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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: 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.