Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Sure there is: spambots, viruses, pr0n popups, complete flash environments to display a text file; you always know when you're on the intertubes.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Different sites requires different interfaces. News sites requires minimum decoration and maximum information in one page (in device UI it will be called «admin's overkill». Entertainment sites requires lots of decoration to attract visitor.
Device UI must be something in between. Not so askethic like DOS ( =) ) but not very colorful and full of decoration details because it'll screw your brain in everyday use. It must be informative, but not OVER informative, cause too much info will disorient user. And many little details creates an image of each interface.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Most of the crap that hits me has always come across corporate INTRAnets. By far.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

You generalized, so I generalized. :D

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Yeah, we've thought about that, but it's not really feasible with our current touch screens. There are issues even with the finger/stylus detection, let alone multiple different stages of stylus pressure detection. You'd really quite a rather fundamentally different type of touch screen, like in those wacom/cintix etc. drawing pads.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Have pie menus been considered? I like the idea of them for finger/stylus based input, but I've not read any studies of their usability on handheld devices.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Pie menus are somewhat problematic with stylus/finger and a small screen. Because the screen is so small, there are often cases where you can't really display a pie menu to all directions, because you reach the screen edge. And it's really not very good if it sometime would open really somewhere else. At least you lose the benefit of the thing pie menus try to offer in the first place, of learning almost like a gesture to select a certain command. Also, whereas with a mouse cursor you see equally well in all directions, especially fingers block downward directions. Even more, since mouse gives cursor movement and hovering and a touch screen does not, there are a lot of issues with those.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Here's a very simple, yet quite obvious tip (which is probably why nobody at Nokia thought of it): If you have a device that's going to be operated by finger/stylus, PUT THE FREAKIN' MENUS AT THE FUDGIN' BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN!

There really is no need to invent all kinds of weirdness, just a plain observation: Every time a user has to go to the top of the screen with a finger/stylus, (s)he obscures most of the screen.

Again a revolutionary vision of the obvious that sofar only the Newton got right. Hildon is particularly nasty in that respect, because the menus are both at the top and at the left, and frak the user coming and going. Then again, there isn't much that isn't nasty in Hildon...

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

The problem with touhscreen UIs IMO is that, for the most part, they start off on the wrong premise: emulate a traditional PC UI and then work around the stuff that doesn't work the same.

I say it's time to forget that nonsense and design from scratch. Fight legacy UI encroachment as much as possible, by default. Maybe my wild suggestions so far won't work with the hardware in question, but that's still no reason IMO to be bound by an approach that may not be best.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

At the left? isn't that how it should be? Or maybe I'm the only one who flips the menus open with his left thumb, so my right thumb can already be headed toward the spot in the menu...

And below here, perhaps I'm arguing for the sake of argument -- after all, does it matter which way is best for menus to come up? not if it's configurable!

But the apps/email menu does open from the bottom-left, which is good for me. And having the (less-used) tray at the top leaves the bottom open for simple-launcher. The bottom's best even for non-menu items, and I start things from simple-launcher often enough for me to like that.

Still, I think my config, if I set it up, would be a REAL panel (with menus, launchers and large applets on it, and no non-configurable bookmark & contact junk!) across the bottom of the screen, and a system tray on the right edge for small applets that don't need much interaction. Nothing across the top, and (undecided here) either access task switching only through a flyout menu, or stack task icons over the whole left edge.