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0 pointst4356214h ago0 comments

I find current UIs weird and stupid and extremely dull - which is why I think the CLI is still used so much by at least developers like me.

Drag and drop is one thing we just don't really use more than, say, once every 1/2 hour.

There's no composability really. We have the stupid metaphor of an "App" and it's a little world in itself. You can't really plug things into each other - e.g. use the gimp brush tool in a facebook post.

It's a dead end.

Why ** ** do we have to have a modal dialog to save a file when there's a perfectly good file manager?

I used to use the ROX window manager and ROX Desktop - they were a great export of RiscOS features to Linux. I liked the way I could customise a menu option with a hotkey so easily. It's no longer maintained and I wasn't smart enough to be able to do it myself then. Perhaps now... :/

0 comments

sillywalk12h ago

> Why * * do we have to have a modal dialog to save a file when there's a perfectly good file manager?

At least for me, when I tried RiscOS, it was annoying and more work to have to switch to the file manager and then open more window(s) just to save a file. That could also be with RiscOS not having(?) Alt-Tab. I do sometimes use the macOS "proxy-icon" (which I think was disabled by default a few versions ago) to save/move files into finder windows if I already have them open.

t43562OP1h ago

I'd probably just open a file manager window to the foreground rather than open a dialog box.

Or possibly I would make the whole thing document centric - you create a document in the folder you want it in and that opens the app. Then you can move it around like you would move any file.

Symbiote33m ago

To save a file, I think (and this is over 25 years ago) I would typically open the Filer window to where I wanted to save the file. Remember this might involve swapping floppy discs.

That would leave me with the Filer window open over the top of the application/document. Middle clicking anywhere on the document wouldn't raise the application's windows over the Filer windows, so dragging the file to the destination was easy.

At the time I preferred it to the Windows 3.1 alternative, which gave you a completely different UI to the general file-browsing tool.

The button on the top left (next to close) on all the application windows is "Send window to back" (of the stack), which would be useful for showing any Filer windows opened earlier.

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