Introduction to GNOME Human Interface Guidelines

This is a great document that specifies how an application should look. It begins with an interesting overview of why certain things should be in certain places in an application, how to avoid offending someone in another country who might try your application, and why unique interfaces don’t always inprove the user experience. This should be required reading for any programmer, but it is a sufficiently interesting read to any technologist or power user.

Introduction:

“This document tells you how to create applications that look right, behave properly, and fit into the GNOME user interface as a whole. It is written for interface designers, graphic artists and software developers who will be creating software for the GNOME environment. Both specific advice on making effective use of interface elements, and the philosophy and general design principles behind the GNOME interface are covered.

These guidelines are meant to help you design and write applications that are easy to use and consistent with the GNOME desktop”

Opinion Column by PC Magazine: How to Kill Linux

I think John Dvorak is fun to read generally speaking, but this was of great interest to me. Having recently tried , and quickly discarded, the Unix Services for Windows CD, given out free at the last NYC Linux World, I am still interested in being able to use the power of Linux on a Windows based PC.

Right now I have this to a great degree with Cygwin, but I feel like it could still be better. After reading the article, I feel like I should probably just stay with cygwin, and quietly hope MS keeps its hands off of the open code. I imagine regardless that xbill will not be ported in the MS version of Linux services.

Opinion Column by PC Magazine: How to Kill Linux:

“While chatting over dinner with the executives of a middleware company during the recent RSA conference for encryption and security in San Francisco, I heard about a secret project. It concerned the development of a version of Linux that runs smoothly as a task under Windows. The project was completed and then shelved. Whether it will ever reemerge is doubtful, but it does offer some interesting possibilities and hints as to what Microsoft may be up to with MS-Linux.”

NewsForge | Must-have open source software for a mixed environment

When I saw ths article, it reminded me of one of the reasons I love open source software so much. Since the source itself is open, if someone likes the project and is inclined to tweak the code to be able to be compiled on their favorite OS, be it OSX, WinXP, Linux or something else, they are free to.

That means the best open source software usually gets ported to all three of these, and other platforms. For me, since I work on these three platforms, it helps to have the same great tools available anywhere. This guy is a software architect, and so his application needs are different, but the idea reamins the same for everyday computer users who use more than one machine and more than one platform.

A perfect example of this is Firefox - everywhere I go, Firefox and its extensions go with me. Here’s this guy’s take on platform portability.

NewsForge | Must-have open source software for a mixed environment:

“I am a software architect working in a mixed environment, with both Linux and Windows systems on the network. As happens with many others working in IT, different projects often require me to take on additional roles, like system administration, quality control, programming, and sometimes even documentation. To balance out the different tasks and roles, I depend on several open source applications, regardless of what platform I’m in, what project I’m on, or what position I’m filling at the moment.”

Gui’s - COMPARISON of XEROX, Apple & Microsoft Windows

This here is a fun site with great screenshots that compares the GUI of the big Operating Systems over time. Of great interest to technologists are the screenshots of Xerox Star, but fun for anyone who uses a Windows or Mac desktop to see how the desktop has evolved.

Gui’s - COMPARISON of XEROX, Apple & Microsoft Windows:

“Appears XEROX ALTO had no icons or desktop (above) ‘As it evolves, the Alto will feature the world’s first What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editor, a commercial mouse for input, a graphical user interface (GUI), and bit-mapped display, and will offer menus and icons, link to a local area network and store files simultaneously.’ ALTO becomes operational in 1973. XEROX did not have a chance competing with Microsoft, “

Gui’s - COMPARISON of XEROX, Apple & Microsoft Windows

This here is a fun site with great screenshots that compares the GUI of the big Operating Systems over time. Of great interest to technologists are the screenshots of Xerox Star, but fun for anyone who uses a Windows or Mac desktop to see how the desktop has evolved.

Gui’s - COMPARISON of XEROX, Apple & Microsoft Windows:

“Appears XEROX ALTO had no icons or desktop (above) ‘As it evolves, the Alto will feature the world’s first What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editor, a commercial mouse for input, a graphical user interface (GUI), and bit-mapped display, and will offer menus and icons, link to a local area network and store files simultaneously.’ ALTO becomes operational in 1973. XEROX did not have a chance competing with Microsoft, “

eLearning Dialogue: Rich Media based Distance Learning.

This article talks about the kind of distance learning content that is generated using in-classroom content recording by tools like Sonic Foundry’s MediaSite recorder, which can record the video image, audio voice, whiteboard and powerpoint presentation of an instructor in their natural presentation space, the classroom.

Viewing the packaged result in something like Blackboard seems like one of the best alternatives to actually being there, which you need in Distance Learning, an area Rider has yet to enter.

eLearning Dialogue:

“While the percentage of institutions that offer online distance-learning and hybrid courses is impressive, dig deeper and you will find that the vast majority only offer five to 10 percent of courses in this manner. The reason for this low penetration rate on campuses may be traced to the complex processes germane to traditional eLearning, which create entire new cost centers in terms of people (instructional designers, media specialists), time (two to six man hours per session) and resources (learning object repositories and a robust infrastructure). In addition to the technical and economic barriers, eLearning, in its strictest sense, is a rather rigid, instructional methodology that forces educators to teach within an entirely new paradigm that some feel diminishes their importance, specialized knowledge, and pedagogical skill.”

NewsForge | It’s time to integrate open source graphic applications

Here’s a great story I found on Newsforge, written by Jozsef Mak. He makes a great point about the success of application suites on the windows platform. If these [or another set of open source applications] were integrated into a single suite, with filetype recognition, drag and drop recognizance, and other inter-application tie ins, I think more people would consider open source alternatives to Adobe and Macromedia.

NewsForge | It’s time to integrate open source graphic applications:

“In the open source arena, product integration is still lagging. Most open source products are developed independently, and this is definitely the case with graphic applications. However, a package of three applications that target desktop publishers and graphic artists — the GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus — would make a strong ensemble if their developers could be enticed to create a common interface and integrate their features.”