This Old Interface

There are times where I wonder why it is that I can't bring myself to like the things that the rest of the world seems to. For all that people adore it, I'm not a fan of the Mac interface. For all the improvements they've done to it, I can't say that I like the Windows interface all that much more than I did in 1995. Despite all my amusement that Linux actually beat Microsoft to releasing an accelerated 3D environment, I haven't successfully changed window managers in several years.

It's hard to argue against the fact that we're living in an increasingly media rich world. As people have become more used to seeing pictures instead of words, the push has generally come for even more pictures. Without a doubt, interpreting symbols is much more native to the human experience than reading -- cave paintings predate written language, after all. But then I end up somewhat getting stuck, "If a picture is worth a thousand words, but I can say what I want to do in three, isn't the latter more efficient?"

That's where I end up departing with conventional wisdom in interface design. After using Linux for as long as I have, I've managed to build up a pretty extensive collection of keyboard shortcuts. Four virtual desktops allow me to switch seamlessly between applications with a single hand gesture, every window creating program I regularly launch has its own keystroke, and even my tabbed programs behave nicely without my hands ever needing to leave the keyboard. I can windows-t ls some/dir<tab>/or/other faster than I could ever do the same with Windows Explorer.

Keyboards need love, too.