Category: Technology

Inductive user interfaces (aka: IUI’s) or more commonly called “task-based” interfaces are a user interface (aka: UI) advancement that promotes “usage” or “tasks” over individual applications.

The article above talks about how Microsoft has promoted and been the most noticeable innovator of IUI’s. The reason I point the article out is because of an apparent “slight” to the Mac OSX community regarding the amount of innovation going into their OS. The author basically states that Mac OSX has done little or nothing (I would strongly support the use of the word nothing!) for UI advancement. This really bothers Mac users because they historically see themselves as the origin of all things innovative. And they were… once.

It’s a popular trend in the “literary computer expert world” to slight Microsoft for now comming out with a UI to the level of OSX. Some authors go so far as to say the Mac OSX is the “ultimage Unix desktop.” While many people believe the OSX is the most beautiful personal computer UI in existance… the reality of the matter is that it is less functional than OS9, less user-friendly than XP, less flexable than KDE,and less innovative than any of the above mentioned.

IUI’s is a wonderful advancement for the majority of end users (as long as power users do not loose their flexability), and one that should be promoted in all desktop UI’s. Denouncing it and rejecting it does nothing to help improve user interfaces. And makes those who ignore it look as ignorant as those who thought the internet was simply a fad.

Kconfigure is a KDE program to compile the sources without the xterm or console. I am its newest developer.

Ok, my first real world development for the OS community has begun. I am now working on kconfigure (after getting the old developers permission to do it =-). ) It doesn’t look like a particularly difficult project but it DOES need some work.

My first priorities are to add checkinstall as a build option and to configure a way to use templates for known system types (i.e. Redhat 8, Suse 8.1, Mandrake 9, etc.. etc.. etc..) and have them detected and and used. This will help improve the build success rate for kconfigure.

Later ideas include adding support for the gentoo build system and Debian dpkg. It sure would be nice if we could get kconfigure to become the install shield of the *nix (build from source) world.

This is exactly the kind of application that I want to work on. It is a KDE utility (we NEED more utilities in the Linux world!), it is generally focused at newer *nix users, it gets ppl away from the command line (and is thus a perfect addition to desktop linux), its a KDE app (and regardless of what Redhat says KDE is the future of desktop Linux), and its one that could have a dramatic effect on HOW *nix is used. I hope I can do it justice.