I just encourage you to be more analytical if you want to work in technical fields. Weaseling out of questions and yelling “because I said so” or “because I don’t like it” won’t cut it.

Anyway, lighten up, it’s a beautiful morning outside.

With Eugenia, this is not an uncommon situation. This is one of those situations where she has made a big sweeping statement and because she believes only Eugenia is correct, will not back down.

To Eugenia: you are often right and I do admire your opinions on many subjects, on this you are absolutely wrong. You are viewing the device as a lapton running LINUX, where as it is actually a device running applications to help/aid kids in the third world to better themselves. The UI of the desktop is seriously not any way an issue.

I know some guy that is working with Squeak in Spain in the proyect linex (by the way it’s the owner of the site you linked www.consultar.com for Squeak UI). I know he changed a lot the UI of the squeak, but some things remains still. I don´t think Squeak “it’s pretty useless today”, but that another topic…

I find the squeak UI difficult to gasp in the firts 30 seconds, as you say, but I understand it has to be different from an usual UI, by the very nature of the things you can do with it.

I think there is a way to arrange/change the UI, and I don´t think it is too late to change that. One of the powerful things of squeak is the possibility to do such thing with easy.

For example: you present 2 images: one is squeak and the other is your mockup of the sugar UI. They serve differents goals, I think it´s clear you won’t manage others applications in squeak, or launch a browser. but you must have the power to “inspect” an object, or access the program behind it, and that operations apply for every little part of the squeak UI.

Having using squeak, as you say, you realize that this is important, and the teachers using it in the classrooms are using this power to alter the way squeak behave. That´s part of the goals of squeak itself.

The usual notice: I’m from Argentina: sorry for my english.

The custom UI is disgusting, in terms of usability. It just ain’t good.
That’s arrogant, because it states as a fact that the work of someone else was of poor quality, with no basis for such statement save a quick, superficial impression and no analysis.

There’s a big difference between an opinion and facts,as well as between an impression and an educated opinion. We all have first impressions, but then we can build an informed opinion with some effort (research, debate).

Promoting our impressions to informed opinions without first incurring the effort or even worse stating them as facts is shallow and arrogant.

I am always careful with my choice of words. I can explain each and every one I use. Can you stand behind yours with some logical analysis? Because I don’t think I’ve ever seen you rebutting specific points. And no, “I DO NOT like the Sugar interface” says little about why it wouldn’t be good for the target audience.

That’s the point. If something is not intuitive enough within the first 30 seconds, it’s useless in my world. 5 minutes to learn such a little GUI is WAY too long of a time.

>Sounds more like shallow arrogance.

No, it sounds more like a personal opinion. I suggest you be careful of your mouth over here.

I DO NOT like the Sugar interface. I USED it and I did not like it, not in the least. Deal with it. You don’t agree? Fine. But don’t tell me that it’s because of arrogance. It’s because I found it difficult to use, and non-intuitive.

So, take it or leave it. This is a personal opinion on the matter. If you want to see it as arrogance, be my guest. But it ain’t arrogance, it’s an opinion on a UI that I actually USED and I have FIRST PERSON experience on, and also, this is my blog, where I state my opinions about everything I feel like it to. If you can’t agree to disagree get the hell out of my blog and don’t bother visiting again. Save yourself the trouble and mine.

Your version is not more straightforward, it’s only more windows-like. Functionally, it has only flaws when compared to sugar.

-it takes up precious screen space, where sugar’s frame doesn’t
-it mixes launchers and icons of different kinds (tasks/people/notifications) where each edge in sugar has a meaning
-it is mainly filled with a taskbar that is useful only for windows management, where sugar has no need of that using full-screen applications and quick ways to cycle among them. Oh, and has a better task/resources indicator in that desktop pie chart

There are many interesting points in that HCI wiki document they’ve put together that would have required writing a new and different panel container anyway. Not only _lighter_, mind you, but with extended functionality:
-notifications have a policy so that only the system ones can auto-open the frame
-notification icons appear on different edges depending on their meaning.
-notifications and invitations that appear on an edge do so in an ordered way. The most recent one is always closer to a corner so that it will be nearest to Fitt’s easiest points.

Basically, it looks to me like a good work. They sat down, defined their objectives and tried to find a way to attain those objectives (pervasive sharing, action vs application etc) given the very strict constraints.
Please read that wiki. Trying the gui 5 minutes without understanding the ideas behind it, scoffing at the UI with comments like “it’s ugly” and slapping together a screenshot of a gnome desktop is not discussing usability. Sounds more like shallow arrogance.

to Ciprian:
I would never use a sugar-like interface on my desktop, of course and I am an OS X /GNOME user myself, finding lots to like in them every day.
That said, your usual WIMP desktop is geared to be a shell to certain class of use cases, the point being that it’s a way more general class of activities than the OLPC seems to be thought for (computers are almost by definition universal machines).
I’m sure you’d agree that WIMP would be useless for a cell phone that only had the functions of voice calls and address book. Or that other interfaces might be better than WIMP on an e-book reader appliance. The more universal your device becomes, the more abstract your interface has to get.
But I think the OLPC is still in a position in which a reduced interface is quicker and clearer and adds no useless metaphors (like windows) that make little sense in the context of its hardware restrictions.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, mind you… I’m pretty sure it will change over time. I just don’t think you should compare it to OS X or Gnome or windows 3.1… but just see it as the answer to a different question. Not all GUI questions have a toned down WIMP interface as the only possible answer.

As for the kids learning this and not the usage of a real desktop, as I said yet they’ll learn to use this tool quickly enough so that they will use it for its real goal: reading, writing, drawing, learning maths and history and geography. If at the age of 15 they’ll use for the first time a different GUI I doubt they’ll have more troubles with it than every 15-years old kid, ie pratically none. Meanwhile they won’t have to deal with window management on a 7 inches screen, they’ll have dedicated buttons on their computer and prominent GUI elements to share urls, drawing or texts with the other kids in their class or group…
All things that with a dumbed-down gnome would not be as practical.

Thinking about OpenSource, I realy believe that GNOME remains a good option, and enough good to not reinvent the well. Secondly, the experience that they get using a GNOME interface may be used to the computer that may be afford later at home.

For me Sugar Interface is like Windows 3.1, ugly and non standard, which makes the poor kids (not financial at this moment) to learn a thing that probably never need to learn, and lately to go to a computer and say: I don’t know how to use a computer, which is far far away from the scope of using a computer from my point of view! And I can say that a Laptop for a Child may became a Strange Laptop = toy for a Child.