Hyperlinks, textboxes, and buttons are forever. But are there more intuitive widgets to be created? This is the stuff I think about as a graphic designer when I’m bored, people. With all this new touchscreen, finger motion tech, what’s coming?
Here are the most common user interface “controls” or widgets used in modern software usage:
Text hyperlink
Click button
Textbox (for inputting text)
Scrollbar
Tabs
Resize box handles
Arrow, hand, and I-beam cursors
Thumbnails
And those that seemed to have disappeared or aren’t used as much:
Check boxes/radio buttons
Drop-down lists, combo lists
Page “corners”
Line splitter
Progress bar
Hourglass cursor
So why do some of these controls endure while others aren’t used as much or are now non-existent?
There’s all sorts of “frameworks” out there now with their own gimmicky tools or widgets. A good example is Windows 7’s ribbon strip tool. It’s essentially a giant combo box that contains thumbnails. I loaded Paint once in 7 and was quite alienated by it. I was so used to XP’s labels and buttons tools.
But now that all these new touchscreen devices are coming out, it seems the mouse cursors won’t be part of the GUI lexicon anymore. So a person uses their actual hand or finger in place of the arrow or pointer cursors. Therefore, the user is actually using what the mouse and cursor previously represented graphically. So what new things will be created to make using new tech as intuitive as possible?
Tags: design, graphic, gui, human-machine interactivity, interface, popular culture, software, usability, widget