Tag Archives: user interfaces

On desktop GUIs for multiple monitors

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OK, this one *will* be short.

I think that I’ve heard a criticism on Digg of the user interface of Mac OS X when it comes to multiple displays. In fact, I think that neither OS X nor Windows are built or created for the multiple-display interface.

For one, both interfaces possess “bars” which span the length of the screen: OS X has the “Apple menu“, while Windows has the “Taskbar.”

IMO, these items, by drawing the mouse icon to the area within the single screen, simply reinforce the single-screen metaphor, while providing no functional space or capacity to the next screen.

Another GUI element that discourages one from effectively using more than one display for a GUI is the application window. It, like the above menubars, spans the length of the screen and has to be dragged from one screen to another if it is being used in a multidisplay.

The fact that all of the visible contents of the application are inside of the window doesn’t help, either. Tabs within windows (especially in most modern web browsers), while allowing one to navigate more than one document without having to close the window, also reinforce the window’s single-purposed feel and look.

The dock might be an answer – maybe a top and bottom dock that don’t span the length of the screen and perform specific functions for the UI – but it is also a very old metaphor, dating from the late 1980’s.

Hopefully, a new GUI element will come in the future that will redefine how we view our user interfaces with an expansion of our displays.

Short: Dynamic tangible user interfaces

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I think that the next-generation dynamic tangible user interfaces (programmed computer expressions which are shown in a changing-by-the-second physical form) can make use of the toys of yesteryear, such as these:

Imagine trying to send needle imprint data from one side of the continent to a needle bed at the other side, which will then interpret the data in a form that will result in the above pictures.

That’s my idea of a tangible user interface, where physical impressions can be transmitted over a network to a separate tangible medium which then duplicates the physical impressions, and vice versa.