progrock

Perhaps it's missing a 'reset' or 'return defaults' button.

I think the main itch being scratched here, is the problem of templating.

Those that grok file systems, might be happy assembling content into an appropriate folder structure, and hitting a 'publish (to html)' button. You could use a little metadata - such as summaries and keywords to string it all together.

I know there are systems such as Pelican already out there, but it's still too complicated for Joe Blow to produce a site with the tool.

Frames were a pretty simple alternative to elaborate CMS's that have been employed to pretty much solve the same problem.

So much wasted CPU time and money. So called professionals cashing in while presenting building web sites as mystical and technically difficult (I realise the tech is difficult - but why should it be?). It goes so against Tim Berners-Lee's vision of publishing easily and straight from the browser.

Not having some dead simple web page editor, has ended in sites such as Facebook becoming 'the web' to so many people.

And not every browser has implemented them. Do you have control of the when they are updated, and how often etc? I like the idea though of perhaps just having them as simple bookmarks. That would allow for easy syncing.

Syncing history - could help regarding your reading history (privacy aside.)

Coupled with an 'easy read' mode in the browser (I haven't tried Safari in a long while,) might make for a pleasant experience.

Non of the popular browsers have a good Bookmark UI IMHO, which leads to inappropriate tab use.

A little exaggeration, but that's a good point. A better bookmark UI then!

Wow, that's quite a fingerprint.

I know this is slightly off topic, but it would seem only natural to me to actually place a feed reader in the browser itself - actually have browsers that have smart UIs and are more than just fast javascript processors and rendering engines.

Where did the gulls come from anyway?

At least I posit 'a' solution! I'm not a fan of mystery meat navigation, and to be honest - there are plenty of sites - that use quite dumb non-intuitive UIs - including non obvious links and drop down menus. An intuitive navigational mode applied to web pages could really help.

I get what you are saying though. I'd envisage say, as soon as you tap the screen or move the mouse, all the navigational controls would be highlighted - rather than having to hover the mouse over something to see if it's a link or not.

I find this on a lot of websites. Perhaps my TN panel isn't as crisp as some of the more pricey alternatives. It gets lost on me, and there isn't enough contrans to even read some of it.

What makes these pretty? I don't get it it. The new UI in Windows 8, looks anything but pretty to me. Am I missing something? Does it only look good on a very crisp high res display?

OT I still find oversized icons, as in Gnome 3, Unity and Windows 8, almost impossible to grok. I never used to be a fan at all of deep nested menus, but a menu is so much more succinct and easier to grasp.

It might just be something about the visual cohesiveness of all the elements.

There's an easy solution for this:

As soon as you interact with the page, be it mouse, touch proximity, or keyboard, you could highlight clickable elements - perhaps with a border, perhaps links with an underline.

Then you have the best of both worlds.

Or maybe better, a fictitious attribute...

<a action="share">Share this article.</a>

Or better still, just have that as an option in the browser. Tada - 100% minimisation!

I like a little privacy too!

I get what you mean about convenience, I have a boxed DVD version of Game of Thrones, and I ended up using a download instead, mainly because I can't handle the hum of my DVD drive! Laughable though that is. If however it was very simple to rip the DVDS I might have gone that route.

I have loads of DVDS that feel almost obsolete. The quality of some of them is just shocking. DVD menus, that forever loop and keep you up at night. The low resolution and sound is crappy compared with HD. And the box get's in my way. I feel a little cheated here.

I wouldn't want to go out and buy those DVDS in my collection again in a format that will be obsolete in a year or two. If I have bought the right to view them - shouldn't I be able to download improved versions?

I have a meager download allowance, and my connection speed is too slow for streaming, so sadly I loose out to some of the subscription services that would otherwise please me.

This still gets me every time.

Don't MS make it agonising. To the point that I almost can't be bothered. Have you read all the twisted workarounds that people are doing to get legitimate upgrades?

I have Vista 32 on my laptop (that is doing nothing at the moment), I want a 64bit version of windows. I'd like to go from Vista 32 to Windows 8 with an upgrade. But that isn't really supported. I can go from Vista 32 to Vista 64 -> Windows 8, but it's a hassle. Lenovo have pulled their images, I have no disk images of Vista, it goes on. I've read loads of people going through similar install/reinstalls.

Windows should just provide different arch versions of the ISO, that they update regularly. That you can download any old place, and place it on USB/DVD whatever. Then just use your paid for product key. Simple?

I'm trialing the evaluation version. I've already broken the Desktop Internet Explorer. And I've crashed the OS twice. It feels like a poor man's Unity! I've windows that I can't view in their entirety on the screen, and there's no way I can move them to get to the controls. I can't easily get an overview of what's installed (no simple menu). And there doesn't seem like any intuitive way to get to the control panel. Plus it's hard to know what's clickable and what isn't.

There are a few nice touches, but I'd personally like to turn Metro off. I've got no want for it. I was hoping it would be a little more polished than this. But it feels odd.

I'm trying to justify the hassle of the £25 upgrade. Price it over £100, no thanks, I'll be at the mercy of Ubuntu for another decade. This was a chance for MS to woo someone that hasn't really touched their OSs for thirteen years. I've tried to meet them in the middle.

It shouldn't be this hard.

I didn't really enjoy the scroll, but did like the pagination.

A little tangential: Xfce has a dictionary applet. That includes a speed reader. Which only displays words, one word at a time in quick succession. It's actually pretty simple to use. And works really well. I wouldn't have thought so. Should add that to smartphones. No scrolling required!

You can page a webpage with the spacebar. Shift and spacebar to page up. I try not to scroll, because I hate it too, unless I need to look at an image. The browser could magically align and size an image for me, but that's another topic.

I found compiz and it's filters made it easier to look at the screen.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037538

Probably too late to mention, but someone suggested yesterday that the colours blue and yellow could help those with dislexia. Looking further into this, there's mention of using yellow and blue filters to help read. There's at least one mention here of someone wearing yellow sunglasses. Interestingly redshift, kind of is like a red filter. It might be interesting to see how alternative colours could work.

I quite liked the way my old powerbook would change it's brightness depending on ambient lighting.

That's kind of funny. I personally can have real issues with bright displays. Only in very light sun lit offices, I don't mind the brightness being up. When at home in the bat cave, I far prefer dimmer light. Some days my eyes are more sensitive, or perhaps getting used to dimmer displays make you more sensitive to bright ones.

I used to use the transparant filter with compiz, just to take the edge of some glare/brightness. I even tried a sepia/monochrome filter with some success. There was an error with compiz and my system, so had to give up on it.

Then I tried a light on dark theme. As I find the terminal comfortable, but I feel you need to match it across your desktop - otherwise it's jarring. That is going from light on dark to dark on light.

It seems support for darker themes is buggy at best on Linux. To the point that recently I had to undo my dark theming just because I need regular access to one spreadsheet.

Now I have a halfway house, browser is setup for light on dark, and the rest of my desktop is greyish. Still buggy though, something as simple as Google's search box is unuasable because I've a dark font on a dark background. And so it goes on.

I might give flux a go. I've installed redshift on XFCE - but it's not currently working. Edit: okay it took like 2mins to get it up and running. Not sure what to make of it. Will see.

I've got quite used to a light on dark them though to overcome brightness issues.

That's what people look like through 'Truth sunglasses.'

Just use a pager. I prefer paging to scrolling.

What I'd like is probably something in between. Or one e-ink display and one 'normal'. But the OS would need to be aware that it was dealing with an e-ink display. You'd need to say goodbye to animations/flashing cursors and mouse pointers etc.

There feels like two Facebook designs, the timeline, and other user pages.

I hate the timeline, as I can't track two columns, and probably wouldn't like a grid also for the same reason.

I logged in to Facebook a minute a go just out of curiousity, and struggle to actually find my homepage, first I get badgered by Facebook, I then accidentally stumble upon my Timeline (which I hate), I then click the Facebook logo to go to a homepage, which happens to be a feed - or rather what I deem my own homepage. Confused! And it happens every time.

I guess that's down to personal preference. I feel that some applications just don't suit full screen.

Good point about visual reminders. Probably why I end up using tabs instead of bookmarks, and because the bookmark UI in browsers is poor.

So if you used workspaces, you could have an active workspace, and just move the application that you want to focus on into that workspace. Then it wouldn't matter if it was full screen or not. It could be your distraction free workspace.

I'm not familiar with Metro.

On small screens, space is a premium, so I can understand the motivation and want for full screen / less chrome.

It's also useful when using the computer on a TV. Ideally you want a lower resolution, or to increase font - sizes, windows controls etc.

On a larger monitor up close, I have no need to maximise the browser window. I get lost in a sea of white most of the time. In fact sometimes I need to resize the window - to make text more readable (fluid layouts - which I ultimately have more control over). If I'm using tabs, the resizing interferes with the other open web pages though. If I flip back to another page, I may need to then resize again - which is awkward. In this case I'm better off using multiple windows rather than tabs. Which I'd prefer if I had better window management.

I think that tabs were really just a hack around crappy window managers. And the real subject here is that of window management.

Yes you can use multiple monitors, but you can't assume that people do, or assume the size of their monitors.

I got so annoyed with crap window management over multiple monitors - that I prefer to use workspaces. I want to be able to use the keyboard to flip between monitors/workspaces, and move windows between monitors/workspaces. Launch windows on particular monitors. Turn external monitors off and on when I want to. Not having to have one monitor devoted to a task bar etc. Not having windows pop up where you don't expect them.

The last time I tried Gnome 3 I had trouble with multiple monitors. I can just about use ARandR under Xfce with an external monitor, but can find multiple workspaces don't work that well with multiple monitors.

I'd have thought that you'd actually be able to come up with something very usable with a little thought and common sense.

Back to having multiple windows. You pretty much need them for dragging and dropping. Which actually is a pretty awkward manoeuvre in itself. Other times having multiple windows on screen at the same time, is useful for things monitors/notifiers. Or when on messenger.

I personally alt-tab lots. But it can some times be jarring. And would be no use if I was wanting to watch something while chatting on IRC.

If I had a CCTV application, and wanted to watch four cameras at the same time. Would you leave that to the application, or the window manager? It seems to me that it makes more sense using a window manager rather than doing it in the application. I mentioned tabs already, and currently this UI is totally inconsistent across web browsers, let alone other applications.