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from the window-systems-need-window-shades dept.
What is Unity 8 and why's it a big deal?
Unity as a name and project began life in 2010 as a new UI for desktops and laptops and it arrived swiftly – in the following year. However, the idea morphed to offer the same screen and user experience on all devices regardless of mouse or touch. Put Ubuntu running Unity 8 on a phone and it'll render as a phone, put it on a PC and it'll render as a PC, put it on a tablet and it'll render as a tablet. That's the idea anyway, and it was analogous to ideas floating around Redmond for a single version of Windows running on PCs, phones and tablets – the same UI and same "experience". One brand, development and runtime.
That was part of the idea of Windows 8 anyway, and the Metro UI.
Coming with Unity 8 is Mir, the planned display server replacement to the predominant X Windows[sic] System, which Canonical announced in March 2013.
X Windows[sic] System is an industry standard for bitmap displays in Unix-like systems such as Ubuntu and is the product of Stanford University, MIT and IBM. Canonical wants to build its own display server, however.
Four years on, though, the dream remains unrealised with Mir like Unity 8 available only as a preview.
Unity 8 is, by the reckoning of Ubuntu daddy Mark Shuttleworth, a year late.
Windows 8 was an amazing innovation and totally worth replicating?
(Score: 1) by Lester on Tuesday February 07 2017, @04:07PM
Well "offer the same screen and user experience on all devices regardless of mouse or touch" is just marketing speak, the real sentence is:
Offer the developers the same API to UI on all devices regardless of mouse or touch, so applications can be ported automatically to all devices, so the users can use the same applications on all devices with a coherent UI: When they change of device, at least they know what changes to expect.
On the other hand, you are right, it's going to be hard to unify UI. That's the Holy Grail of development.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 07 2017, @04:25PM
My point is that the interactions are so substantially different that doing that in a consistent way is darn near impossible. Take, for instance, a really simple question: Where should the user interact with to start up an application?
For tablets and phones, you're talking about big icons on the screen as probably the least-cumbersome way of doing it. If they have a lot of apps, then you provide some sort of scrolling mechanism to expand the area where those big icons can go.
For mouse-based laptops/desktops, though, the fastest approach is probably the one used by Fluxbox: Right-click anywhere that doesn't have right-click otherwise defined for a categorized menu, hover to the category to show a submenu with the applications, click on the name in the submenu.
Those aren't kinda-sorta different, they're completely different. You can make the mouse-based systems use big icons too, but that leads to a whole bunch of unnecessary hunting and scrolling.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Lester on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:33PM
Yes, they are completely different, so it's going to be hard to unify UIs and, as I said, that's the Holy Grail of development, because perphaps it's not only hard but impossible.
My point is that the hype is more aimed to convince developers than to convince users.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @02:38AM
Most computer users don't open programs that way on their desktop computers. They look at a gird of icons and double-click the one they want, almost exactly the same as on a tablet! Your menu system isn't the most efficient for anyone nor the easiest for older users. You require precision mousing through nested menus. When the icons are already sitting on the desktop you have passive awareness of where everything is and only need to target one item instead of needing to target, and potentially scroll through, multiple menus. Plus it's a lot harder to accidentally close the desktop than it is to drop out of a nested menu system.
Most efficient is keyboard shortcuts, but that removes discoverability and forces memorization so it isn't worth considering for the average user.
Circular menus, popping-up around where you trigger, reduce mouse and finger movements, but those designs were patented. Not sure what their state is now.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:05AM
That's solved by having a few, perhaps half a dozen, icons on the desktop or phone/tablets screen such as games, internet, utilities, help, etc that when clicked open another window, full screen on a phone/tablet, containing more icons representing programs or another layer such as types of games. Then just have this layout be reflected in the menu that is reachable by a right click and/or a button on the desktop of the PC. Basically the menu reflects the icons and the icons reflect the menu and in minimalist situations such as fluxbox or the phone, just have one or the other.