Alternative GUIs for Computers

A look at graphical user interface options - today & tomorrow

As we've noted in our features on Graphical User Interface (GUI) options for Linux, many computer users seem to enjoy customizing the look and feel of their computer. In this article, we'll examine some of the GUI options that Windows users can employ to provide additional functionality, or just express their own uniqueness.

Historically, the first GUI modifications for the Windows environment were the Norton Desktop for Windows and Central Point PC Tools desktop. Both of these products were released back in the days of Windows 3.x, and both provided features such as a multiple desktop panels that are now common in the Linux and Unix marketplace and are provided under Windows by current products such as StarDock's Object Desktop.

Running on a roughly parallel course was the Macintosh, with its developers offering GUI modifiers for that platform such as Aaron and Kaleidoscope, in the days before Apple began providing built-in capabilities to reskin the GUI... a capability it subsequently removed from Mac OS X. But I digress.

Apple's Mac OS 8.0 introduced built-in GUI skinning features. Click the image to see a close-up view of the hideously ugly "Gizmo" theme. No wonder they removed this feature from Mac OS X.

Basic Modifications
The most basic modifications to Windows are, of course, those supported by the built-in software. Windows 98, Windows Me and Windows 2000 all have optional downloadable "themes;" a similar set of add-ons for Windows 95 was sold as part of a so-called "Plus Pack."

Even without these Themes, the basic look and feel of Windows can be customized by changing screen fonts, screensavers, icons, and so on. Many of these changes can be made via the various options in the Display Control panel.

Custom Skins
Beyond these basic changes lie more extreme alterations. One of the terms you will often hear in discussions of customized user interfaces is "skins." This refers to the way that various Windows applications can change their skins to customize their appearance. Perhaps the most popular "skinnable" Windows application is the WinAmp MP3 player, for which numerous custom skins are available. Microsoft's Media Player 7.x and newer versions provide skinning abilities, too. Neoplanet is an attempt at an improved skin for Internet Explorer. Although Netscape versions before 6.0 did not support custom skins, the newest releases of the browser -- and its open-source cousin "Mozilla" -- can be customized, as Eric Yang's project to graft an Apple Mac OS X-like Aqua interface onto it shows.

However, system software add-ons such as Enlightenment or StarDock's WindowBlinds are potentially more interesting: these tools allow you to customize the Window graphical interface in such a way that virtually all Windows applications inherit a new look. A fairly comprehensive list of such "shells" is at http://www.gjeffrey.com/mac/links.html; the links below provide more details.

One of the most robust alternative GUIs for Windows is MacVision. This freeware application implements a very good simulation of the Macintosh's Finder (considered by many the best GUI of them all) on the Windows platform. It's well worth checking out. The page at http://members.aol.com/JMB1984/MacVision/ has details.

Of course, look-alike skins tend to infringe on visual identities and these issues tend to get lawyers riled up. So, it's no wonder that links to Aqua themes for Windows provided on this page and other sites frequently go dead. (As of Oct. 2002, a good collection can be found at http://www.amilcarguerra.com/~iceman/vs/).

As noted in our Mac OS X report elsewhere on this site, Apple's lawyers have been busy sending cease-and-desist letters to companies and individuals who infringe on the look and feel of its operating systems. For example, in Jan. 2000, Apple threatened Skinz.org and other sites over graphical patches that can give users of non-Apple computers the distinctive Mac look and feel, including that of "Aqua," the graphical interface of Apple's Mac OS X. Not that Mac OS X is perfect, of course. Applelust has a well written and thoughtful piece discussing some of the more glaring GUI weaknesses of OS X and its controversial Dock. Windows XP users looking for a faithful recreation of the OS X Dock might like Y'z Dock. For a review of this and other Dock apps for Windows PCs, see emaculation.com.

Alternative "skins" are especially popular in the Linux community, but are available for Windows (WinAqua, etc.), the Mac (e.g., Kaleidoscope) and other systems. One author, who re-uploaded revised "Aqua skin" graphics after modifying them in an effort to comply with Apple's demands found that change wasn't enough for Apple's legal team, which again threatened the author of the Mac OS X GUI lookalike "skin" with a lawsuit over its "Aqua"-like look and feel. BetaNews and MacWeek have additional details.

Taking the GUI into the the next dimension, literally, are 3D desktop enhancements such as 3DTop, Win3D and many others.  (We found Win3D to be the best of the bunch, in terms of usability. It's quite slick.) There are also 3D browser enhancements such as the Buzz 3D Browser. The Utility page at 3dfiles.com has additional details.

In all of these cases, however, one must ask "why?" Is a 3-D interface easier to navigate? Is any of it an improvement on the venerable "WIMP" (windows, icons, mouse and pointer) interface? Many of the links at the end of this article discuss these all-important usability issues.

Certainly, in the 21st century, interfaces are evolving to take advantage of the advanced capabilities of the newest generation of hardware. Windows XP, for better or worse, is Microsoft's first GUI that doesn't look quite right with anything less than millions of colors. It includes quite a few snazzy GUI effects that take advantage of a feature called alpha-blending -- the ability to vary the transparency of an on-screen object. Menus can (optionally) fade onto the screen; items can have transparent shadows. Icons have transparent text backgrounds. The Windows XP GUI also exploits sub-pixel rendering to improve on-screen displays, hardware graphics acceleration of the visuals and, of course, 3-D acceleration of all those screensavers.

A closer look at the Windows XP GUI
Back in 1999, sources close to Microsoft reported that the company was developing an extensible window manager for the future version of Windows currently code-named Whistler. The window manager would reportedly support skinning, custom scrollbars, window transparency and will allow users to customize the look and feel of Windows by simply dropping a theme into a specified directory.

Indeed, one of Microsoft's subsequent job postings, seen Jan. 22, 2000, revealed more details on what the company had in mind. Reported Betanews.com at the time: "Microsoft has solicited job offers for a software design engineer who would help develop a new extensible window manager for the successor to Windows 2000. A new window manager would integrate 'skinning' right into the OS to enable a complete interface customization, similar to UNIX X11 window managers like Enlightenment."

Microsoft's Web site reads, "It will be the foundation for a new generation of Window Managers, which will allow easily extensible UI look, feel and behavior. This component will also enable the operating system to support different Window Managers, which could evolve independently from the operating system itself."

As it turned out, Whistler (now known officially as Windows XP) supports only a limited form of UI customization, allowing little more than colour and font changes -- or the reversion back to a classic Windows 2000 look, if you prefer. The announcement of a Plus! Pack for Windows XP doesn't add much to these capabilities, either. You're still stuck with the Luna interface, or the Windows 2K standard. However, the company has officially blessed the WindowsBlinds extensions to allow more extensive GUI customization. The Register has details.... Ironically, perhaps, a product called Styles XP from TGTSoft.com became the choice of many XP skinners, thanks to its ability to create and save styles in the native XP "MSStyles" format. Versions of Styles XP we've tested simply patch a Microsoft DLL to allow the use of these third-party styles.

Too many choices?
Why did Microsoft back away from its original plan to integrate skinning features into Windows XP? Most human interface experts hold the opinion that, when it comes to graphic user interface design, less is more. An unfamiliar interface makes it more likely that users won't be able to successfully complete a task, and thus undermine the company's efforts to simplify the Windows user experience. There's also a chance that Microsoft may have shied away from the idea of providing lookalike interfaces for legal reasons, too -- Apple has aggressively pursued companies and individuals who have released skins for Windows PCs or older Macs based on the look and feel of the new "Aqua" interface of OS X. However, as Apple discovered when it restricted the position of the OS X "Dock" to a single position at the bottom of the Macintosh screen, users don't like it when there's not enough flexibility, either. Apple on Sept. 29, 2001 released OS X 10.1, allowing repositioning of the Dock at various locations on the screen and numerous other enhancements.

The Mac GUI
The Macintosh GUI changed radically with the release of Mac OS X. It, too, exploits alpha-blended effects to deliver eye-candy effects on screen, such as shadows and transparency effects. In fact, it is easy to argue that Mac OS X has too much transparency -- every drop-down menu shows the text behind it, leading to visual clutter and potential confusion, not to mention sluggish performance on all but the fastest Macs.

Apple moved to address this problem with the mid-2002 introduction of Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar." The updated operating system includes a hardware-accelerated graphics engine that requires a 32MB AGP graphics card to provide GUI acceleration.

Meanwhile, in Linux-land...
In July 2002, the developers of the popular K Desktop Environment (allegedly, the K stands for nothing) announced the release of KDE 3.1-alpha, an updated version with transparent menus, drop shadows and plenty of other eye candy and new features, not the least of which is a built-in VNC-compatible server to share KDE desktops. Elsewhere, OSNews looks at a number of user interface issues in KDE 3 and discusses how they could be improved.

Some Microsoft OS users who dislike the limited choice of interface options in the standard product will find WindowBlinds a reasonable solution; others may object to the necessity of a third-party hack to provide what some argue should be a system-level feature, as it is in Linux and some other operating systems. Bear in mind, too, that extra graphical niceties and system-level GUI enhancements almost always carry a performance cost -- and sometimes a stability cost, as well. Those interested in maximum XP performance may want to look at a utility such as Total Idea's Tweak-XP, which allows you to turn off many of XP's more gratuitous graphical effects. A trial version (fully functional for up to 50 uses) is available at www.tweak-xp.com

For Further Reading:

• www.stardock.net: Object Desktop White Paper.
• www.stardock.com - Windows Blinds 3.0 announced Sept. 26, 2001
• MacWindows.com: User interface modifiers. Software that makes Windows more Mac-like, and Mac OS more Windows-like.
• e.themes.org - Themes for Enlightenment
• Custom GUIs for Linux.
• PC Buyer's Guide: Microsoft Millennium and Beyond
• News.com: It's the people, stupid - Winning products come about when technology is focused on people, not because people are focused on technology.
• The Register: Microsoft blesses XP skins
• Technology Review: The Next Computer Interface: The desktop metaphor was a brilliant innovation‹30 years ago. Now it's an unmanageable mess, and the search is on for a better way to handle information.
• Los Angeles Times: Just Beyond Our Windows: The graphical user interface changed computing. But what's on the horizon?
• IBM developerWorks: The Cranky User: Drowning in Aqua [Apr. 8, 2002]
• Generating the next-generation graphical user interface - A discussion of Open Source GUIs on the desktop. [July 30, 2002]
• www.nooface.org - “In Search of the Post-PC interface.” Includes links to a number of 3-D interface efforts. [July 30, 2002]
• Saul Greenberg’s site at the University of Calgary has a collection of user interfaces, most of which have been designed by his students and include video examples. [Aug. 6, 2002]
• Tactile the Future of GUI? Slashdot readers debate the merits of interface guru Jakob Nielson's Alertbox column in which he proposes that tactile, physical interfaces will be the next evolution in how we interact with machines. [Aug. 6, 2002]