A critical analysis of Vista 5270 Aero & GUI
Admittedly I know about visual composition and graphics design.
When Apple introduced Aqua and OS X in '99, it was the first thing out of the grey vector boxes that computers had been about. Apple introduced "reality", elements that appeared touchable, smooth, Hi tech, and in motion. Glassy elements that looked beautiful to the eye. Progress bars that were 3d, white and blue barberpoles, etc. It was about desireability, touchability and excellence.
Microsoft (probably knowing it could not compete at that level (shadowing, motion), released the playdough or clay friendly Mom and pop in Oklahoma look of XP. On the surface a friendly fisherprice ease of use where Mac was art design sleekness.
So what was the next logical step for Microsoft after Mac OS X? How to you beat a fluid, desireable, "lickable" GUI system?
Very simple. There is only one direction they could have gone in. You make it see through.
That could have been the only next higher tech step after aqua and OS X.
Who ever advised Microsoft on that was right (but then again it was the only answer, no other choice could have been more desireable than OSX but a transparent OS)
But why was the -implementation- of that idea, in my view, less than perfect?
Take the start button on 5270. A cutoff orb with a logo in it. A superior starting element is not difficult to imagine. Imagine how sleek something could have looked if it was made by the worlds best unhindered professional designers. GUI Design is about making something look as -sleek- as possible -without- being obtrusive, this is the crux. Badly compiled logo intersparsing doesn't even begin to come into it. It is completely not what GUI design is about. Yet here it is in Windows Vista. The "Highest tech" OS yet.
The min, max, close elements, the scrollbars, everything is less than beautiful. The scrollbars are XP. The buttons again do not look anything at all like the work of the worlds best graphics designers. Just ill coloured XP buttons. And in WMP11, the blue used for the orb buttons, 97 out of 100 good designers (and I'm not one!), would have told you that shade of blue is too dark. What is the reason for the Aquamarine colour throughout explorer? It is completely unfitting and is pertinent in no other way apart from being the WinNT wallpaper colour all those years ago. It just doesn't hang together innovatively.
If the next step is "clear" it can be made so much better. You want a clear "feng shui" look, or transparency, not blockyness. You want roundness. (yes Aqua is also round) but Microsoft have copied far worse than roundess would be.
It seems that today there's one of three surface elements that are used:
1. Simple colours
2. Glossy surfaces
3. Gradiented colours
This while there could have been an infinity of innovative surface elements that could have been implemented to make Vista truly innovative (what Aqua was in '99), instead of XP with a few touchups.
You want clear, bright, and porousness intermixed with gloss. Fine use gloss, but that shouldn't stand out against normal "flat" buttons, it should stand out against "porous" surfaces. The most important thing in applying transparency to a whole GUI is composition (it's see through how much more important can composition be?).
I think what could have been done as opposed to what has been done is a big difference. Optically, now we really have just a few changes from old windows. I.e. in addition to simple gradients (scrollbars) we have gloss, translucency and transparency. But the elements themselves are still old windows style. It's there that a big change was expected. There were many more innovative surface textures to implement to give the os a complete overhaul, porous surfaces, dynamic surfaces, as opposed to just adding transparency and colour changes to XP.
I don't think it's high tech at all. Look at any app window, in addition to it being just a standard XP window with a transparent title bar area, we have standard scrollbars and in addition we have a seemingly useless semi-transparent 5 pixel window border. I say useless because it wastes screen real estate, even if you could move the window with it, it is inefficient (you can just move the window using the much larger titlebar area.) Windows have always been resizeable from everyside since old, but this is exactly (what I believe) is an inefficient way to stick to tradition. Screen real estate is what matters. Frills don't. Ideally we should have had borderless windows, or dynamic active bordering of somesort. This isn't a fantasy, it's 2006, if GPU's can peak at 20 gb/s surely the O/S could have been more dynamic?
To see what I mean look at three-drives.deviantart.com and look at TD4.0, this is just windows XP hacked in depth to resemble Aqua, but look at the wallpaper (it's in the .zip). -Thats- clear, bright and relaxing.
http://www.deviantart.com/view/4634229/
Or better yet look at the screenshot of the T630 white phone with the theme I made called "clear",
http://www.deviantart.com/view/18684837/
Yes these examples use elements from existing GUI's, but it's the idea I'm trying to explain.
Vista GUI is just XP with -some- unique surface elements, it's should be a complete new system, if it is to emulate (let alone surpass, but that's a long way yet) what Mac did with Aqua in 99.
Look at the new Vista default wallpaper (you can see it on the logon screen. Blue (because that is the way forward & cool (a la Mac) and Green (Windows colour, but also the -next step- as Microsoft sees it.). So how do you differentiate Vista from Mac OS X & Aqua. The -only- way left would be by saying Mac is cool and sleek (:blue), but it is too cute and not High tech enough. Vista is more High tech and complex, intrinsic, unknown, and that leads us to darkness and black:
The new taskbar colour.
For another example consider this screenshot,
If the transparency is for increasing clarity and productivity shouldn't most of the dialog box and aquamarine areas also feature transparency?Even this three year old Longhorn promotional video shows design elements that are -much- more desireable and appealing than what we have in 5270.
http://www.winsupersite.com/files/pdc2005-pdc2003-rock-video.wmv
The whole transparency issue today looks un-thought through. It looks and feels like a small unimportant marketing gimmick, as opposed to being an innovative and productivity increasing feature.
PS: Rereading this post I get a very negative impression of Vista, I didn't intend to write it like this. This post ultimately is intended to provide -constructive- critisism, as I also believe the way forward in GUI is transparency.
EDIT:
My suggestion for improvements to you are as follows. To give the Aero look a "style" or a consistency I would advise the following. Consider that Apple OS X Aqua features a fluid look, has clearly defined round borders and gloss as its unique look.
For Aero I suggest elements that fade and are non gloss. I.e. scrollbars that are porous, light blue and fade at the edges. A taskbar that is clear or light blue, not smokey black. Dialog buttons that also have a symmetric shape but no clear edges, with again a porous texture. To see what I mean with porous texture look at the wallpaper in the .zip file of this theme I made:
http://www.deviantart.com/view/4634229/
Those rocks have a fade, a porous lightness. Contrary to OS X Aqua's hard edges and gloss, you want soft edges, and in line with -dynamic- transparency and clarity, a vapourous experience.
That is Aero.
