Introducing the HUD to Ubuntu

join us for a review of HUD - Ubuntu's intent driven interface. Check out http://www.markshuttleworth.com/?p=939 for more details.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Spec4D]

Soooo... It's a functionality search engine for whatever program your running. Interesting. Linux tries everything, but only the best features stick. Time will tell if this idea is a winner.

[nacs]

I like how theres an ad for MS Internet Explorer within the first few seconds of this video..

You guys didn't even bother to redo that part or at least edit out the ad?

[arielco]

The "Undo" example was terrible. Why I *may* leave it installed: You know the searchable Start menu in Win7 where you can type the name of the program right away? WIth this you can do the same within an application's menu, which is useful when you don't remember where in GIMP's huge menu is the #^%$ is the goddamn filter you want hidden. The rest may be bull if you already use the keyboard a lot.

[arielco]

Yup, not the best example. But the [Discovery] feature (not having to hunt through the huge menus in GIMP and Inkscape) is why I _may_ leave it installed this time. The rest (compsing an email, recalling a website from bookmarks/history, etc) I can already do with the app interface.

[arielco]

Well, 1. when I'm typing I hate having to reach for the mouse, worse if I'm sitting in my bed. 2. I type a whole lot faster than I mouse through a menu. But because of (2) I already use hotkeys and Alt-something accelerators a *lot*, so the biggest advantage is what the video calls "Discovery" - not having to hunt through huge menus for a command (yes, GIMP and Inkscape, I'm looking at you).

[Keith Gadberry]

My thoughts exactly. I think the HUD is a load of shit.

[jonhill987]

That is completely different, I was talking about for using applications not configuration and you know it. There is no good reason to have to type commands that could be in a menu.

[cromrke]

One more thing that really annoys me in Unity is the main menu. You have to switch tabs to search for different stuff. It should work like this: Tap super button > type what you want > Enter. Searching application menus is great, I hate searching manually every time! But hiding them is going a bit to far if you ask me. I will try it out when it's finished.

[cromrke]

I think this is a great idea... I used linux then switched back to windows 7 because i need some apps. The only thing that saves windows 7 from being a total mess is the search function in the start menu. Windows 7 tries to categorise everything to hard and because of that becomes extremely annoying to navigate. Personaly I think unity is a pain to use because of the disapearing menus. The best thing i used so far was the classic gnome desktop with the 3 menus: Applications Places System BEAUTY!

[nubl37]

>typing undo

>not pressing ctrl+z