Posts tagged: DESIGN

An opinionated minority of advanced computer users are rebelling against the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointers) model of HCI. They are developing and promoting alternative interfaces (typically desiigned to work with unix-based systems) that embody their opinions.

I haven’t used any of these yet, but here are the ones I keep encountering references to:

• Ion
• Ratpoison
• Orion
• StumpWM

Most if not all of these credit the terminal-only GNU Screen (a program I do use) with inspiration. The ideas of Jef Raskin undoubtedly are a factor too.

I couldn’t stop myself.

A little-used new feature in the Displays preference pane in OS X 10.4 is rotation in 90-degree increments. I tried this feature out with the 20-inch Cinema Display on my desk. Novel – it took me back to the old grayscale Pivot I wrote so many columns on in the ’90s. A base that handled rotation would make it nicer. Also, the type and other elements onscreen just don’t look as good at 90 degrees – I don’t know if it’s the disparity in vertical and horizontal viewing angles, or maybe a change in anti-aliasing behavior. (Onscreen is top running in Exterminal.)

This is a lazyweb request – I’m looking for something but I don’t even know if it exists. I have about 200 photos (headshots) and I’d like to make an animation that runs through them in order of, for lack of a better term, visual similarity. I’m not talking about morphing or just fading between the images in arbitrary order. Is there software out there that, given a reference image and a set of images to select from, can choose the most similar image? Open source would be best, as there’s no budget for this, and command-line-only is fine, but I am on a Mac.

When I’m using my PowerBook with an external screen in spanning mode, this sequence happens more often than I’d like:

1. Working on in Application A on the internal screen, I need to refer to something displayed in Application B on the external screen.
2. I look over at Application B and read. When I’m done reading I realize I don’t need that window anymore, so I press cmd-W.
3. Frontmost window of Application A closes – say, a browser window with unsaved content in a web form.
4. I make an “aaaargh” noise.

In the world of window management, there’s click-to-focus, and there’s focus-follows-mouse. What I really want is Focus Follows Eyeballs.