Tag: USERINTERFACE

Over the last few days, Mozilla's lovely Are We Pretty Yet? has been steadily accumulating Firefox 5 interface mock-ups. If you haven't visited AWPY before, its primary purpose is for listing and fixing bugs in the Firefox 4 UI -- but it seems it will now also be used to showcase potential interfaces for Firefox 5. The mock-ups include concepts for 'desktop apps', which are Firefox's answer to ...

With the release of OpenKinect, an open-source library that lets PC users interact with Microsoft's depth-sensing and environment-recognizing Kinect, crazy-cool applications of the technology are beginning to emerge. In this video (embedded after the break), one creative hacker mashes together a bunch of open-source libraries to create... well, a modern-day equivalent of HAL 9000. Using ...

Computer benchmarking applications abound for Windows machines, but what if you want to judge the capabilities of your current Mac against one you're considering buying? Though I'm in that situation far less often than I'd prefer, when I do need to measure the relative performance of two different Macs, I turn to Xbench. Xbench is a free performance benchmarking utility that measures the following ...

When I visited the Mozilla offices in Mountain View, California, I met with three very important Mozillans. Aza Raskin, Creative Lead of Firefox; Vladimir Vukićević, Principal Engineer of Firefox; and Nick Nguyen, Mozilla's Director of Add-ons. Together, they form the spearhead that drives both the creative vision and development of Firefox, a browser that's now used by over 400 million users. ...

[Update] As Michael points out in the comments, I neglected to mention that Appigo has worked out a deal with Toodledo to offer a free for 6 months Toodledo PRO account to all affected customers. Remember the Milk, if you're not familiar with it, is a very popular web-based task management application that we've frequently covered here at Download Squad. In fact, I've been a big supporter of ...

By now I would hope you've all seen the amazing, adorable and humbling video of a two-year-old interacting with an iPad for the first time. If not, go watch it now (it's after the break, too). In just five minutes I had my entire world view shift; I started humming Children of the Revolution; I got to pondering the possibilities of a future where babies interact with computers before they learn ...

As some of you may have noticed, the new Ubuntu theme for 10.4 features the window buttons on the "wrong side" (left). This has caused quite the storm in a teacup. It turns out some people feel strongly about this point, even though you apparently would be able to change it later (on a per-user basis, as a preference). This presents Mark Shuttleworth (head of Ubuntu) with an interesting ...

When Apple unveiled their new iBooks application during the launch of the much-anticipated and unfortunately named iPad tablet computer, many people noticed its similarity to the well-known Classics iPhone app. Classics [iTunes link], if you're not familiar with it, is an iPhone app that gives you access to read over a dozen public-domain books. There are lots of ebook readers available for the ...

Do you have an idea for an iPhone app that you'd like to throw together to discuss with friends, colleagues, or even investors? Or maybe you're just looking for a way to fool around with the various iPhone UI elements to figure out just how you want your app to look. In either case, iPhone Mockup might be just the tool you need. iPhone Mockup lets you create illustrated mockups of the iPhone ...

App for the Milk is a cross-platform Adobe Air-based desktop client version of the extremely popular online task management application Remember the Milk. One of the unique aspects of Remember the Milk is that it lends itself well to various user interface interpretations. There are already a number of different UIs for RTM, including the classic web interface, the embedded Gmail interface, the ...

The folks over at the Media Interaction Lab have figured taken on the complex task of designing a usable interface for one of those fancy multi-touch coffee tables; their response to the challenge was quite simple: if you're virtually controlling the devices in your home, shouldn't it seem a lot like when you control them in real-life? Makes sense to me. This simply brilliant yet brilliantly ...

I hate packing for trips. I will put it off until the last possible moment, and even then some. Part of the reason I hate it is that I'm never quite sure exactly what I need to pack. If you're in the same boat, you might find the Universal Packing List site as interesting as I do. Basically, the site is a very compact user interface that asks you a set of questions about your upcoming trip, ...

Windows keeps the Start button, taskbar and system tray at the bottom of the display and a menubar in every window. Mac OS X keeps one main menubar at the top of the display, with a 'dock' of larger icons that take the place of the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the display. Linux, for the most part, seems to prefer the Windows UI, typically using a taskbar-like system with menubars again in ...

Has anyone noticed that the Ribbon in Office 2007 does not extend to all Office programs? Publisher doesn't have it, as well as some other programs. It seems that Microsoft only saw fit to include in the most loved and used applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. I can't help but brace for the fallout from users. First Microsoft tries to build a "zero-learning-curve" model into ...

So you're a software developer and want your program to have a shiny "ribbon" interface just like Office 2007? Well, guess what--Microsoft patented the hell out of it! This should not surprise anybody. However, there is good news for developers, or some of them, at least. Microsoft has announced that it has "created a royalty-free licensing program that will enable developers to build ...