W.I.M.P....is there a better alternative
 

Read an article the other day about whether theres a better way to interact with a computer than WIMPs (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers).

It talked about all sorts of stuff that sounded cool but most likely wouldnt make using a pc any easier.

I thought the idea of using a 3 Dimensional GUI with touch sensitive gloves as a replacement of a mouse and menus sounded kinda pretty sweet, but it would make using a keyboard more difficult.

So does anyone have any thoughts on this??

Would you like to see something other than WIMP implemented now that PC's generally have enough grunt to show more than just a desktop with some icons?

Or do you think that using a pc is easy enough as it is?

To be frank I'm not sure.Using a computer is pretty easy.
On the other hand I think touchscreens and completley voice aactivated computers(a la Star Trek)might become the de facto standard.

ah LCARS finaly:)

It's slower to use a touchscreens than a mouse. You block your view of the screen with your own hand. In addition, it's tiring to hold your hand up for several hours.

Voice activation might become more standard, but I don't think keyboards and mice are going anywhere soon. You can't truly have privacy when you are speaking aloud, and the computer can't recognize words it doesn't know. The systems are going to have to get a lot better before we can throw away the keyboard. Programmers are't likely to ever throw their keyboards away.

code:
if spacekey open-parentheses i spacekey equals-sign spacekey x

close-parentheses spacekey open-brace returnkey tabkey do

Capitalize-something open-parentheses close-parentheses semicolonkey

returnkey close-brace

code:
if (i = x) {

	doSomething();

}

Well, screw that. :)

Apparently, MS said that they are looking into creating a 3D desktop. Longhorn is going to use the 3D accelerator to handle graphics, so it wouldn't be much of a huge step to take. Of course, it might just end up being annoying.

In a way i hope they do try a 3d GUI, but they should definately let the user decide which they want to use, like with Xp you can choose to use the luna or 2000 look and feel.

By the way, there are systems that can detect where your eye is looking. That's fairly minor these days. Combine that with a fewbuttons in easy reach, and that would be pimp.

it is one of my long term goals to make a self programming computer. Basically to create a compiler that will need vastly less code to create a program than currently.

Well I like everything about PC's apart from the upgrading every year and a half...

I prefer to type and at the end of the day touchscreen would just ache to much with you raisong your arm to the screen.

Sounds good though. Icons are good and i think that many people as well as you Atmo believe that 3D GUI's will be used for the future!

Who knows what shit Micro$oft will churn up in the future!!
:rolleyes:

I dont think M$ will be first....They have a habbit of playing it safe to keep the buisness world happy...So someone would have to develop a stable and user friendly 3d gui for them to steal and call their own...
I hear ya....But thats the choice ya make when using a pc...I tend to do the whole upgrade thing slowly, and piece together computers with the replaced components to get back some cash which can then be used to buy more bits...Its and endless circle..

I think it would be difficult to create anything more productive than what we have today. The only 'improvements' will be eye candy - WinXP is a good example, but it also adds stability and features so that's a good thing.

Touchscreens, I think, will find wider usage once tablet PCs become more common. The general trend seems to be that the way we act with computers becomes more natural over time. As computers become more accessible, mice will fade away into the past. Keyboards, on the other hand, are one of the most efficient data entry devices conceivable, so those'll hang around for a while.

I'm not sure that's the best way to handle things. 2d is the best way to organize and present information. Imagine a flat desktop with neat little piles of paper, compared to a 3d file cabinet. You can store more information in the file cabinet, but it's harder to keep track of the things in the back. It's just added complexity without added functionality.

Vie told me that Micro$hit stole Apple and made it their own!? Is that true??

Yes i kinda agree. 2000 was alot more stable and never crahed for me. But the thing is, new OS, new shit that comes with it and then there will always be new reports of discovered bugs so its kind of a continous cyle and we'll never see the backs of these darn bugs and service packs! :(

I find xp to be stable enough...I've only had 1 bsod since installing xp....and that was a buggy screensaver that caused that.

Does anyone remember the gui that supercomputer in the movie 'hackers' used...I thought that was kinda cool...

Specify

:p Although Star Trek computers can do all sorts of voice commands, do something it does't know and you get one annoying word:

Specify

er... the command line interface is much more powerful than any crappy w.i.m.p interface could ever be.

At the simplest level the user can write batch files to perform repetitive tasks; but for anyone who can touch-type you can get jobs done much quicker with DOS or any command line interface.

I do not like the idea of sound activated computers, as it will be fairly easy to activate someone elses computer this way.

I quite like WIMP myself.

watch you'll get something like the matrix poping up.... :igor:

ugh...robots will kill us all! kill 'em all before they turn on us!

:igor:

I've personally got no problems with my plain old keyboard (although a wireless would be handy) and my optical mouse. :D

Certainly true. Doctors in this province have a wide variety of programs to choose from to bill their sessions to the government. Most doctors can file away about 30 claims an hour using a windowed program. My folks use an old and reliable program, and can do over 100 an hour. When you can just TAB your way through all the fields, things go much faster than using a mouse.

Then again, commandlines are fugly.

another brilliant post! :) damn i love the forums!

The Hands Free Mouse, these could standard someday. (so you can
use both hands *wink wink*)
http://www.naturalpoint.com/prod/product.htm
And attach a Soundbug to your skull to elimenate speakers
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/computing/5a15.shtml
If they could some how incorporate Steam ( http://www.steampowered.com/ )
into speech-to-text software so you can dl the newest slang on the
fly it would elimenate that problem!

Voice control....... :)

I would think a 3-d file cabinet would be much more efficient. I am sure it would use a maping system for locating your files.

Willfisher, you're talking abuot true artificial intelligence.

Hmm, I'd rather search a Filing Cabinet than a pile of papers. I want to see what comes out in the 3D GUI world before I dismiss it.

As for the Tablet + Touchscreen idea, I completely disagree. It's extremely difficult to use a keyboard with a tablet. You set the tablet up like a screen, and then ever time you want to use the "mouse", you have to move your hand to the screen. That's far more inefficient than just moving your hand to the side a bit. And, of course, your hand is still in the way when you use the touch screen.

That depends. If you mean that Microsoft stole Apple code, then . . . no. If you mean Microsoft stole the idea for Windows from Apple, then . . . still no.

Both Microsoft and Apple both stole the idea for a Windowing system from Xerox PARC. The Palo Alto Research Center created every single one of the bad-assed ideas we take for granted on our computers. Networks, Email, GUIs, Mice (I think), etc. Microsoft just stole the Windowing idea a bit quicker than Apple.

WinXP has been just as stable for me and everyone I know.

Not necessarily true. It's extremely fast to select several dozen files in a windowing system, but try typing in all those paths manually. Try it with several thousand.

That's a really shitty Windows program if you can't tab through the fields. Most of the "productive" DOS programs simply emulated many Windowing capabilities.

Fugliness is a huge drawback. Humans like things to be pleasing to the eye.

Wow, way too long.

P.S. Thanks, liquidmotion. :D

I was just wondering. Haven't you considered voice input for typing and the hands free mouse mentioned earlier? If these things were packaged in a hand held tablet, like on 'ST', we wouldn't have to do very much but hold the 'tablet pc' in our hand or on our person. It would seem to me to be so much easier to have something like this for many of my pc needs (not all mind you). I may sound a little flighty with my thought's here but I have this very clear image in my mind of what it might look like. I can also imagine that it will be many years after my time on earth has passed.

It still comes down to the fact that voice activation isn't a real solution. We need keyboards. Can you imagine being on a plane with a dozen other people speaking to their laptops? How about trying to use it in a mall with all those people around you talking loud, or with all those people around you listening as you compose a love letter or a private business document.

I'm not opposed to having good voice activated technology. I just think it's foolish to imagine that it will ever replace keyboards.

Good point and very true. However, have you ever seen those little fold up keyboards in the stores? The Staples store in town had one on display not long ago. I picked it up and at first I was shocked by how easy it was to use. It was very light and it folded up real nicely (I just keep trying to think of different aspects that we haven't discussed yet).

Yes, I've seen those. They are quite nice. But, if you aer going to use one of those on a real PC (as opposed to a Palm Pilot or Pocket PC), you might as well carry around one of those travel mice, too.

Voice Recog? lmao! I always type with music on, usually quite loud and there's no chuffin way I'm going to turn it off so I can use some feature which is far less efficent. Then there's the case of:

Phone convo
friend: "How do you delete everythingn on your computer?"
you: "Format space c colon space forward slash s"
friend: "You sure?"
you: "Yes"


WOOPS!!!

Ya know there's a shell utillity that uses that interface. Just that it's not touchscreen but just using a mouse is alright. Try to find Hoverdesk or Aston at http://www.deviantart.com