What do you want the 'OS name' for this project?

Hi again,
Sometime in the somewhat near future I would like to create a few images based of a redesigned WIMP interface. This poll is just inform me what you would like it to be called, Acorn’s cancelled Galileo OS or Risc OS 7.

Your input would help me alot.

I don’t really understand what you are proposing…

Are you planning on creating a new set of icon sprites and textures for RISC OS? Or just creating a picture of what you think RISC OS should look like?
If its the former then that sounds like a good idea to me, but if its the latter then I really don’t see the point and its been done before many times.

As for the name, calling it RISC OS 7 will just be confusing and should be ‘saved’ for a major OS release. And galileo is too generic (it was just a code name and never going to be its official name).
How about… RISC OS 5+

Regards

Lee

@Lee Shepard
I’m proposing that during the course of the summer holiday I will create a few images (1920×1080) previewing a new vision of what WIMP would look like if it was ‘made’ today if that is the correct word.
Basically using Pixelmator I will create a desktop image and a few more showing a new designed WIMP.
Hope this Helps.

When you say “a redesigned WIMP interface”, do you just mean a desktop theme?

RISC OS 7 … should be ‘saved’ for a major OS release

I agree.

create a desktop image and a few more showing a new designed WIMP

That’d be interesting, but how important is it that the name be agreed beforehand? The mockups (as I understand it, at this stage) will be primarily window furniture etc. won’t they? …Although I suppose the “branding” might be useful in connection with file icons.

I’m gonna quote Acorn for your answer Dave “New and improved look to desktop including: new Icons, new Wimp, new pinboard”. I will create a picture (jpg, png, etc) of my idea of a new interface, then I will publish my images here to be viewed and enjoyed. No skin for ROS 5.

I don’t want to sound like buzzkillington… but it seems like a waste of time IMHO, if your going to go to all the trouble of creating a picture of a new desktop (which has been done many times before) why not go whole hog and actually draw new sprites and make it a reality, that way we can all benefit.
I would love to see a modern look for RISC OS, the current default sprite set looks very 90s, but I don’t have the artistic talent to do it myself.

I don’t think it sounds like a waste of time.

A significant number of RISC OS users are aware that the WIMP looks like a throwback from the 1980’s. Having a fresh pair of eyes to re-imagine what it could look like would be very useful.

I’d love to see what Matthew and his artistic talent may come up with. It may prove to be the catalyst required to start investigating ways to improve the real WIMP going forward.

Matthew, I’m all for your work, and as a suggestion for your Project’s name, how about ‘RISC OS Stars’?

Thanks for your support Alan! I will take your name into consideration.

Having a fresh pair of eyes to re-imagine what it could look like would be very useful.

While I wouldn’t want to dissuade somebody from enjoying RISC OS in their own way (and why not mock up some screenshots?), I do feel there is a VAST gulf between saying “I think this looks cool” and an actual implementation. In theory it is possible to alter the Wimp’s appearance, even as far as making it look similar to the dinky-blue-fisher-price XP style that I’m looking at right now. The problem, and why it will remain a theory, is that making such a thing happen is considerably less than easy. Even small things like rearranging the order of window furniture, or making scroll bars appear and disappear (Windows style) could mean a lot of changes to the insides of the Wimp for little functional gain.

Then comes the next issue – a proper GUI operates in three dimensions. Up and down the screen, across the screen, and the third dimension is time. Pop-to-front iconbar, for example. Menus that auto-open submenus after a pause. Does a button have its effect when you click or when you release? What happens if you click but move the pointer away before releasing? This sort of behaviour is important to how the system “feels” to use, I’m a crap stick-man artist so I’m not sure how you would represent such ideas.

Personally, I think the icon bar is too big. These days, and with the sort of display tech we’re using now, it could be half its current height (icons scaled accordingly). Add a clock to the extreme right (like Windows). I find it useful. The Wimp should manage this itself, rather than needing !Alarm to be running (which wouldn’t put the clock on the right in any case). It would be nice if windows could have a snap-to-edge zone so when dragging a window, it can snap to the edge of the screen, but pull it further and it’ll go offscreen.

how about ‘RISC OS Stars’?

Kinda cheesy, but I have to admit it is also kinda catchy. So I’ll +1 it.

I’m in partial agreement with Lee.

If you do produce such concept images, please also make it available as a theme.

Presumably you will only be able to partially implement what you really want, due to hard coded choices in the current wimp, but it would mean some of your work would be of immediate benefit.

It should not be called RISC OS 7. (Though “RISC OS 7?” might be a good title for the artwork)

It would be nice if windows could have a snap-to-edge zone so when dragging a window, it can snap to the edge of the screen, but pull it further and it’ll go offscreen.

(Don’t want to derail this thread, but Rick, do you know about WinSnap?)

GUIs can always be improved. I have my own tweaks: small toolsprites, close icon in red, patch the filer so that the Delete (^K) option appears in red, … .
However, what I would really like to see, is not one individual’s idea of the appearance of the desktop, but an abstract specification of it, with due reference to customizability, what the OS relies on, linkages between components, etc.
I know that some OSs like to pretend that everything, including the desktop and filer-windows, is a webpage. The darkside is that users are softened up into accepting advertising and the vendor’s choices. The plus side is that being able to control a filer-window’s appearance by editing a CSS file would be awesome.

GUIs can always be improved.

<looks at TIFKAM>
<looks at Unity>

Uh-hu. But there’s a huge difference in what each of us would consider an ‘improvement’.

close icon in red

I feel it is important on Windows because closing the last window (usually) closes the app. On RISC OS, it is less important. What might be better for RISC OS is a special Alt-Ctrl-click on an iconbar icon to pop up a list of windows belonging to that task so you can switch to the one you want. Not a big deal with OvationPro writing a document. A slightly bigger deal with Zap and a source file in six parts, plus several header files, plus a taskwindow or two, plus…

patch the filer so that the Delete (^K) option appears in red,

I would prefer an “Are you sure?” regardless of what the Confirm setting says.
Would also be useful to have drag-saves trapped to ask the same thing if you drag to where it’d replace an existing file.

including the desktop and filer-windows, is a webpage

Gee, I wonder what OS you could be referring to? ;-)

The plus side is that being able to control a filer-window’s appearance by editing a CSS file would be awesome.

You could do a (light) bit of customisation with scripting and such in Windows98SE (probably ME as well). It seems these tricks don’t work with XP – but then, the XP File Explorer is a little less webpage looking than it was in 98.

The darkside is that users are softened up into accepting advertising and the vendor’s choices.

I take it you don’t own an Android phone.
That is the ultimate. Don’t like Facebook? Too bad, it is supplied baked in and enabled at startup and you can’t get rid of it. Adverts? Adverts everywhere. There’s even a movie player that dumps changing adverts into the top of the screen in a free version while video is playing. Accordingly I found MX Player and deleted the other one. You can’t switch on GPS without a bull***t pop-up requiring you to accept that some (unspecified) ‘anonymous’ (rubbish! know my location, know who I am) data to be sent (where? for what purpose? under what privacy policy?). You can decline the request, but then your GPS functionality will remain switched off.
Install an app, you have to accept the stated permissions. It helps to READ the permissions to take note of which ones want to pilfer your address book and discover known accounts. You’d be nuts to install those. You can’t pick and choose permissions, accept them all or reject the app. I think Android 4.something flirted with a permissions tweaker, but that was pulled – possibly because too many people were switching off geolocation and internet access (used for advertising). Official reason? Older apps won’t know how to deal with disabled permissions. Lame excuse, there is no reason why a disabled permission can’t reply with dummy data. The Android security mechanism is a huge pile of fail. For reasons dating back to the first Android (that I read as “excuse excuse excuse”), when an application wants to read the phone’s state, it also gets its identity. It is logical to detect the phone state for an app to suspend itself when a phone call comes in. It is not even slightly logical for the app, in discovering this, to determine the number of your phone and if a call is coming in, the number of the caller.

Things are not so much different with iOS. An app, by default, does not get open access to your system. It needs to ask to access photos, location, and supposedly “private” things. But you are never told what other permissions an app needs. Apple probably figures this is because its sandboxing approach means an app is not going to spew your personal data across the internet without your say-so first. We are, in some ways, protected from the rampant problems with Android’s security model on iOS because – firstly there is no filesystem at user level. Each app runs in its own world. You need OS assistance to share files between apps (in times where such a thing is even possible) and it is slow enough to be doing the sharing as a byte-copy. In addition to that, the multitasker is fairly rubbish. Battery life is remarkably long with iOS because it isn’t fully capable of letting tasks run in the background. If I download a file with Dolphin, I need to remain in Dolphin or the download will suspend. Some stuff can run in the background – AppStore, email, music player. A lot of stuff just pauses when in the background, even in times when it would be logical for it to continue.

“The darkside is that users are softened up into accepting advertising, being tracked, and the vendor’s choices.” has never been so true as on a modern mobile device.

….and the like (!)

Thanks for this rant Rick. Despite pressure from my better half, I never bought a mobile. Hate telephones too. When they ring my nerves are too jangled for rational thought, so communication by them is not actually feasible. Emails at least afford you time to make a considered reply. The branch-line upon which my life has travelled has been diverging from the main-line for a while now.
But if you come across a sane, secure, portable device whose inward parts are not in the clutch of evil powers, do let me know.

I detect a man after my own heart here…

When they ring my nerves are too jangled for rational thought, so communication by them is not actually feasible.

Oh… Making phone calls on these things is waaaay far down the list of priorities. No, I have more direct plausible uses for smartphones. Take a pee-break at work and check the most recent posts here. Go on proper break and read TheRegister. Use the Bouygues¹ PAYG one as an internet gateway for the tablet² so I can do the aforementioned with a nicer display.

I get smartphones because Orange are willing to give me a reasonable piece of hardware at dumb prices when I renew my contract (Sony Xperia U for ~€20?). I have the iPad Mini because… I won it. It’s been quite useful for watching stuff, and now that I have discovered that VLC works well with the DLNA server built into the Livebox, I don’t need to worry about the hassles of getting content onto the iPad (via clunky iTunes). Just drop the animé and such onto a USB key, then plug that into the Livebox.

But…
what…?
These smartphones… you can actually talk to people with them?
Wassat – Skype?

(^_^)

¹ Pro-tip to the insanities of French pronunciation: that is said like “bweeg”. Go figure.

² Orange, on a contract, is willing to offer me 100 (or is it 200) megabytes tethered for an extra tenner a month. This is on top of the sixty/month I pay for the “everything” bundle³. As I’m not a big data user, Bweeg will hit you for something like 0,30/megabyte and are happy to let you do it off a simple PAYG setup. A fiver recharge should be good for about 16MB, which is quite enough to read ROOL and send an email or two⁴. So, sorry Orange, guess who gets my money.

³ This is with Orange offering a monthly data allocation of 500MB (that I rarely use all of) to the mobile phone. It wouldn’t be a hardship to allow that to be tethered. They’re just being a**hats because sixty a month isn’t enough. Maybe they ought to look at packages overseas. What would the equivalent of sixty euros a month buy in the UK? Don’t answer – I’d cry.

⁴ For photos with attachments, it is nice to know that McDonald’s free WiFi service does not block the use of a VPN. So I sign in to McDo and switch on the VPN and can then email with McDo out of the picture⁵. KFC, on the other hand, not only blocks VPNs, any time you visit an https site (like ROOL!), you are thrown an SSL certificate from a service I’ve never heard of. I think the bastards are trying to push fake certificates so they can man-in-the-middle snoop on encrypted connections. WTF?!
This is the SSL certificate KFC wants me to accept when trying to log in to ROOL.

⁵ McDo will silently answer ANY outgoing SMTP with its own server. I discovered this when wondering why it was taking 5-10 minutes to bounce an email to a friend sitting beside me. So me being… well, me… I fired up the telnet client and logged into my SMTP server. McDo answered and accepted my hand-typed email. Hmmm…⁶

⁶ I used to think this was a horrible breach of privacy. Then I twigged what was going down in KFC.⁴

⁷ This forum probably could do with an option to redirect messages to Aldershot. ;-)

As far as designing a new GUI look, I suggest having a look at some of Inkscape’s feature proposals . These are short wiki sketches on a proposed feature, how it should look and how it should work. Some examples: 1, 2, 3, 4.

If you were to produce concrete sketches like these it becomes much easier to understand how something might work or might be changed. This covers some of Rick’s points about the desktop being a fluid interactive thing rather than a static picture.