Dusan Presents Several Better Second Life User Interfaces

Last month I mentioned Dusan Writer's L$800,000 User Interface contest, challenging designers to create a "newbie viewer".  He received six proposals, and has them on display here.  To no one's surprise, all of them include significant improvements to the Lindens' standard viewer UI.  Also note that next week on July 22nd, Dusan's contestants are going to have a public presentation of their designs-- think American Idol, but for UI.  As Dusan notes, new CEO M Linden has made improving the interface a top priority, so it'll be interesting to see which user interface is ultimately more user friendly-- the Linden's, or Dusan's winner.

Comments

[Eleanor]

Wow, very interesting slideshow. And some brilliant ideas! I especially like the inventory management improvements; it is desperately needed.

[FlipperPA Peregrine]

My main issue with all the designs is that they're still tied in the same OS window. This keeps people from doing things like using multiple monitors. I think any major UI overhaul should use the OS widgets rather than custom application widgets: inventory should appear exactly like a folder with files in it, the chat history, search, and build dialog interfaces should be available as a separate window (so they can be put on a second monitor, for example, or resized easily). None of the submitted designs seem to offer this functionality.

[anomouse]

My guess is it wouldnt be the Lindens viewer heh

[Elysia Snook]

Wow, those are some pretty neat and innovative designs, though I have to say that #5 was my favorite by far. Is it just me, or does anyone else much prefer a darker UI to the headache-inducing "Dazzle" color scheme? @_@

[Naomi]

@FlipperPA Peregrine

Excuse me, but "The OS widgets" does not exist, is like saying "The religion", or "The Ideology", There is not a widget Monopoly, not for the ones lurking moar. There is a small microcosm of widgets out there, running in all kind of OS's.

OS and widgets do not come "inclusive". GTK, WXwindows, KDE, etc...

Iplementing "The OS Widgets" is opening a door to a coding hell, its not only coding and debbuging for 3 different Operative systems, but dozens and dozens of different widget libraries. Like trying to make the Lakers play basketball against the Red Sox playing baseball on a waterpolo pool, Incompatible? No, just pretty complex at some point, not funny at all. (how many layers of rules would you need?)

If you want to get the same "OS" feeling, is better to emulate it. Widgets in different OSs could emulate other widgets, like GTK looking like Vista's, etc... Nice isn't it.

[FlipperPA Peregrine]

@Naomi: most SDKs I've ever used support what I'm talking about. Firefox, Photoshop, OpenOffice, and many more apps manage to use native OS dialogs across multiple platforms - multiple windows, file dialogs, preferences in the flavor of the OS. Why can't SL?

[Naomi]

@FlipperPA

OpenOffice uses nothing "native" as to the internal "look", is its own kludge(sun need'd this for its multi platform feature), and its kinda horrible, lol. Maybe uses stuff like font dpi configs from Xorg, but it keeps looking almost the same in every OS. Very much like java, bloaty. (both brought to you by sun microsystems)

Its very much the approach of SL, only that SL came with its own font file(java does) that was linden's idea, even it is in the credits thinkso, while Oo uses the ones on your system, and in SL you choose dpi instead of your window manager's config.

Firefox would be the way to go, elegant solution, Truly embedded all you need without unnecesary extras (specially 3.0.X, but depending on the build you will require extra libraries)and you can choose your own skins, showing that it has nothing really to do with native parts of OS, My Firefox looks the same in every OS if I use the same theme and font on the 3 operative systems. (of course thats not 100% possible, like font hinting not the same because of pattents, etc.)

But well, new dialog windows (like opening file in Oo and firefox or downloading in SL, etc) does not counts, the app just call 'em from the window manager, so its not exactly in the program. SL is doing this in the 3 operative systems from long time ago(and its buggy on linux), what we are talking about here is about stuff inside the app, like the chat history, the search engine, etc, as you mentioned it. So its a completely different animal.

Example: It would be a coding hell implementing Vista's transparency in SL's chat history, not for its difficulty, just because its buggy and bloaty, and developers hate to debbug other's silly mistakes, specially if they are from a company like microsoft, with awful record at bug-tracking(where are the new SPs redmond dudes?[[/me evades flying chair]]

As an other example of what I think you are talking about, Internet explorer is THE WAY of every windows operative system since 98 to show html, and to navigate folders etc, its inside the very kernel, but firefox does not uses it for rendering html. Firefox uses the gecko's way. What you are asking for is like wanting firefox to render html using the OS's rendering engine, Internet explorer, using it 'cause is the OS's very look and feeling.

About file management: Look at how Gecko(firefox) navigates through files in hardisk, is its own way, feels like being in a ftp, it is not IE's way. Even there are distros that uses Firefox as windows uses IE, for file management. (wacky idea, cause the mozilla breed was not conceived as a file manager, but IE was conceived to be both: file manager and web browswer, monopolist mindframe, you know)

What you are asking for is that SL will look like your typical Windows, Linux or Apple app inside the very app.

Good choices would be doing SL's skinning easier to the user to install and choose(the actual way is not user-friendly), then everybody could emulate its favorite widget library in every OS independently.

And different windows independent from the SL's main window app has nothing to do with native widgets, its about running new processes, I wonder if there are any other MMO around that puts its chat history in an independent window, dont remember, but it is a serious problem when fullscreening, I dont know very much about OpengGL and/or DirectX programming, but its bogus if you dont have, as you say, a second screen, and a second screen is not an option as minimum spec, and fullscreen stills being buggy in the 3 operative systems. And think about it, SL's target audience is closer to WOW and EVE than Maya or Photoshop, So why would you have and independent window for chat history or search engine?

I have never used Photoshop, not since 98, So I could not tell about it as an example.

At the end, maybe all this fuzz was just semantic misconception of both of us, dunno.

Anyway, best wishes.

[Suzanne Aurilio]

I agree with the commenter about about the overall interface not being more integratable with other apps, since few of us are only in SL. This is where Activeworlds surpases SL, particular for learning and education, where most students are engaged in both flat and 3D web-based tasks.