The chase of a new information
A GUI interface should be well AIRED:
A GUI interface should be well AIRED:
- Attractive (easy on the eye)
- Intuitive (easy to understand)
- Responsive (easy to learn, operate and customize)
- Expressive (easy to see what its doing if it makes you wait)
- Demonstrative (easy to upgrade and add new functions).
This project will differ from GNOME in that it is designed from the ground up to be cross-platform - the plastixine platform will act as an abstraction layer between the core OS and back-end modules and the program interfaces (GUI) that the user interacts with. Also, unlike GNOME, the programs will be designed to still operate as stand-alone applications even if the plastixine platform is not installed - although the set-up process would suggest installing the platform and provide clear, accurate instructions on how to do so. This means that existing open source applications can provide plastixine support without being subsumed into a cludgy paperweight desktop designed primarily for one OS (Linux).
The plastixine platform will be easy to obtain, easy to install and easy to configure. It will use Bittorrent (or something similiar) to reduce bandwidth use when downloading new application programs.
The programs will use a common, user-adjustable plastixine GUI attached to proven open source back-ends (where possible GPL). As much as possible they will share back-end modules and code libraries to reduce storage space usage, download time and boot time.
The
platform
will only load at boot those functions of the
program used most often by the user logged on, taking advantage of
spare timeslice
(coffee and piss breaks, text typing etc) to load less-used functions
later and only loading never-before-used functions when requested by
activating them
from within the GUI for the first time. Again, this information about
the users habits will be portable to any other instance of the
plastixine platform (which will support multiple users and password
management) in a secure way.
This project will differ from the Mozilla platform in that it will support any and all kinds of desktop programs rather than primarily internet-orientated ones. It may use code from Mozilla's cross-platform GUI system in its codebase. Also rather than a small number of flagship programs defined by common application features (Office suite, Browser, Media Player etc) it will support the emergence of many programs which combine those features that people tend to use in combination. The idea being to avoid a desktop full of running programs of which only a tiny proportion of the features are being used.
The most
exciting potential of this project is the idea that average users could
be given the tools to build their own application programs using the
same simple, intuitive interface they will learn by using plastixine
programs. Ideally they could select the functions they want, arrange
them into menus, toolbars and pallettes, create a name and style scheme
and have the plastixine assembler compile and install it for them.This project will differ from the Mozilla platform in that it will support any and all kinds of desktop programs rather than primarily internet-orientated ones. It may use code from Mozilla's cross-platform GUI system in its codebase. Also rather than a small number of flagship programs defined by common application features (Office suite, Browser, Media Player etc) it will support the emergence of many programs which combine those features that people tend to use in combination. The idea being to avoid a desktop full of running programs of which only a tiny proportion of the features are being used.