Hey loon,
some awesome stuff you've been working on there mate.
I've been thinking about the tabs, because I personally think that it's a
Haiku's UX Killer feature and has a lotta potential. The only problem is
that browser can't really use that, and the reason for that are
Favicons(you can't get rid of those nor the close button, u can place them
in in the middle right before the title but that looks ugly and cluttered)
But on the the bright side tabs will work just fine with pretty much in
any case except aforementioned and I think that this feature should more
accessible i.e. stacking should work without a hotkey(just like in any
browser or like in OSX Finder)
and about the tracker breadcrumbs as tabs, I've tried this in OSX a couple
of years ago. I still have the code for that thing and it's actually not
that useful, most of the time(like 99%) you just need two or three folders
to be opened in separate tabs so you could drag'n'drop things. Losing the
space for breadcrumbs wasn't very useful/helpful. Plus I really love the
idea that anything can be stacked with anything. Basically you can do the
one window computing if you preffer so we just have to remove the hotkey
and make it work automatically by default, just like in Photoshop or
Chrome or whetever.
I also completely agree with you on the animations part, they are tiny
simple and very short and that's the key of adding smoothness without
compromising on speed. A lot of people here(and there) think that adding
animations slows down the working process while in reality it actually
creates an overall smoother experience thus making things work faster. For
example: smooth scroll animation can cache the window contents i.e. preload
them.
In fact I have the same approach with the UI redesign, the first stage is
to come up with something that looks fresh but doesn't require you to get
used to it, it should be cleaner, crispier yet still looking like a modern
BeOS. I love the overall look and feel of Haiku it has it's own magic so I
don't wanna lose that for sure. The main goal is make it look and feel like
solid and modern OS for an average user and not only a programmer or techy
enthusiast.This will obviously boost the user's interest.
So that being said, almost each and every UI control should be redesigned
and tested in multiple conditions. So right now I'll focus on modernising
the default elements and window decoration to come up with the solid
platform and then we could experiment on top of that. I'm thinking about
replacing the font as well cuz DejaVu is not the best font in terms of
readability/accessibility.
Anyway glad to have you loon, that's a big leap forward I'd luv to see it
in action or maybe a video demo at least.
Fox
In any event, I've rambled enough ;-)
--The loon
