Photoshop to get new UI - Gimp too!
Yay..... The news could not come at a better point - just when I was about to ramble about the interface clutter that programs produce - now that my OS of choice does not produce so much clutter anymore (hey I do have the feeling I am in control of my computers again :) the next problem is the programs themself. As I consider myself pretty much a poweruser (anyone seen my open programs can acknowledge that I guess) there is a HUGE problem - program UI and keyboard shortcut consistency.
But it seems the days - at least - the program User Interface has been living a live of a neglected child are counted. Senior Adobe product manager John Nack himselfs believes they have raised a bloated monster ready to drown any second - and I give him right in every sentence. The solution for Adobe would be to make the interface more customizable - he says. I would say make the freaking program itself more modular - let me make snapshots of modules that I like to work in my workflows and let me save those snapshots to carry around with me (on my nonexisting iPod f.e.) and make the snapshots FUTURE PROOF - I donīt want to sit and reconfigure something as fundamental as a pixel editor everytime they release a new version (in other words - do it right from the beginning and future proof).
Modularity is the key as Apple already figured out when they made Opendoc (the best teck ever to come out of apple in the last 20 years I would say - toooo bad they killed it with OSX but their "services" are a step in this direction - think of opendoc as Everything is a module and can be reused by everything else - say use the photoshop paintbrush in maya by actually loading in the photoshop paintbrush into the maya interface!)
The problem with a photoshop interface redesign - they need to make a "compatibility" configuration that looks just like photoshop 1.0 because everything else the older designer generation will just not buy (the biggest problem in modern interface design today is that "old school" user bitch about every small UI change and its really time to rethink the interface itself from the ground up)
A bit easier this is for gimp as its only users to date are people who otherwise use the command line (flame me please - but its a fact) so every interface must look like heaven to those poor souls. While I have bitched about poor Gimps interface for years there seems to be finally a growing consensus to do something about it - other then just badly copying Adobes already not so great interface.
The Gimp User Interface Group tries to find the godly ingedients to make an working interface that is actually used by graphic peeps rather then programmers. The sad thing: While they have the opertunity to make some (r)evolutionary that departs from every modern day UI, because a graphic program has the all the option imaginable to make it work better then anything there is or has been out there - the interface on their website looks like - oh wait no - photoshop. While talking about details is great ITS NOT GREAT IF THE OVERLAYING CONCEPT IS INCREDIBLY FLAWED! Layers are soooo 90is. One dimensional interfaces are so 80s!
To all people who are designing interfaces out there: TRY SOMETHING NEW or at least LOOK WHATS OUT THERE ON A BROAD SCALE (not only image manipulation f.e. but database handling, node editing etc).
The programs and workflows have become so endlessly complex that a complex interface is NOT the way to go!
simplyfy make it multidimensional context sensitive and modular and future proof and interoperable and standard conform and build in possibilities to easily hack it down to the core. And try to get rid of the fucking windows! I spend more time trying to find the right window burried in a stack then I am designing (at points that is of course).