Examples of a great GUI

[50words]

Instead of arguing about CLI vs. GUI, let's talk about examples of great GUIs.

I think a decent GUI allows you to do basic tasks with one or two intuitive gestures or clicks. Moving a file to the desktop with a click and drag, for example. A great GUI, on the other hand, allows you to access, say, 90% of a program's features and options in the same way: intuitively and with a few gestures or clicks. Obviously, this will be easier with more simple programs.

I think Firefox is an example of a good GUI (though not great). Nearly everything is fairly easy to access, use, and customize. I think a browser is a bad example, however, since so much of what it does depends on the sites you visit, not the browser itself.

I think Photoshop is an example of a good GUI on a very complex piece of software.

Still, I am not sure I can come up with an example of a great GUI. Nothing on my system seems to qualify, anyway.

What programs would you say showcase the best GUIs?

[Iceni]

I think opera has a very good gui. Everything is available and if you learn the mouse gestures you can get most things done really fast and easy.

[-grubby]

I would say thunar has a good GUI. Maybe not a great GUI. But definately easy to use and simple enough

[p_quarles]

I'd say that a couple of my favorites are amaroK and Krusader, both of which are incredibly powerful and versatile, but there's a learning curve with both.

[50words]

Now that I think of it, iTunes has a pretty intuitive and easy-to-use GUI. There are some things--the purpose of the checkboxes next to a song is completely unclear to me--but overall very easy to use.

Rhythmbox is similarly friendly, I think.

[Sockerdrickan]

I like gnome-screenshot gui... lol

[Scarath]

I would say thunar has a good GUI. Maybe not a great GUI. But definately easy to use and simple enough

+1 for that, i think most GUIs in XFCE are very nice to use

nvidia-settings is 'great' cos its useful but features wise i'd probably just class it as good

[Lostincyberspace]

A great Gui is one that has all the features of the Cl interface.

I took me for ever to find one for mplayer, but smplayer has all but one feature (ascii video) and that feature I haven't ever used since it is kind of pointless.

[banjobacon]

I think Epiphany's URL bar is an example of a great GUI. I searches your history, bookmarks and allows you to do searches. After using Epiphany, Firefox's separate search bar seems unnecessary.

I'm not saying all of Epiphany's GUI is great, just this unique part of it (though it will be less unique once Firefox 3 is out, I guess).

[-grubby]

+1 for that, i think most GUIs in XFCE are very nice to use

nvidia-settings is 'great' cos its useful but features wise i'd probably just class it as good

well I don't even use XFCE actually

[Warpnow]

The windows program Joost has a nice GUI for an application of its type.

I also think Opera's GUI is great. Everything is fast and easy, no hassle.

[Darkhack]

Firefox has one of the best UIs because it is simple, has lots of options that are easy to find and edit and I can use about:config for more advanced stuff. Extensions, themes, plugins can all be installed with just a few clicks. On operating systems without package management (Windows/Mac) Firefox will update itself. The interface is easily customized with a click and drag interface. Components aren't stuck in place by what the programmer thinks is best for me. I have complete control.

Opera is one of the worst. The default theme is cheesy. It addition to forward/back they have this weird next/prev buttons which don't make much sense to me. The settings dialog is horrific. Epiphany is good because it doesn't confuse the user with all the web terminology (cookies, javascript, SSL) and I would feel very comfortable having my parents use it. I don't use it, because I'm not in their target audience. For the people they are targeting (beginners and novice users) it's easily the best browser.

VLC is nice, but again, the settings dialog is just plain awful on this application. Thunar is good but I haven't found a good thumbnailer that supports all my video files.

Believe or not, I like The GIMP. Everyone hates on it because it isn't an exact Photoshop clone. God forbid they try something unique and see if they can do a better job. I really think The GIMP is easy to use and it has plenty of documentation for when you get stuck.

Other applications like OpenOffice and Rhythmbox are pretty standard compared to other applications in their genre.

[urukrama]

+1 for Krusader

[timpino]

Firefox has one of the best UIs because it is simple, has lots of options that are easy to find and edit and I can use about:config for more advanced stuff. Extensions, themes, plugins can all be installed with just a few clicks. On operating systems without package management (Windows/Mac) Firefox will update itself. The interface is easily customized with a click and drag interface. Components aren't stuck in place by what the programmer thinks is best for me. I have complete control.

Opera is one of the worst. The default theme is cheesy. It addition to forward/back they have this weird next/prev buttons which don't make much sense to me. The settings dialog is horrific.


Opera will notify you of updates and lett you install them if you chose.

Opera has the option to change theme you know. you just click the theme you want to download and click again to keep the theme.

You can alter how the interface looks as you want it in opera, just drag the buttons you want to the toolbar. also you can change all the keyboard shortcuts in the settings and all the mouse gestures.

about:config easier than operas settings dialog? I just can't see how basicly a textconfig is a better gui option than Operas...

[zenwhen]

iTunes immediately comes to mind when I think of "great GUI".

[Kingsley]

iTunes immediately comes to mind when I think of "great GUI".
I was just about to post that. The greatest media player possible for Linux would be a program that looks exactly like Itunes and has the functionality of Amarok.

[InfinityCircuit]

xterm is a great gui.

[Lostincyberspace]

xterm is a great gui.
No it's not its a great command line interface

[selda]

I think Epiphany's URL bar is an example of a great GUI. I searches your history, bookmarks and allows you to do searches. After using Epiphany, Firefox's separate search bar seems unnecessary.
.

I think the same, Epiphany is the best. Also, Pidgin has a nice GUI.

[fuscia]

another vote for thunar. i've tried doing things the cli way for file management, but there are things that are just easier and clearer in thunar. k3b is great (i've only tried burning a cd once via cli apps. what a confusing mess). i've found using elinks in x, instead of the console, and it is so much easier to look at. still, the internet is really a visual medium and it gets a little austere using a text browser after a while, so i'll use firefox. of all the browsers i've used in linux, it's the one closest to having everything working. it's very customizeable and my only current complaint is font management (yuk).

[theharshone]

Enlightenment's Guis are gorgeous. nice. animated. stable ( for me)

[Darkhack]

about:config easier than operas settings dialog? I just can't see how basicly a textconfig is a better gui option than Operas...

Firefox has sensible settings in a GUI and the advanced stuff in about:config. Opera tries to cram everything into a GUI and it makes it difficult to find and work with. Firefox's about:config is very straight forward with plenty of documentation and I can type what I'm looking for and see all the settings that fall under that category.

[wersdaluv]

Quicksilver for OS X :D

[bruce89]

Epiphany's bookmark system. Bloody marvellous.

For those of you which have had no epiphany (pun intended), you tag bookmarks, and a hierarchy is generated based solely on these tags.

After using Epiphany, Firefox seems bloated.

[jken146]

Possibly RiscOS (rox in Linuxland). That was excellent back in the day. I still have an Acorn A4000, and it still works. I should boot it up!

[franklinno1]

Probably most of you will not agree, but I find MS Office 2007's GUI is very nice,

[pain of salvation]

Sonata
Firefox
Banshee
Thunar
Pidgin
Openbox
Gnome
MS Office 2007

[wersdaluv]

Probably most of you will not agree, but I find MS Office 2007's GUI is very nice,

I do too! :D

[init1]

XMMS has one of the best GUI's I've ever seen.

[harlan]

I like very much xmms, as music player, and xfe as file manager. Both of them light and efficient.

But a GUI is useful if only has the most common tasks and when you want all your system potential you need to use the CLI.

[zugu]

Thunar, Firefox, Office 2007 and the winner in my book, Paint.NET.

[Linuxratty]

Enli
ghtenment's Guis are gorgeous. nice. animated. stable ( for me)

They are indeed...Got to get it sometime.
I also like Firefox and The Gimp.And the Linux and OSX gui...

[DjBones]

i think the best GUI's are the ones that are the most configurable,
firefox would be a good example i think..
since we all have a different opinion of 'great' the ability to change it to our own taste is what would be the best to me lol

[new2*buntu]

I think that Iceweasel (Debian Firefox) is quite nice. But Synaptic is the best GUI in my opinion, since it can do pretty much everything I want and more easily.

[happysmileman]

Probably most of you will not agree, but I find MS Office 2007's GUI is very nice,

I agree, I use it in school and it's much easier to use than OO.o

It's a bit on the slow side when opening and closing files, and uses a lot of RAM, but in fairness it's not like you open/close a file often enough for that to matter, and my school computers have plenty of RAM

[Dimitriid]

I think file managers in general are the best possible use of GUI.There is something about getting visual feedback that greatly helps a person get a sense of location and direction and improve your efficiency a lot very quickly.

Sure a manager like vifm can make you just as efficient or even more so but it would take a good while and many people would just simply give up because of its learning curve while a regular file manager like Thunar can get a person up to speed and very efficient within a tiny fraction of the time.

That is a good example of making something efficient from a programmer's point of view to making something accessible yet powerful from an end user point of view.

[50words]

But a GUI is useful if only has the most common tasks and when you want all your system potential you need to use the CLI.

I think a great GUI should allow you to easily and intuitively perform about 90% of a program's options. This is not a CLI vs. GUI thread. Some prefer typing, some do not. There will always be tasks (e.g. batch operations) that a CLI is especially good for, and tasks (e.g. creating website graphics) that a GUI is especially good for. And there is a lot of gray area in between where a lot depends on a user's preference.

I like the intuitiveness of grabbing a folder in a file manager to move it. But for mounting my TrueCrypt containers, a CLI is easier (for me) than Forcefield. To each his own.

This thread is about GUIs.

[YourSurrogateGod]

gEdit. Short, sweet and to the point (we... I wouldn't call it 'great', but definitely good.) And anything that I can do with the mouse, I can also do with the keyboard.

[SidewinderPro2]

Vista's Aero is pretty nice, it just takes up about 900 megs of RAM to look at it (when it's not crashing). Office 2007 was nice while the trial lasted, but Necrosoft has enough of my money; they don't need another $150.

The greatest GUI out there is in Quake Wars. It's pretty easy to use and it works. iD just makes excellent games that work. Either that or the basic ones I can write in BASIC...

The worst would be the menu system in UT3. Epic had a great GUI with the past games (the UT menu system being the best in terms of ease of use and practicality) but they blew it on UT3 with the million menu screens.

[mmb1]

I think Apple's safari has a nice gui, and it's always been very good looking

[nalmeth]

I think KDE has some of the best and worst examples of UI's out there. Synchronizing maximum functionality with usability has different results
Gnome/GTK UI's are somewhere in the middle, trying to stay on the usability side.

I guess I look at a GREAT UI as one that has easy navigation across the interface, does NOT have wasted or unusable space in the interface (like an unfilled toolbar or status bar, or the upper panel in gnome), configurability and powerful!!

Konqueror, K3B, KMyMoney, Ktorrent are good examples of this I think. Firefox and thunar on the GTK Side.
Amarok is a great UI, but it takes time to adjust to from other music players. Quod Libet is great in a unique sort of way, it can take on many different forms. Songbird may someday be a direct contender for itunes fans

Ardour is one of the Great GUI's IMO. Great design, powerful functionality, and beautiful form.

[Sukarn]

Now that I think of it, iTunes has a pretty intuitive and easy-to-use GUI. There are some things--the purpose of the checkboxes next to a song is completely unclear to me--but overall very easy to use.


The checkboxes are for the party shuffle feature of iTunes. Unchecked songs are skipped in party shuffle mode.

[argie]

Quicksilver for OS X :D
I heard of this only recently. Is it anything like the Enlightenment DR17 applet that attempts to match what program you want to start with a few letters? That thing was really damn good. I loved it so long as I was using E17.


I think that Iceweasel (Debian Firefox) is quite nice. But Synaptic is the best GUI in my opinion, since it can do pretty much everything I want and more easily.
Synaptic. Agreed. I love Synaptic.

And maybe this doesn't count but I like the GMail UI.

[gn2]

Probably most of you will not agree, but I find MS Office 2007's GUI is very nice,

Remember though, beauty is more than skin deep.

[regomodo]

Adobe Lightroom and Google's Picasa

Amarok is good too

[bruce89]

Firefox and thunar on the GTK Side.

Firefox isn't a real GTK+ program, that's why it looks a bit different in GNOME.

[qazwsx]

KDE configurability is very important to me.

I like GIMP also and still I hate most GTK apps (open/save dialogs are just horrible).