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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

The 3d styling in the UI is very nice, but the widgets are not touch friendly at all. Even "classic 90s" OS's like Windows CE used the pattern of headerbars with a few key widgets that could be easily accessed via touch, not unlike modern GTK 3.x and 4.x. A lot friendlier than this.

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That's correct, the SerenityOS UI does not attempt to be touch friendly. This is a classic mouse & keyboard system by design. :)

This is a really good thing. A lot of desktop stuff seems to presume a desktop has a touch interface which is almost never the case. Using the keyboard and mouse for 8 (or 12 hours in case of IE) is tiring enough. I cannot picture someone using a touchscreen for 8 (or 12 hours in case of IE).

Good! Tablet and phone concerns have been the absolute bane of desktop UIs for so long now.

> Even "classic 90s" OS's like Windows CE used the pattern of headerbars with a few key widgets that could be easily accessed via touch

That's because it was made from the start for PDAs with touch screens. This is a desktop computer OS, and although I can entertain the notion that someone out there might be smudging a touch screen connected to their Unix workstation, I don't see why everyone else should accommodate this weird and ergonomically unsound input method at the expense of screen estate.

Also, whether they could be easily accessed really depends on the device and input method. Using Pocket PCs without a stylus was certainly no fun.

Well, these days we have "PDAs with touchscreens" running "Unix workstation" OS's. Touch input is simply the native input method on these devices.

Yes, and for most productive work this is to their detriment. Lower precision, no tactility, terrible ergonomics. I understand the need for smartphone/tablet operating systems to design around this. I don't understand the need for every other operating system to do so.

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