ROrollcat·Sep 10, 2023
> Even in this article just a few sentences after stating we should start from first principles he then jumps into the assumption of the "desktop".
Agree. Although I can see how the idea of "first principles" can be a very difficult starting point. A blank sheet of paper is a scary monster.
There's a huge breadth and depth of non-"desktop" GUIs out there, some (like smartphones) are even wildly successful. It's good to explore them for inspiration. Some of my favourites:
- Arcan (https://arcan-fe.com/about/) - I won't attempt to summarize, just dive in!
- SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/) - mobile UI focused on interaction through gestures / swipes; I've used it as my daily driver for a couple years.
- Speaking of mobiles, classic Nokia UIs allowed you to navigate to a specific item in the menu by pressing the corresponding digit on th
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e dial pad. Once you learned where a particular item is, accessing e.g. your SMS inbox was extremely quick.
- Apple Watch / WatchOS (https://www.apple.com/watchos/) - I've always loved the idea of a device where one of the primary interaction methods was a wheel/dial of some sort. The watch even gives you context-sensitive tactile feedback.
- ZUIs in general (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface) and the work of Jef Raskin in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_(software) - this is the guy who helped design the Macintosh, but his other work took a radically different route.
- Magit (https://magit.vc/). Many common git operations are reduced to a couple of keystrokes; the obscure features are more discoverable, and the cumbersome procedures (such as rebasing, or staging individual hunks) become simple and intuitive. Also check out transient (https://github.com/magit/transient), which is the "UI toolkit" that powers Magit.