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Mozilla The Internet

UI Designers Hired by Mozilla 245

Posted by CmdrTaco from the maybe-they-can-fix-the-leaks dept.
ta bu shi da yu writes "Mozilla has hired several developers from Humanized. According to Ars Technica, Humanized is a "small software company that is known for its considerable usability expertise and innovative user interface design. The Humanized developers will be working at Mozilla Labs on Firefox and innovative new projects.""
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UI Designers Hired by Mozilla More

UI Designers Hired by Mozilla

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  • More Raskins (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:14AM (#22066622)
    Humanized is Jef Raskin's son's company. The kid has been living and breathing UI design his entire life. Looks like Mozilla picked a good one.

    • Re:More Raskins (Score:5, Funny)

      by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:17AM (#22066664)
      Yeah. Clearly the guy who invented holding down the Caps Lock key and typing "open firefox" to start firefox (real example from their home page) is a UI genius.

      • Re:More Raskins (Score:4, Interesting)

        by wampus ( 1932 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:25AM (#22066768)
        In Vista I mash the Windows key and type firefox. I got into that habit VERY quickly.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by ByOhTek ( 1181381 )
          In Windows Vista I upgrade to Windows XP or FreeBSD. I got into that habit very quickly myself.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bytesex ( 112972 )
          I didn't mash my Windows key; that would be such a shame of this nice keyboard. Besides, I can't get any drill close enough to the surface without mashing other keys as well. And I'm not using it either. I have WindowMaker put everything I want behind a few function-keys.
      • So basically they reinvented Quicksilver but for Windows.

      • Re:More Raskins (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Constantine XVI ( 880691 ) <trash@eighty+slashdot.gmail@com> on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:41AM (#22067020)
        Considering the popularity of Launchy (Win), Vista's start search, Quicksilver/Spotlight (Mac), Katapult (KDE) and GNOME Deskbar, I'd say he either hit a home run or knows trends when he sees them.

        Personally, I feel very lost when I can't use any of those tools.

        • Re:More Raskins (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Evil Adrian ( 253301 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:59AM (#22067292) Homepage
          Google Desktop does this too -- I actually realized that Launchy was totally redundant once I installed Google Desktop, so I removed it. Launchy is great, though.

        • Re:More Raskins (Score:5, Interesting)

          by xtracto ( 837672 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @12:15PM (#22067536) Journal
          Considering the popularity of Launchy (Win), Vista's start search, Quicksilver/Spotlight (Mac), Katapult (KDE) and GNOME Deskbar, I'd say he either hit a home run or knows trends when he sees them.

          And this brings me to the question of, why aren't the menu and windows keys binded by default in many of the most popular linux distributions?, here I am writing this in Fedora 8 and neither the menu or any of the two windows keys of the keyobard do anything. The same thing happens in Ubuntu 7.10.

          Now, I know there is a super-duper easy way to bind them in X/Y/Z menu or editing certain.conf file, but these keys are in almost every keyboard nowadays and they have specific functions (one open the sytem menu, the other opens the "alternative button" menu. And moreover, if they are binded by default and there is some keyboard that does not have them, it won't hurt the user in any way!
          • Well, in GNOME, the menu key serves the same function as in Windows (r-click menu), but the Super/Win key seems to be set up as a modifier key by default. It sounds like you can't use modifier keys by themselves, so you can't have Super-Tab (WindowFlow switching) and Super pulling up the app menu at the same time, you have to choose.

            PS: Since I never actually use the Menu key for menus, i disabled it, and remapped it to Scale and Expo (Alt-Menu).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Hatta ( 162192 )
          How are these any better than popping open a terminal and using tab-completion?

          • How are these any better than popping open a terminal and using tab-completion?

            None of them involve opening a terminal, for starters. On Linux, - fi gets me Firefox. Could I really do that more easily in a shell?

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )

              On Linux, - fi gets me Firefox.

              That should've been <alt>-<space> fi <enter>.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Hatta ( 162192 )
              Sure, just bind RXVT to alt-space. Or just use yakuake or the like and you don't even need the hot keys. Or just use the terminal you have open anyway.

              • Sure, just bind RXVT to alt-space.

                ...making the minimal set of keystrokes is <alt>-<space> fi <tab> & <enter> <control>-d and involves spawning a new zsh process with the startup overhead that entails. It also makes me have to manually close the terminal window afterward (possibly much later if Firefox opens before I manage to hit ^D to exit the shell, which also means that Firefox swallows the ^D and prompts me for the folder I'd like to put my newly-requested bookmark in).

                No, I have to say that's not

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cuantar ( 897695 )
            My question exactly. The "fancy" method seems fundamentally limited, as it probably requires the user to define aliases for things and remember those. I get instant feedback from my shell, on the other hand, and I have access to everything in my PATH. If the fancy method just searches the PATH, how is it different than pressing Alt+F2 and using the Run... dialog?

            • It's really one of those things you have to experience before you can understand it. Try the popular launcher on your OS of choice for a few days. If you don't like it, no harm done. If you do like it, hey! New shininess.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Hatta ( 162192 )
                I've tried katapult, it's absolutely awful. I can see using it if firefox is the only thing you ever want to launch, but then why not just put an icon on your toolbar. It pretty much always guesses wrong, and unlike tab completion doesn't show me all the possible alternatives, just a couple. And if I make a mistake and try to backspace... well I'm not sure just what it's doing there. Tab completion works in a predictable way, with katapult I never know what I'm going to get.

            • Re:More Raskins (Score:5, Informative)

              by Constantine XVI ( 880691 ) <trash@eighty+slashdot.gmail@com> on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @01:47PM (#22068884)
              With Deskbar, after pressing alt-space, I could:
              *launch a program out of the App menu
              *launch a program from my PATH
              *go to a web page
              *start a mail to someone with their address or name
              *launch a bookmark
              *run a Tracker search
              *look up something in the dictionary
              *post to Twitter

              And all of this is done in context, without having to drop a command before it.

  • Mayby they can send them to (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Respawner ( 607254 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:15AM (#22066646)
    the Open Office project.
    I always find myself lost when trying even basic stuff, could be I just suck at it ;-) but somehow I've always appreciated indesign more
    • I think Mozilla would be much better off finding someone to plug the memory leaks and other stability problems. The latest version stops working after a few days and I have to kill it and restart. The only reason I stick with FF right now is the plugins.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by mike_c999 ( 513531 )
        An often misunderstood problem with Firefox is that it keeps a cache of pages you have visited in memory, thus causing very high memory usage.

        type about:config in your address bar and change the value of browser.cache.memory.enable to false
        this will dramatically reduce the memory usage in Firefox for those long browsing sessions but with a small hit to the speed of back/forwards functionality
        • If it's not really a leak, then I don't have a problem with it taking memory, as long as it's being useful.

          It still doesn't resolve the stability problem. Seriously, I can use Firefox for maybe three days before it must be restarted because it starts acting like there's no server on the other end. Kill it and restart the session and it's fine. I've even gone to FF 1.5 and I'm running almost no extensions except the two that I must have.

    • Re:Mayby they can send them to (Score:5, Insightful)

      by emaname ( 1014225 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @12:12PM (#22067492)
      ...to the GIMP project. PLEASE send them to the GIMP project. I'm begging you.
  • firefox needs an UI facelift!

    • Re:good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by filbranden ( 1168407 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:22AM (#22066726)

      firefox needs an UI facelift!

      No it doesn't! More important than having a cool UI is adhering to current UI standards and doing things the way users expect them.

      In most cases, great UI improvements are the incremental ones, not the revolutionary ones.

      Firefox is already on the right track. Change it just for the sake of changing it would be bad.

      • Re:good (Score:5, Insightful)

        by slashbob22 ( 918040 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:33AM (#22066904)

        In most cases, great UI improvements are the incremental ones, not the revolutionary ones.

        It is a gamble. Office and ribbon are a good example. The trasition from the current way of doing things to ribbon can be time consuming, however when you have transitioned it is an improvement. Is it worth the pain? tbd.

        • Re:good (Score:5, Interesting)

          by filbranden ( 1168407 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @12:27PM (#22067702)

          Office and ribbon are a good example.

          Actually Office 2007 is one of my pet peeves. Incidentally, Microsoft nowadays seems to be breaking all UI standards just for the sake of the change. For instance, you can see several rants on Vista's new Windows Explorer [technotheory.com], IE7's lack of menu bar [greghughes.net], and Office's infamous ribbon [zdnet.com.au].

          Funnily enough, sometime ago, the excuse not to adopt non-MS technology was that the interface doesn't follow Windows guidelines, it doesn't integrate with Windows as well as Microsoft applications (this was always a complaint with Lotus Notes on a company I worked for).

          Now, Microsoft is making this problem irrelevant, since their own software doesn't follow Windows guidelines anymore. Heck, not even the different families of Windows apps are not consistent. If you see Office, IE, Messenger, WMP, it looks like each one of them was made by a completely different software vendor.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by barzok ( 26681 )

            Now, Microsoft is making this problem irrelevant, since their own software doesn't follow Windows guidelines anymore
            MS has been doing this for years. Either Office 95 or Office 97 (and later versions) skipped the standard file dialog boxes (open, save, etc.) and implemented its own version of it.

          • it doesn't integrate with Windows as well as Microsoft applications (this was always a complaint with Lotus Notes on a company I worked for).
            Of all of the many many (many) things wrong with Lotus Notes, they complain about that?

          • Microsoft nowadays seems to be breaking all UI standards just for the sake of the change. For instance, you can see several rants on ... Office's infamous ribbon [zdnet.com.au].

            If the biggest rant you could find on Office's "infamous" ribbon is an article praising MS for making its minimize feature slightly more discoverable [msdn.com], I'd say that's a fairly resounding vindication of it...

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by MrSteveSD ( 801820 )
            That's the problem with that kind of commercial software. You naturally reach a stage where nothing really needs changing much, but to keep making a profit you have to keep radically messing with it to make it look new and shiny so people will buy it. That's why FOSS makes so much more sense since it serves the needs of the users, not a large company's business needs.
        • "...however when you have transitioned it is an improvement."

          Uh, no. That's an opinion only, not a statement of fact.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sm62704 ( 957197 )
        There's good reason to change its Linux interface. On my small monitor there's not much of the Firefox screen that's devoted to the page being viewed.

        I still like it better than konqueror though.
        • I use small icons, and move the Bookmark Toolbar up to the menu bar, then hide the bookmarks toolbar. If you need more space you can hide the status bar. If you _still_ need more space, press F11 to go into fullscreen mode.

      • No it doesn't! More important than having a cool UI is adhering to current UI standards and doing things the way users expect them.

        Doing things the way the user expects is good UI. But finding the 'intuitive' interface is not always as straightforward as it seems - and often isn't the 'orderly' layout.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Kram_Gunderson ( 1053068 )

        No it doesn't! More important than having a cool UI is adhering to current UI standards and doing things the way users expect them.

        Exactly. One of the (several) reasons I can't stand using Internet Explorer 7 is the 'new and improved' UI that puts the stop and refresh buttons on the right side of the address bar. I'm not sure what drove that decision, but I am continually mousing over to the left side of the address bar (where they are on every other browser). I wish I could just not use it, but unfortunately web design/development requires testing in IE7, and a lot of page refreshes as things are tweaked.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )
        However, firefox is themeable... Hopefully whatever new UI they come up with can be replaced with the standard theme if the new one is too horrendous...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hatta ( 162192 )
        There are definitely things firefox could do to improve its UI. Case in point: detachable/attachable tabs. Another: that horrid thing they call a file dialog.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khelder ( 34398 )
        A constant tension in "improving" the UI of an existing program is that the users say, "Make it better. But don't change anything."

        This is sensible on their part, but makes life hard for UI designers. Up to a point, incremental improvements can do a lot for a lot of the UIs out there. (In fact, for most software out there, commercial and OSS, incremental work would go a *long* way toward improving usability.)

        However, some improvements cannot be done incrementally. To pick an extreme example, textual, keyboa

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceeam ( 39911 )
      http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html#top [webstandards.org]

      IE needs it more.

    • firefox needs an UI facelift!

      If they do, keep that center button with tabs functionality. Addictive super addition to FireFox and I love that feature. IE users don't know what they are missing, unless of course M$ added it to IE7? Been so long since I used IE I don't know where they are at any more.

  • Ka-ching! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:18AM (#22066678)
    The lesson here is that to make progress sometimes you have to pay people.

  • I don't want innovative, give me easy, familiar .. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by petes_PoV ( 912422 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:22AM (#22066732)
    ... and intuitive any day.

    It really hacks me off when someone changes a UI (or goods on supermarket shelves, for that matter) just for the sake of doing something new.

    What we need are some standards here. Preferable just one, so people stick to it.

    • Re:I don't want innovative, give me easy, familiar (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hausrath ( 757099 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:30AM (#22066880)
      But here's the thing... The statement they're making by doing this is that they think the interface they have isn't satisfactory - isn't intuitive enough. Hiring these people says that they recognize that improvements can be made in the UI which will make firefox more intuitive and easy to use. If that comes at the expense of some (quickly forgotten) sense of familiarity, so be it.
      • If FF were unintuitive, I might agree. Since I'm using it right now and it's just fine, I don't.

        If you want to change the interface, fine. But either allow users to fall back to the one they like or expect abandonment. A browser's a browser's a browser. Beyond browsing, I don't want clutter.
    • They get it; BLACK on WHITE; 500 - Internal Server Error
    • They did that at my local market, under the guise of "standardizing across the chain".

      Of course, nobody can find anything any more, and the reordering is not logical (some of the frozen organics are in the freezer section, others have been moved next to the veggies, etc...).

      It's been 6 months now, and as you walk the aisles when you shop, you still hear people complaining that they can't find a damn thing.
      • Sounds like someone has been using the islike operator [informit.com] a bit too freely.

      • My local supermarket did the same thing about 3 or 4 months ago, but their new layout rocks. Instead of the "usual" layout of keeping all like products together, they separated non-perishables by cuisine/culture. So, when I feel like Mexican, I rock the Mexican isle. When I want pasta, there's a sauce & pasta isle. Etc.

        Some things stayed the same... Frozen foods are all together, produce is by the entrance, and the milk is still in the far corner... but overall, it's a vast improvement. At first, I did

    • I'm with you. I USE the "Go" button, but no matter how many times I about:config it back on, the next time I start Firefox it's hidden again.

      I guess there was a study proving that the Go button confused users and we shouldn't have it.

      I've done some studies and I've conclusively proving that my custom cluttered KDE interface is the most intuitive on the planet. Soon I will publish these studies and force everyone on the planet to use my designs.

  • learning curves (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Arthur B. ( 806360 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:29AM (#22066854)
    The Humanized website is an interesting read. While they do make valid points, they seem to fall into the "dummies" culture. Why does everything today has to be "for dummies" or in "24 hour"? What's wrong with learning curves? Learning curves exist for a reason... they're not here to make user's life miserable but simply because an interface that you learn can be more effective in the future. Of course, just because it's hard doesn't mean it's powerful. It is possible to build an unintuitive AND uneffective interface, but I think it is not always possible to be both intuitive and effective. On the humanized website, they seem to solely focus on the former : why is that? I think we are in fact facing a wide cultural problem of high time preference... before are not willing to spend a few minutes reading a manual or a few days getting use to a device, even if it can save them days later. For example, my mother works with computers all day and hunt and pecks at 20WPM. When I told her to spend some time learning to touchtype, she claim she didn't have time. Same story when I was in college, watching people spend hours writing formulas in word because it took too much time to learn LaTeX.

    Back to interfaces. If what I describe is indeed a cultural phenomenom, then the guys at humanized are right, they are merely reflecting market demand for simplicity versus efficience, but this is in itself a sad thing. I think they do not emphasize the possibility of satisfying different kind of customers by providing optional advanced options.

    • Re:learning curves (Score:5, Informative)

      by Unordained ( 262962 ) * <unordained_slashdotNOSPAM@csmaster.org> on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:50AM (#22067150)
      http://www.mit.edu/~jtidwell/language/sovereign_posture.html [mit.edu] from a collection of HCI design patterns at http://www.mit.edu/~jtidwell/interaction_patterns.html [mit.edu]; I think J. Tidwell has since moved on to http://designinginterfaces.com/Introduction [designinginterfaces.com] however, and in restructuring her thinking items like 'Sovereign Posture' seemed to lose their place. The new site seems to be more about layout than 'modes' or 'purposes' of use.

      'Sovereign Posture' refers to the situation where an interface may be complex, and is designed for the 'expert user', but that's okay -- anyone using it already intends to become an expert and is willing to take the time needed to do so, so long as they know the reward will be a faster/more-expressive work environment. The idea is that sometimes it's not worth it to create a 'dummy' version of your software. It makes some sense for 'winzip', but not for 'word'.

    • Re:learning curves (Score:4, Informative)

      by Krinsath ( 1048838 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:53AM (#22067204)
      On the flip side of that coin, people who go through learning curves then become more resistant to an interface change (such as a new program, or an upgrade like Office 2007) due to the perceived time investment they put into the current one. "I spent six months learning how to get this one to work! I don't want to learn a new one!" is a fairly common human attitude. Using a basic, intuitive interface for basic tasks means that if you need to switch to another program with another basic interface you get less inertia with people to the change and less "shift downtime" while people adjust.

      From a business perspective, such things are highly desirable as you can keep technology up to date while not negatively impacting worker productivity with having to learn something that isn't really their job. They hired an accountant to do accounting, not work an email program and every minute/hour/day/month he has to spend learning a new interface is money that's been lost from the reason he's there. Accounting is his job, not email...even if email is tightly integrated into the communications about his job it's not their primary function. So from an efficiency standpoint you'd want a simpler interface that can be learned quickly and easily.

      Now, for more advanced work (such as the financial system that accountant would use as part of their core job) there's a strong case that a learning curve and it's boosts to productivity on complex tasks outweighs possible issues with later changes, but I can't think of a product that Mozilla makes that I'd put into the "advanced work" category. They seem to make apps for fairly basic tasks.

      So basically (horrid pun intended), when the work is what people get hired to do, the interface should be powerful at the cost of simplicity. When it's an incidental task that will be performed in the execution of their main job, I'd say a simpler interface should simple, even if not as powerful, at least by default.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sm62704 ( 957197 )
      What's wrong with learning curves?

      What's wrong with having a needle stuck in your ass? Yes, sometimes the doctor needs to give you a shot of something or other but if he gives you the choice between an oral antibiotic and a big needle in the ass, which are you going to choose?

      If you have two things that perform the same functions, and one has a steep learning curve and the other doesn't, the one without a learning curve is the best one. Just like a pill beats a shot any day.

      Yes, like a needle in the ass, so

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mjeffers ( 61490 )
      You usually want to reserve designs that require a learning curve for situations where you can be sure that clear and consistent training will be required or at least easily available for those that need it. No one designs in-flight control systems for dummies because pilots are required/want (out of a fear of crashing and dieing) to be trained on how to use the system. Similarly, if you find Photoshop too challenging but think you can make money with it you can buy a book or take a training course.

      No one m

  • Uh oh, Opera here I come (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sm62704 ( 957197 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:43AM (#22067052) Journal
    This doesn't look good AT ALL.

    "small software company that is known for its considerable usability expertise and innovative user interface design. The Humanized developers will be working at Mozilla Labs on Firefox and innovative new projects."

    I hope I'm wrong, but "innovative" and "user interface" in the same sentence are sometimes good, but rarely. I'm thinking of innovations like Microsoft's not showing all menu items, or web 2.0 innovations that move the fucking link when you try to click (ala the firehose, please redesign that travesty, I have to use IE at work!)

    OTOH there are good UI innovations, like the circular menu that nobody's used. Fingers crossed, at least they have no monopoly and if Firefox starts sucking I can go elsewhere.

    -mcgrew
    • Now that you mention Opera, they have a fair share of design innovations.

      For example in mail. The now-loved then-hated model of not using a folder hierarchy but using views or labels and search to sort through email. Yes, it was in Opera before being in gmail.

      The quick reply email and newsgroup button.

      The quick dial buttons.

      The middle mouse button scrolling. Yes, it's something that all browsers have, but here the difference is in quality. Different distances of the pointer to the origin have different scro
  • The problem wiht usability experts is that they would never come up with vi. That's because it's complex, hard to learn and impossible for beginners to quit (never mind learn) without a cheat sheet. But get past that (and some of us do) and there is an incredibly powerful editor which becomes easier and easier to use as one learns. Many of us vi fanatics find everything else hard to use by comparison.

    But because of that a UI expert would never come up with it. Is this a big problem? I dunno.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by BlueBoxSW.com ( 745855 )
      Powerful and easy to learn do not have to be mutually exclusive.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chrisq ( 894406 )
        Agreed. In vi you have to learn a lot to use it but its powerful
        Notepad is straightforward but limited
        JEdit is easy to use if you only need to do simple things, but the power is available for those who need it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shados ( 741919 )
      The thing is, I don't think Firefox is targeting the same people as Vi. So thats definately not an issue here.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ricebowl ( 999467 )

      The problem wiht(sic) usability experts is that they would never come up with vi. That's because it's complex, hard to learn and impossible for beginners to quit (never mind learn) without a cheat sheet.

      I agree that a UI expert isn't going to come up with Vi in its current format, but I think you're equating a complex interface with a complex/powerful program. Ideally what would happen is that the programmer comes up with Vi then passes it to a UI expert who then passes it to an art department.

      The fact th

      • The problem with usability experts is that they would never come up with vi. That's because it's complex, hard to learn and impossible for beginners to quit (never mind learn) without a cheat sheet.

        I agree that a UI expert isn't going to come up with Vi in its current format, but I think you're equating a complex interface with a complex/powerful program. Ideally what would happen is that the programmer comes up with Vi then passes it to a UI expert who then passes it to an art department.

        The fact that Vi

    • You probably also wouldn't get something like vi today at all. The development of the vi interface was due to the constraints of the systems of the 70s. Those same constraints generally don't exist in modern systems today. For instance, the H, J, K, and L keys would never have been used for navigation if keyboards were developed with arrow keys.

    • Re:The problem wiht usability experts (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kellyb9 ( 954229 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @12:26PM (#22067688)
      You're missing the point altogether behind usability. An interface should be intuitive such that someone who has never worked with a computer in their life can walk up and understand what they're doing after a limited amount of time. Vi may be powerful, and I'm sure you'll get modded up on a place like Slashdot for mentioning it. But when I walk up to a terminal using it, what do I do? what are the conventions in place? How does it relate to anything in the real world? Bottom line is that it doesn't meet any of the criteria behind usability. As much as it pains me to say this, Microsoft Word is more powerful than Vi in terms of usability. You push a letter and it shows up on the screen.

  • Simplicity. (Score:3, Funny)

    by edgarhz ( 732153 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:48AM (#22067130)
    From the article: His design philosophy extends from the belief that the best kind of interface is no interface at all.

    From the site [humanized.com]: 500 - Internal Server Error

    Nice proposal.
  • The should rename their company to "Slashdotted"

  • Firefox doesn't need a team of UI engineers.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:54AM (#22067218) Homepage
    When they're done with Firefox, could they spare a few guys to work on OpenOffice, The GIMP, and Blender? Those projects seem more in the need of a UI overhaul than Firefox does.

    (But still, I'm excited to see that some of the "big" open-source projects are taking UI design seriously. Huzzah!)

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by zsouthboy ( 1136757 )
      Blender's interface is designed for ARTISTS who use the program - try again. It's an incredibly fast UI - there IS a learning curve, however.

      I've been blending for years, and it just gets out of your way, and lets you get to work.

      I get sick of people crapping on Blender - I use it instead of, you know, those other programs you have to pay money for? Those ones that I had no problem paying for before?

      Seriously, I use it instead of 3DS/Maya.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )
        It's like vi, if you're used to the interface you won't want to use anything else, but if you're not used to it, then it can drive you insane.
  • ...someone fix the GIMP!
  • What leaks?
  • Can't the WINE team do the same? They REALLY could use a better interface, you know.
  • Frankly, I think Firefox is one of the few OSS projects that needs serious UI work. I find it more than adequate and I'm not sure a major overhaul is something I'll appreciate. But then again, I'm not a big fan of eye candy. I like simple, functional user interfaces far more than pretty, but less functional, ones.

    On the other hand, there are a LOT of OSS projects that could use some serious help in the UI department. If you told me KDE or Gnome, or Gimp had done this, I'd be pretty excited. These projects c
  • I wish editors like CmdrTaco would stop trolling with unrelated lines like "maybe-they-can-fix-the-leaks".
  • and monster chops to boot! (from the About Us page: http://www.humanized.com/gfx/header_aboutus.jpg [humanized.com] )

    I hate to be one to point out the shortcomings of others, but how can you expect to be a good user interface designer when something as simple as trimming some hair seems a daunting task?

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