since applications developers have moved to a Single Document Interface (SDI) from Multiple Document interface (MDI), opening extra instances of that program (ex. Mozilla with tabs enabled)” Mozilla with tabs enabled is not a Single Document Interface. Each website is a different document, after all.
“Some of these little tricks cause some hang ups here and there, i.e. single-clicking causes a headache when trying to select multiple files NOT in order (which I have some great thoughts about how to fix it if anyone is listening) but there are ways around it.” Since-clicking causes a headache when trying to select just about anything.
And please, stop abusing the word usability. Usability is not a set of random tricks that you particularly like. First of all, I bet you didn’t even test if these changes actually ARE good, as opposed to just FEELING good. (Feeling good is important, but it’s not usability.) Second of all, there’s a big difference between your GUI habits and those of general majority. You can’t simply extrapolate what works for you to something that’ll work for everyone. HCI is way more complicated than that.
double click is good because:
* you don’t want always to execute file (being executive or calling app responsible for that file)
* when you want to select files not in continuos list (using control + clicking)
just to mention few things.. anyway explicitly talking to system through shell (especially ipython -p pysh) or using midnight commander is in long term much more efficient than clicking around… at least that’s my experience
I’m sorry, but I don’t consider a windowing system that can’t
even do a competent job of scrollbars to be usable.
On X-Windows based systems, I don’t have to waste my
attention manually snoopervising the scrollbar: I just
grab the scrolbr’s handle, and pull up or down without
having to do the detailed coordination of making sure it
stays in that itty-bitty narrow little track. Not so with
MS-Windows. My wife needs me too much for me to have a
heart attack from the frustrations of dealing with
Microsoft’s incompetetent UI decisions.
“PowerToys will only work with US-English regional settings.”
Great…
“IMO it’s “like putting perfume on a pig”, to borrow a quote from the movie ‘They Live’.”
I needed a good laugh this morning. Thank you!
We all know that a GUI is essentially visual dressing for command line. So yeah, in this case this statement really does apply.
stop using it?
The ‘Alt-Tab Replacement’ is an interesting idea, but the implementation sucks. It might not be so bad if it didn’t always wait for the screen preview to be drawn for everything you tab through.
Yeah, it sounds great to be able to see what your alt-tabbing to, but if you have a lot running, it can nearly lock up your computer if you try to alt-tab to a different program.
I would say that’s definitely not making things more ‘usable’.
I’m a Mac zealot so I’m going to ruin this thread.
No, wait, hang on… that’s not productive.
I drive a Windows machine alot. I’m not happy about that but there it is.
One thing that annoys me no end is tooltips.
“You don’t like tooltips?!? ID10T!!!”
Well, hold on, let me explain. I like tooltips just fine. A tooltip over an icon that tells me “this thingy is called soandso” from which you glean it’s significance and function. I like that, especially when working with apps that have icons or buttons that are new to me. Some small pointer will go a long way in helping me find out what all the gizmos are for. No problem.
What I do hate is tooltips with multiple lines of text in them. Mouse over an icon of an application, see a tooltip the size of a baseball pitch. It doesn’t just give information on what it is, it tells you intimate details about the love life of the guy who wrote the app’s step niece twice removed as well as great cooking tips for stir fried liver. It’s a novel, it’s a sweeping tale of the life and times of an application, a picture. It’s got everything: when it was made, who made it, where they made it, what they made it with, how big it is, what the short name is, what the long name is, what it’s about, it’s significance in the life, the universe and EVERYTHING. It’s telling you it’s favorite drink, the places it likes to travel to, the celebrity it most closely resembles. What’s hot, what’s not, how old it is and where it lost its virginity.
Acres and acres of information. The next iteration will show you the complete content of the file, all in the tooltip so you don’t have to open the file to know what’s in it. You’ll be able to run the application by looking at the tooltip. You’ll be able to compile Ubuntu from clicking the link in the tooltip that opens another tooltip that contains the data. And it’s even telling you where you can get cheap tooth paste too.
No more!
Small tooltips.
Three mono-syllabic words tops.
For the love of [insert your preferred deity here].
Well, YOU can’t do anything about it. But MS can… Using both KDE and Windows at work, here are a few improvements that could be made:
1. Less distracting default theme (XP) which conserves
real-estate while still being functional (KDE’s plastik
is a good example); paring down the UI is possible
under Windows — but if so many people do it, why isn’t
there simply a mode switch?
2. Virtual file-system support. For those not familiar
with KDE under Linux, applications transparently handle
Windows shares, FTP sites, zip and tar files, WebDAV
and many other things as filesystems. So, you can,
for example, use the open-file dialog to navigate to a
document on a web-site or inside a Zip file and open
it to edit it. The magic of doing the right thing
in loading and saving the file is handled for you.
3. Option for multiple desktops should be there by
default and not require you to download something
from MS
4. More straight-forward to remove auto-starting apps and
manage the system tray
5. Better and more consistent use of the scroll-wheel
(including user-defined “wheel-click” function)
6. Grouping of tasks in the taskbar by application
7. Window shading
8. Don’t use “My <whatever>” since it’s meaning can vary
depending on how you login; be specific
9. Fix the fragility of network profiles
10. Native support for SSH/SCP/SFTP (a la KDE’s kio_fish)
11. Better public-key encryption support (a la kgpg) and
form contents management (kdewallet)
12. Sane start menu layout, preferably with
various “views” (Mandriva’s start menu layout
is a good example)
13. File previews, a la KDE. In KDE, you may select that
certain file types are represented by a miniature view
of the content rather than a fixed icon. You may also
enable a feature that allows you to mouse-over and
see a slightly larger preview with the file’s meta
information (such as EXIF info in JPEG, author in a
Word document, etc.) Videos show as the first frame
from the video and play in miniatur when you mouse
over, audio-files can play a clip when you mouse-over
etc.
14. Text completion. Throughout KDE, if you start typing
into a text field, it autopopulates a drop down that
appears below the field. For example, typing in a file
path/name, a URL you may have visited before, the
name of a program or service, whatever may be
approriate.
15. A good mime-type action and association editor –
again like KDE
16. A good auto-mounter that is easily configurable (the
Linux automounter is supremely flexible, but awkward
to configure and there’s no Windows equivalent that
I’ve ever seen).
17. When you are dragging the scrollbar, you oughtn’t need
to keep the mouse within the scrollbar while scrolling
(that is, if you slide you hard sideways making the
mouse move off the bar, it should still keep the
handel grabbed until a button-up event is detected).
18. International support. I have co-workers and
colleagues from abroad, my wife is from a small
european country, etc. Yet half of MS-tools don’t
support the foreign locales (ever try power tools).
No foriegn language dictionaries in the US version
of Word? How come I can’t have different users on
my system configured to run the UI and apps in their
preferred language (I can do this in Linux)?
I suspect that ours is not the only multilingual
household in the world.
— that’s all I can think of right away.
I only need two things :
– A quick way to start my day-by-day apps (QuickLaunch Bar)
– Resizable Taskbar
– Start menu for apps I don’t use too often
Everything _else_ is nitti-gritty-graphics-doodeldoo. I don’t like complex, feature-burdened GUIs like KDE. Or dumb graphics effects like MacOS.
I don’t wanna _play_ with my computer.
I want to work with it.
I don’t wanna _play_ with my computer.
I want to work with it.
What do you think I want to do with my OS? Take it out shopping? Have dinner with it? Go see a movie [oh wait…]?
I want to work with my OS too. And OS X does just that and is not in my way.
Can I help it that it looks drop dead gorgeous? Does it really hurt that much to work with a system where the interface elements don’t look like they’ve been doodled together with crayons?
You haven’t really tried it or you wouldn’t be saying it. Do like Mr. Anand of Anandtech and take OS X for a spin for a few months. Give it an honest try. Don’t muck around with it for 5 minutes and decide it’s crap.
I often say that Windows sucks, but I work with it, I’m speaking from experience. Is it useless? Of course it isn’t. How dumb would 95% of people using computers have to be to use something that’s not functional?
But is it as clever, easy and yes, as good looking as OS X is? No sirreebob.
I’ll be tickling the Tiger tomorrow. You obviously won’t be. But see: it’s no skin off my nose. You live like you wanna live, baby. Smile and be happy.
Yes yes yes, I agree. I also own a MiniMac at home sinc 3 months as primary OS for doing eMail etc. It’s really sophisticated.
But it doesn’t make me more productive.
That’s the point.
I’m not faster with it.
Smoke less weed.
Get a life.
I do have a life… trust me too much money… ajajaja but i don’t care..
I am just here laughing my head off…:) thanks slx… but weed is not my thing…
I have a great job, it’s just that i hate Apple evangelist…:)
Sorry man… i just over reated:(
I have to say you’re wrong,
Of course I’m wrong. I was being sarcastic
I’ve personally created a mini-shell myself to replace Explorer. Though that was 5 years ago, and was a hack job, as I was still bad at coding.
I’m sorry, but I don’t consider a windowing system that can’t
even do a competent job of scrollbars to be usable.
Actually, you can have your mouse within somewhere around 100-200 pixels to either side of the scrollbar without it reseting. If you can’t keep your cursor in that area, you have issues. Why would you move it OUTSIDE of that anyway? The intention is to scroll, is it not?
2. Virtual file-system support.
You can do that in Windows and have been able to for a very long time. Ever seen the GMail virtual drive app?
4. More straight-forward to remove auto-starting apps
MSconfig is pretty straight forward…
6. Grouping of tasks in the taskbar by application
Hello? The article author states that he does this.
I prefer knowing exactly where I am in the file system, so I always set the default action for folders to ‘explore’. That way I get the file tree on the left every time. I also tell Windows to show the full path in the address and title bars. and, of course, to show file extensions.
I happen to use the quick launch quite a bit. I HATE big icons. (Though I am a *nix guy, may have something to do with it) The less space used by the gui the best IMO.
The only UI tweak I bother running on windows these days: http://www.palma.com.au/winroll/
It adds windowshading like Mac OS 8/9 and other useful features like minimising windows to the system tray and sending windows to the back.
It’s free, opensource and hasn’t caused any problems on the half dozen systems I’ve used it on.
wouldn’t:”What can we do to make the Windows GUI more secure?” be more appropiate?
I totally agree. This idea of doubling the Start Bar is terrible in my mind. Considering how often I actually use the Start Bar (just to start apps usually), I think it should take up a minimum amount of space. More content, less UI. Please don’t suggest that auto-hide option as it is ridiculously stupid; it always interferes with scrollbars and other UI elements.
I’ve read a few posts suggesting either Cygwin or the shell that the MinGW guys have (MSYS). How heavy are these shells? I’ve heard that Cygwin is a bit of a pig.
More options could be cool, but I’d rather have a UI with reasonable defaults that takes up less RAM. To ATI, Synaptics and all of the other companies writing those useless system tray apps: quit it dammit. I’d like my new computer to run like it was made in 2005, not 1995. At least have the option not to install the “TSR” (or whatever they’re called).
This is a good topic, because most of us use Windows at work, and can’t install 3rd party apps, and then even at home, I don’t want to install things that are too different, because I spend most of my time at work and inconsistency is awful.
I like the big icons, because there’s less chance for error, and they’re fine on a 1078×768 resolution- which applies to my laptop, too. Monitors aren’t getting smaller. I use a large iconed quick start on the left of the screen, which mimics the windows desktop setup, which I hardly use anymore. I just edited the normal settings to put My documents somewhere more usable (ever have to navigate to c:Documents and SettingsMynameDesktop ? It’s a pain when you don’t have the My docs shortcut in an older program. I also use custom icons for different folders- a must. Tooltips take too freakin’ long.
Anyway, When M$ included a ‘desktop cleanup’ option on the computer they should have known something was wrong and changed their own setups. People who need the ‘desktop cleanup’ can’t find it, and people who can find it don’t need it.
Let’s talk normal users, not like everyone reading this. They use grouped icons, many like the theme (I do, just because the ‘Start’ and the ‘X’ sticks out) and many like the atrocious ‘personalized menus’ which I find ridiculous because it hides and moves things around. Novices need assists that we think are barriers.
btw, I single click to select files and then use cut-copy-paste icons (which I added) because I stopped using windows cut-copy-paste shortcuts when i started using vim. Too confusing and damaging to use the wrong keys in vim/Windows explorer. So now shortcuts are for linux, where they save me a ton of time, and file management can be a little slower and more deliberate (cuts down on mistakes anyway.
> What can we do to make the Windows GUI more usable?
Replace it with a Mac running OS X 😉
http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/
very effective freeware tool. u can define mousegestures for every windows operation. for example close window by right click – cursor down. its similar to the firefox mouse gestures.
First off get nLite and get rid off all the gunk. I had a 550 mb cd with SP1a slipstreamed…and now I have a 130 mb install cd with SP2 slipstreamed. Makes a big deal of difference. I like the silver looking theme in xp so I keep it. I dont have a problem with performance. I use the quick launch tool bar and now that I know of Virtual Dimension I am gonna take it out for a spin. My machine is really fast because it is a modern laptop and the XP install (lite) helps it big time. If you guys are looking for performance, look no further than nLite, some educated registry tweaks, diskkeeper to defrag ur machine when u are not using it so u wont even have to defrag on your own, crap cleaner, system mechanic. You are set.
“I’ve read a few posts suggesting either Cygwin or the shell that the MinGW guys have (MSYS). How heavy are these shells? I’ve heard that Cygwin is a bit of a pig.”
I rather use nx-client and connect to a nearby knoppix station
booted from a LIVECD with nx-server running.Means more CPU cycles left for the winstation.I wouldn’t like to have so much goodies (tools) on a winbox for an potential attacker.
I’d like to be able to take my windows ‘config’ with my to use on any computers I have to deal with, or apply to a newly installed computer. At one point, I played around with dumping out the reg entries for the specific changes I use, but that wasn’t practical, since several of them are just a part of a larger reg entry.
Being able to save off the user’s config before I apply mine would be a necessity of course. Which is another problem with trying to dump out the specific reg entries.