Tag: GUI

As with earlier previews of Internet Explorer 9, the latest release is totally chromeless (there's no shiny user interface, just a floating window). That can make it a little tricky to test things, but fortunately Ars Technica has posted a simple guide on how to turn on the IE9 GUI in Platform Preview 6. First, you'll need to download and install both the Internet Explorer 9 Beta and Platform ...

Bend is a Windows text editor that is currently under development. It's far from ready (it doesn't really have a proper homepage, and its status is listed as Alpha on CodePlex), but it shows great promise. The whole thing is based on WPF and XAML, which are two hot, new Microsoft technologies that are used for making interfaces look nice. The screenshot shows the basic interface, which is ...

HTML5 features are slowly creeping into our favorite Web apps. Recently, Google added drag-and-drop attachment support to Gmail. If you're using an up-to-date browser with built-in HTML5 kung fu, you've got a plug-in free way to upload files from your desktop. Today, Box.net turned on drag-and-drop as well. If you've got an account, just sign in and head to your dashboard. Select a file (or ...

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 ...

Tipster Juan Camargo sent us a hot one: This Chinese page purportedly features a couple of leaked screenshots of IE9's new GUI. I don't know if it's the real thing, but if it is, Microsoft are doing something very bold here. The general design is reminiscent of the new Windows Phone 7, with a clean, angular look and graphics that are "cut" on the edge of the window (like that back button in the ...

Ubuntu has been the "Flagship Linux" distro for quite a while now. This is the distro most people judge Linux by (and the only one I personally work with). However, its visual style remained constant for a long time, and has been starting to look a bit stale. It's difficult to convey "innovation" to end users when your product keeps the same look, version to version. There's been a lot of ...

It's been known for quite some time that Mozilla was planning to re-skin Firefox 3.7. At long last, the old default toolbar icons have finally been replaced in recent nightly Minefield builds. The new icons are nearly identical to the ones we first saw last year in the mockups. Support for Aero transparency hasn't been integrated yet, though it remains part of the 3.7/4.0 Windows Theme ...

Up until today I've been using a dark Firefox theme. It looked quite pretty, but eventually I got tired of not being able to read the black text on some of the dialogs (yes, I've tried tweaking userchrome.css -- multiple times). So I've set out in search of a lighter theme which would still be nice and minimalistic. Operetta Advance seems to fit the bill perfectly. It's called "Advance" ...

digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2009/12/26/chinese-copy-cat-pirates-launch-ubuntu-that-looks-just-like-windows-xp/'; From the Chinese pirate masters of the non-sea-faring variety comes ... Ylmf OS! Not happy with pirating Windows XP itself, these creative Chinese have gone one step further and hacked Ubuntu to look exactly like Windows XP. Why have they moved to Ubuntu? Because ...

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo. Kitschy soundtrack, good voiceover and an intensely thorough demo add up to one cool re-imagining of our conventional human/computer interaction. In other words: this looks as close to the UI in Minority Report as I've ever seen. The key seems to be rewarding the user for having 10 fingers, and using all 10 to do a high number of operations in clever ways. This ...

A few days ago, OpenOffice.Org's Renaissance Project introduced a new prototype UI. Predictably, the similarity to Microsoft's Ribbon did not go unnoticed by commenters. "The Office ribbon sucks. Please don't copy it," reads one reply. It's important to note that this is just a prototype. As OOO's Frank Loehmann notes in his post, "We just want to be able to test the interaction. Content of the ...

I like to keep things in my Firefox UI to a minimum, though for some reason I don't like to utilize the full-screen view. What can I do? Why, go find some addons and combine, compress, and tidy things up a bit. Here are four handy addons that help get the job done - if you've got some others, share them with us in the comments! Personal Menu Nix that needless file-edit-view menu with this addon. ...

digg_url = "http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/01/21/flipping-the-linux-switch-misplace-a-file-find-it-quick/";It happens to the best of us. We forget where we put things. Car keys. Flash drives. Yes, sometimes we even forget where certain files are on our computers. We can't really help you with the car keys and flash drives (although we inexplicably find things like that in the refrigerator ...

It seems like every week there's a new application hitting the streets that aims to turn your Windows Mobile device into an iPhone. If you really want an iPhone, you should probably just buy one. On the other hand, if you prefer Windows Mobile applications, but like the look of the iPhone program launcher, we can understand why applications like Pointui are attractive. Pointui appears to be ...

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 ...