The Many Orthogonal Modes Of UI

When I was primarily a windows user, I only had one mode if interacting gracefully with my PC. That was via the typical application interface of a given application using my mouse and keyboard.

For example, click to start MS Word, type in some words, spell check it, click to print it, and click to save it.

On Unix (Solaris, Linux, etc), I had one primary interface, and that was the console, or command line. I could start simple applications like vi, but it was all keyboard based with scripts and aliases.

On my mac, I get both the application interface, and the command line interface. And more...

For example, the Dashboard interface, and an imperative interface supplied by Quicksilver.

I don't know if 'imperative interface' is the correct term. But it works for now.

I haven't played or even seen Vista, and I'm not particularly interested in doing so. But I hope for PC users, it comes with more than it's application interface, as the console on current versions of Windows really suck. And I've seen nothing like Quicksilver, but I haven't been looking either.

I at first didn't get, nor care, for Dashboard. But now I use it everyday to get a glance at things I want to know about. Of course the barrier to entry was overcome with having 3G of RAM on my MacBookPro. 2G + Dashboard was a pain. With Dashboard, it's about being informed with as little involvement or interaction as possible (hit F12). Read mostly.

Interestingly, some of these modes are showing up in web interfaces. This whole web2.0 thing is around converting web apps from page flipping and navigation to rich interactive interfaces.

And you have companies like yubnub creating a command line for the internet.

All I can say is I want more. Shifts in how I interact with my computer are much more fun and interesting than new lipstick on an old paradigm.