Going gaga over XGL

Chris Pirillo's been making a ton of noise over a video he posted showing off a YouTube video of a demo of the XGL desktop running on KDE.

He then turns around and asks "Why can't Vista look like this?".  I'm not a UX (user experience) guy, but I have watched the video and I've got some pretty strong opinions about it.

 

First off, he's right - this is a pretty amazing demo.  It has TONS of eye candy.  The "bouncy" effects on the windows are very pretty.  The rotating cube is cool, as is the "windows bump into each other" effect. Having said all that, there's a TON of distance between a cool demo (or proof of concept, or whatever it is you call something that's not shipping in a product for millions of consumers).

 

For instance, the bouncy windows make you seasick after a while.  And the cube desktop, while slick has some serious issues - for instance, you've got a strong potential for "losing" your windows (because they're on a face of the cube that's obscured).

The key thing to realize is that it's relatively easy to make a cool UI.  I've seen the most amazing proof of concepts for Windows UI coming from our advanced UX team.  Really compelling stuff, that just knocks your socks off. 

And not one of them has ever seen the light of day outside of Microsoft (to my knowledge).

 

Why is this?  Because making a good user experience is HARD.  It's easy to make a cool user experience, it's REALLY hard to make one that's good, and that works for millions of users.  There are a ton of things you need to consider.  You need to consider usability, accessibility, localizability (yeah, it matters - Right-To-Left languages may have differnt visual conventions than Left-To-Right languages), all sorts of other *bilities.  I've been through enough and read enough UX reviews over the redesigned multimedia control panel in Vista to realize the complexity of the things that these guys have to deal with.  It's a lot harder than you think.  John Gruber over at Daring FIreball has a classic post entitled "Ronco Spray-On Usability where he talks about some of hte issues.

 

Take floppy windows for example.  The Shell Fit&Finish dude (Dave Vroney) just put out a post explaining why they disabled floppy windows.  The answer is that they significantly reduce the usability of the system.  They may be cool but they get really annoying really soon.

 

And, of course, Vista is only V1 of the DWM.  This release is about getting the heavy lifting and building a new desktop compositing engine.  Future releases are likely to have a ton more cool stuff coming from the UI wizards now that they have a platform on which they can do really cool things.

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  The only problem with Vista is that it is heavily resource intensive and is intent at driving the hardware market rather than the ISV market. Minimum 1GB RAM plus a directx9 support graphics card is something that is required at the minimum to enjoy the cool graphics there. Vista market at the beginning is going to be sloppy, I will have to throw away my machine and get a new one to enjoy it. :( No plans as of now to do that. How many would make that transition soon?
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  You don't have to throw away your machine.  My 2 year old home machine runs glass just fine.  My dev machine at work needed a $99 video card and it runs glass just fine.
  
  My two test machines, (one with 768K of RAM) both run glass just fine.  
  
  You're right that Vista is more hardware hungry than XP was, but it's not likely to be as bad a picture as you paint.  And all the machines shipped with Vista preinstalled on them will have glass working just fine.
  
  
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  Agreed - and most of compiz (the window manager being used in those videos) effects are more "tech demonstrations" than "things that should get enabled by default for every linux user"
  
  More importantly, it's clear that Windows Vista does have the technical ability and all the pieces to do that kind of effects. What I don't understand about the Microsoft-way-of-doing-things is why Microsoft won't allow expert users to download extra effects (I suspect they won't), Microsoft usually only releases whatever gets into the final build and nothing else even if they could. (compiz's architecture is plugin based and it's easy to enable and disable plugins for example)
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  "For instance, the bouncy windows make you seasick after a while."
  
  I know just what you mean. The fuzzy text in the borders of Vista's Glass interface give me a headache.
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  Vipin: Minimum 1 GB RAM is just not true. My girlfriend has glass on her machine and it has only 512 Mb RAM and an Intel onboard graphics adapter (I think it's a 940 or 945).
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  768K of RAM running Vista, let alone Glass? No. Way.
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  "here's a TON of distance between a cool demo (or proof of concept, or whatever it is you call something that's not shipping in a product for millions of consumers)."
  
  Whether XGL is bad UX or not, the Youtube video you watched is from a shipping version of Ubuntu -- admittedly not shipping to millions of people :)
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006

• How about "the vast majority of the machines shipped with Vista on them will have glass".
  
  this is not necessarily true.  This will only come with Vista Home Premium and above.  Many companies will undoubtedly try to sell their low-end computers with the Vista Home Basic, which will not come with the Aero features.

• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  I don't think too many people will argue with you  if you say the effects are superfluous. The 3d flip task thing in Vista is superfluous too. I think the main point that Chris P. and others are making is: "Look at what XGL can do with 1/3rd of the machine that it takes to run Vista."
  
  So when you say, "all my work machine needs was a $99 video card to run glass.", I say, "All I needed to run XGL on my 2 year old laptop and have those visual effects was to burn a DVD." And btw, just HOW beefy is your dev machine? How many CPU's do you have in it? ;) I doubt most home users have that much horsepower.
  
  The cube is just another way to swap multiple desktops around, the bouncy windows are just for fun. The full screen transparent video is nice.
  
  After having seen the re-work of the "Start" menu in Vista, Paul T's demostration of the new back and forward buttons in Vista, and having used Quicksilver under OS X for over a  year now, I refuse to believe that Microsoft has ANYONE working on useability. ;)
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  [quote]
  For instance, the bouncy windows make you seasick after a while.  And the cube desktop, while slick has some serious issues - for instance, you've got a strong potential for "losing" your windows (because they're on a face of the cube that's obscured).
  [/quote]
  I don't think so.
  
  Do you remember XWindow has multiple desktops in the same user session ages ago? I believe the sides of "the cube" are just different desktops be made to stick together.
  
  I think this effect can be made into Windows in similar way too, just treat the "screens" as multiple monitors. :)
  
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  Larry Osterman (ya, the same Larry Osterman that got bit by the Audio bug) has a great post on why XGL...
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  So true Larry, so true. I am tired of hearing some open source project comming up with flashy animations and calling it the best UI ever (and like you said, it makes you sea-sick after a while). My fav UI improvement in Vista, the Start dialog with its search and "in-place" browsing. Saves a ton of time for me and I no longer need to carefully take my mouse pointer from the parent menu to the child, without losing the child menu because my hand slipped!
• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  You say that making a good user experience is hard and use this argument to make it impossible to customize the looks and effects because some customers will not like it etc.
  
  That is not really a good argument.
  
  Also, I see the argument that Linux distros have much fewer users and that Windows has millions more - thus, Windows has far greater responsibility to make it work for a larger number of people.
  It makes it look almost impossible to do anything innovative in the desktop. I don't buy this argument and the perception that people can't deal with a large number of changes either.
• Anonymous
  September 16, 2006
  "And my 768K test machine does glass quite well."
  
  You keep using that figure. I do not think it means what you think it means.
• Anonymous
  September 16, 2006
  Jason, whoops -I forgot about starter and home basic.  You're right.
• Anonymous
  September 16, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 16, 2006
  Maybe I'm weird, but I find Aero Glass to be a huge waste of resources. Flip 3D is pretty, and occasionally useful, and I like taskbar window previews, but that's about it. I see no point at all in title-bar transparency (I turned that off pretty quickly), and I find the text on the title bars to be nearly unreadable. I'm all for better experience, but for me that has nothing to do with floppy or bouncy windows.
  
  The stuff in the XGL demo just doesn't excite me at all.
• Anonymous
  September 16, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 16, 2006
  To get back to XGL,... wow, they cloned the OS X doc.
  The worst part of OS X.  The windows 95 taskbar really wins hand down in best UI design in my opinion.
• Anonymous
  September 16, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 16, 2006

1. I don't think people would lose their windows if they are on a different "side" of the cube any more than people lose them when windows are minimized in windows. Clicking on the window/app in the taskbar/dock/whatever brings the window/app frontmost in all cases. If it's on a different desktop, it'll switch to that one. So support is a non-issue.
   
   2. Yes, useless eyecandy is bad. Much like the fuzzy, translucent borders in vista. Mac OS X 10.0.x had those, and they were quickly phased out as being too distracting. i wonder when windows will phase them out.

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2006
  Hmmh. Sometimes I feel that Windows users are just jealous... or irritated because Linux has such a nice technologies like Xgl/AIGLX/Compiz and Vista doesn't look so "awesome" anymore.

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2006
  > I say, "All I needed to run XGL on my 2 year old laptop and have those visual effects was to burn a DVD."
  
  I say, "All I needed to run Vista RC1 on my THREE year old laptop (with 1.6GHz Pentium M and (admitedly) 1GB RAM) was to burn a DVD."
  
  Runs perfectly fast with Glass and all.

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2006
  > Much like the fuzzy, translucent borders in vista. Mac OS X 10.0.x had those
  
  Mac OS X had NON-fuzzy, slightly opaque windows (for the unfocused windows). Vista blurs everything underneath, which actually makes an enormous difference.
  
  The problem with the Mac OS way was that the text of the windows underneath was ALMOST readable, so your eye got distracted trying to figure it out. While text under Vista's windows does not fool the eye into thinking it might be able to read it.
  
  In fact, the way it works in Vista makes the whole titlebar and everything else that is "glass" fade into the background (which is obviously the whole point) thus focusing you on the actual contents of the window.

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2006
  PingBack from http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/09/17/the-truth-about-windows-vista/

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2006
  Too much eye candy causes brain decay.

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2006
  My home machine: 2.8GHz P4 on 533MHz FSB, 512MB RAM (1066MHz RDRAM on 32-bit modules, can't be upgraded), 160GB Hitachi DeskStar 7200rpm 8MB cache on ATA-100, Radeon 9550 Pro w/128MB RAM on AGP4x bus.
  
  Desktop Graphics score 2.1 on Vista RC1, had to enable Glass manually, but runs fine once I've done so.
  
  Seriously, anything that has 512MB RAM will run Vista perfectly well.
  
  Personally I like the translucency effects on the window borders, but don't like the 'zooming' animation as a new window is created.

• Anonymous
  September 18, 2006
  Too bad there is not an <debate had before> link to somewhere so debates don't have to be had again and again. Vista, like the many Windows and OS2 releases before it, will, as in the past: a) not run well on some bargain basement machines b) will run better on a) with some more memory c) may not run well on your current machine d) will run better on your current machine if you stay away from some features d) the install will be slower, but you will get used to it or won't care if you do it once only.

• Anonymous
  September 18, 2006
  Mike:-
  
  well what if you run several bloat applications like Office, Visual Studio2005,coreldraw on Vista? Does it become sluggish? I bet it will become so. 512 MB is like throwing peanuts to Vista to run productively. The point is the conclusions on RAM,etc drawn here are based on the fact that nothing is running on those systems. btw,I am wondering how MS suceeded in turning Visual studio2005 into a bloat.
  
  As far as eye candy is concerned, I am ok with all the UI effects. I love it. But I am wondering as a developer, how much it will affect my productivity. It would be like programming with a SuperModel by my side. lots of distractions. Not the best environment to program in but to have fun with. Well I am kidding, I will get used to it. :) I love the new looks in Vista.

• Anonymous
  September 18, 2006
  Mike:-
  
  well what if you run several bloat applications like Office, Visual Studio2005,coreldraw on Vista? Does it become sluggish? I bet it will become so. 512 MB is like throwing peanuts to Vista to run productively. The point is the conclusions on RAM,etc drawn here are based on the fact that nothing is running on those systems. btw,I am wondering how MS suceeded in turning Visual studio2005 into a bloat.
  
  As far as eye candy is concerned, I am ok with all the UI effects. I love it. But I am wondering as a developer, how much it will affect my productivity. It would be like programming with a SuperModel by my side. lots of distractions. Not the best environment to program in but to have fun with. Well I am kidding, I will get used to it. :) btw,I love the new looks in Vista.

• Anonymous
  September 18, 2006
  Chris: "I don't buy this argument and the perception that people can't deal with a large number of changes either."
  
  I feel the same way--people are capable of amazing things, and the problem for a lot of people isn't that they can't learn new things, but they don't want to learn new things.  HOWEVER... there has to be a value proposition to do so, particularly when it comes to businesses.  Businesses are notoriously wary to make upgrades that involve significant user training, and the reason is a simple, practical one--if the cost is not worth the benefit, they won't do it.  How on earth would you show a productivity benefit for wavy windows?  
  
  More to the point, how would you show that the benefit of a virtual desktop utility like the cube in XGL wouldn't exceed the costs to train users?  Training costs are unbelievably expensive: it involves both direct training costs and, more importantly, the opportunity cost of workers training rather than working.  I can almost assure you that the cost of purchasing a second display and the associated (minimal) training costs would be far lower than the virtual desktop training and support costs, and the productivity benefit would be much greater (easily outweighing the cost for most user scenarios).  Plus, I'm convinced that acceptance and actual use of an additional display would be far greater than that of virtual desktops--a lot of users would never touch the virtual desktops feature, even if they were trained how to use it.

• Anonymous
  September 18, 2006
  XGL is just TECHNOLOGICAL Possibilities.
  
  it allows X to use the video card to do thousands of things : compositing hardware (you want that even if you don't care about colors and moving stuff) ,  fluent resizing and move of windows without use the cpu ,  special effects to improve the interface (not beautify it, but IMPROVES : to help the user to see something is happening and where) without use too much cpu
  
  and so on.
  
  about the "cube", Gnome (and I think Kde) is able to switch to the virtual desktop if an application need to inform the user or to move the application to the current desktop
  
  in Novell Linux,  XGL has way to inform users.
  
  it's not ABOUT "eye candy" !  of course some people can take XGL and Compiz projects and add fluffy wobbly and waterly effects
  
  but enterprises as Canonical, Redhat or Novell can build upon it to do better interface using more efficiently the computer.
  
  you HAVE TO STOP mistaking technological EXPERIMENTATIONS and corporate development.

• Anonymous
  September 29, 2006
  Larry Osterman empleado de MS desde 1984, opina sobre algunas caracter&#237;sticas que trae XGL.

• Anonymous
  September 29, 2006
  The only thing I know is that XGL runs like a dream on my GF4MX card. Runs wonderfully on my laptop, too. On both machines, Vista just drops me into an ancient XP-like desktop.
  
  Make up all the excuses you want, while it's true that XGL right now might be used for eye-candy, or might be misused by its developers, at least it's giving me a hardware accelerated desktop with my limited hardware, a thing that Vista is not going to achieve.

• Anonymous
  September 30, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 01, 2006
  Larry Osterman (ya, the same Larry Osterman that got bit by the Audio bug ) has a great post on why XGL

• Anonymous
  October 21, 2006
  Putting aside the vista glass vs xgl argument for the moment,how about the simple fact that we are allowed the option to play with this "eye candy" , but not allowed to play with the great stuff that MS has hidden in their UI dev unit? If they dont allow people the choice,where they gonna go? Right! Somewhere else that gives you a choice. Oh and just for my own small debunk,i have xgl running on a Ibm x22 laptop (p3 600,ati rage mobility,128meg ram). Would this run vista with glass?

• Anonymous
  December 02, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 19, 2007
  Xgl is cool but it takes more than that

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