Everyone’s all abuzz with Microsoft’s latest leaked prototype: Courier. On an off-note, it’s hilarious to contrast the handwritten everything with the king of monospace fonts! (and previously, my latest interest has been the long-awaited crunchpad.)
But there’s 2 things I’m here to mention: my dream & the obvious rising behind Courier.
Why Courier is Obvious:
First off, how many people do you see carrying around a notebook/folio of some variety? Everyone. The business guys do it for their contacts, dates & files. College kids do it for their class notes. Artsy-kids do it for their scribble-pics. Christians have a habit of doing it for their Bible study/sermon notes. Everyone.
Second: netbook+eReader. Limited computing strikes again, and awaiting for a convergence.
Third: Intel’s atom platform (and I would argue ARM even more!) is ready for this kind of thin-and-goodness. Especially with ssd’s (heck, I’d be happy with an SDHC!)
My Little Dream:
I’m a fan of the UI-customizability of Linux. Always have been: it’s what keeps me away from MacOS. Right now, I’ve got a toolbar that has everything I need in it: time, calendar-on-click, applets & a task-switcher. All this overlays the wasted-space of window-titlebar. Most of the time I maximize my apps, so I can focus. But there are somethings that should be a sidebar: notably a tabbed filemanager (since I already have a tabbed term thanks to tilda).
And there’s no reason why a quick photo-viewer, calculator, contacts & datebook cannot also be in this sidebar (especially if cache’d & synced from Google!) All this sidebar stuff is too perfect. Why not make a Window Manager that runs specific apps in specific ‘frames’ (yes, like HTML old-skool style). The frames are resizable & collapsable. Ths is so (similar but) much more useful than a tiling WM.
Next up, I’ve never, ever understood file dialog boxes. I do however understand Delicious’ tagging. It auto-generates recommendations, and why not do this for files? Linux is built for this: symlinks.
And while we’re at it, why not kill off scrollbars & make everything grab-and-draggable. Just use a modifier key (or both-click). Then we can have the app be like a magnifying glass, with the edges smushed to show you how much more you have down there (in preview-style).
As for all this journally stuff, Xournal is the single-best program I have ever, ever, ever encountered. Multiple-layers? yup. Print to PDF? Yup. Wanna add a new page? Click the ‘next page’ button. It could remove all it’s menus if it just had a ‘preferences’ dialog box. It is the model for any journaling program.
Lastly, mouse-gestures are very hot lately. I don’t use them because I’d like ‘em to be like Courier: context-specific AND list suggested actions, instead of always acting on its own.
Dreams, dreams, dreams.
All I’m sayin’ is if ASUS puts out an Intel Atom dual-screen netbook/eReader next year, or even this year, I’m putting my dreams to work. Just need to solve 2 problems: the sidebar thinger (update: “devilspie” might be halfway there for me) & handwriting recognition (and I’ve got a prototype system coming this december when classes are out!).
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