Hello - first post here so let me introduce myself: my name is Howard Winter and I have been an avid user of OS/2 since Warp 3, I've been the UK Reseller of eComStation for some years, and I've recently joined Arca Noae LLC, dealing with third party relations.
Most of what I post here will be my own thoughts and opinions, not official Arca Noae statements, but if I do post the latter I will make it clear. I will answer questions where I can, but most of what I will be able to say is on the Arca Noae web site already. I'm new - please be gentle with me!
I've read through Martin's and Alex's documents on the OS/2 User Interface - thank you both for all the hard work in doing this. There's a lot to think about there, and I agree with some - most - of it. I have to say that I can't get too agitated about the non-clean boot process - since 99% of the time the system isn't booting, I don't feel it's a high priority item, and compared with booting a Raspberry Pi, which scrolls hundreds of lines of illegible command line output during booting, "ours" is pretty tame!
To Martin's "Navigator" idea, and Alex's suggestions on that topic, I can give my full support as I feel it's an area that Windows has been better than OS/2 for a long time - maybe the only item like this! Having the "tree" on the left and the selected item expanded on the right is so much more useful than any other way of doing it that I can't work out why it hasn't been done a long time ago. On Windows I do sometimes find I have a lot of things expanded in the tree which makes it awkward to find your way up and down, and a single "Collapse All" button (equivalent to pressing all the "-" boxes) would be useful. And if the same "Navigator" was the standard format for Open / Save / Save As functions within applications, that would be excellent.
I really like the idea of configurable "Favourites" in the tree display, but perhaps with the option to have a single heading with the actual favourites inside, as my list of favourites would probably be too long to be displayed permanently, and having it subject to the "Collapse All" function would be good.
I think it's a shame that Wide Screen displays have become the fashion - they're great for watching films, but not for office type functions such as dealing with letters and spreadsheets, or editing programs, where Portrait orientation is usually the best choice, so Alex's idea of having the "bar" - whatever it will be called - dockable at the side to free up vertical space is a good one, although some items such as the historical CPU usage graph don't do well when vertical.
Scalable Icons on the desktop is another "must have" with modern equipment - trying to use a 1920 pixel-wide laptop screen can be painful when the icons and text are so tiny.
One thing that I don't think is in ether set of ideas (correct me if I missed it!) is on the desktop itself, the absence of an "align to grid" function - my desktops end up looking a mess because all the icons are placed "freehand" and it would be really useful to have a definable "grid" and the ability to align all icons to it with a single click, or to place them on it individually (say drag/drop alone for free-form placement, the same with <Ctrl> to align with the closest grid-point). The existing automatic placement options which put icons in arbtrary, but aligned positions ("From Top" etc) are useless IMHO - I want to decide where each icon goes on the screen, but with the micro-position nudged so things line up. Trying to use "Selected Horizontal" etc. usually results in a frustrating exercise of trying to get it to do what I want, and failing!
I think that's enough for my "Maiden Speech" - thanks for your attention!
Cheers,
Howard Winter
