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Author Topic: What is MorphOS - a brief introduction for users familiar with C= Amiga  (Read 6086 times)

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Offline lsmart

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Re: What is MorphOS - a brief introduction for users familiar with C= Amiga
« Reply #44 from previous page: February 04, 2011, 06:00:07 AM »
The MorphOS look that you see most often is much like Linux in the late 90s or what Windows tried to copy with XP. But it doesn´t stop at the color of the titlebars being in bad taste and icons being autoarranged to weird grids.

The original Amiga OS had to concentrate on the essentials. There was much thought going into details. Icons looked the way they looked, because one found that the image

a) represented the idea best
b) was visible an clear on every monitor by people with moderate eyesight

Todays criteria seem to be: its coooler! It´s mooore!

And the old Workbench had some pretty cool bells and whistles: Many people for example forgot that it was normal to select more than one menu item in one swoop. AmigaOS still does that and if you know the trick it can become more useful than Apples "Expose" or "Spaces".

MUI has a lot of eyecandy and unfortunately is helping you to create interfaces with more buttons than your user really wants. If you really think about how the software is used you will find that less is almost always more.

So I don´t agree with people who are calling the old Workbench-look crappy. AROS in fact does a good job in maintaining the clean lines of the former design.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2011, 06:20:46 AM by lsmart »
 

Offline itix

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Re: What is MorphOS - a brief introduction for users familiar with C= Amiga
« Reply #45 on: February 04, 2011, 06:47:58 AM »
Quote from: lsmart;612345
The original Amiga OS had to concentrate on the essentials. There was much thought going into details. Icons looked the way they looked, because one found that the image

a) represented the idea best
b) was visible an clear on every monitor by people with moderate eyesight

Todays criteria seem to be: its coooler! It´s mooore!

I have to admit I like Workbench 1.x look very much these days. 2.x was complete miss shot in visuals.

And I have to admit I sort of like OS4's retro look.

But I dont see any reason to use more colours when we have true colour gfx cards available. I liked my 8 colour MagicWB very much but it was in 90s. Glowicons on my 3.1 were not bad either. But I can always boot my A500 to get my Workbench 1.3 fix.

Quote
MUI has a lot of eyecandy and unfortunately is helping you to create interfaces with more buttons than your user really wants. If you really think about how the software is used you will find that less is almost always more.

In Amiga software less buttons usually meant no buttons at all. I recall many utilities which were completely menu driven without single button in window except standard close/depth arrange buttons. Preferences system is often completely tooltype driven and visuals are locked to topaz/8.
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Offline Cammy

Re: What is MorphOS - a brief introduction for users familiar with C= Amiga
« Reply #46 on: February 04, 2011, 06:51:56 AM »
MorphOS has multi-select menus too.

I don't see how MUI makes people put too many buttons in the programs. Do you mean because it's very easy to make GUIs with MUI compared to using Gadtools or Reaction? Sure, it's a lot easier for the programmer, so we can get on with coding the important parts of the program and not have to worry about spending too much time programming the GUI for it. It has been like this since the early 90s when most Amiga programmers started using MUI for their programs, and MUI doesn't have any unnecessary eye candy, that's purely up to the user if they want to make their programs look visually appealing insted of keeping the grey, default look. Even the GUI in OWB is based on IBrowse, other MorphOS software is extremely Amiga-like. And once Zune is updated, Aros software will have the same amount of visual configurability as MUI4 in MorphOS. The main thing missing at the moment is the ability to use bitmap frames rather than the default MUI vector ones.

MorphOS can use regular Amiga icons, GlowIcons, NewIcons or PNG icons and they can be single or dual-state, up to 32bit.
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Offline J-Golden

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Re: What is MorphOS - a brief introduction for users familiar with C= Amiga
« Reply #47 on: February 04, 2011, 07:47:39 AM »
This little blurb helped me out a lot!   Iwas always under the asumption that MorphOS was an Amiga-like OS; that it didn't have any real use with Amiga programs.  But now I understand how it all fits into the Amiga realm AND can understand why there is such a division with users...
 
I almost wonder if this could have been AOS if they were able to purchase the name from the begining...
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Offline ElPolloDiabl

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Re: What is MorphOS - a brief introduction for users familiar with C= Amiga
« Reply #48 on: February 04, 2011, 09:02:32 AM »
Q: Who wrote the wikipedia entry for MorphOS? Anyone know?
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Offline pVC

Re: What is MorphOS - a brief introduction for users familiar with C= Amiga
« Reply #49 on: February 04, 2011, 09:27:24 AM »
Quote from: J-Golden;612351
I almost wonder if this could have been AOS if they were able to purchase the name from the begining...


Of course it could have. IIRC there were official discussions, but they didn't end up with agreement, as usual. Everyone can have daydreams what would have happened if MorphOS would have got the official name before OS4 was started.
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Offline lsmart

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Re: What is MorphOS - a brief introduction for users familiar with C= Amiga
« Reply #50 on: February 04, 2011, 10:24:52 AM »
Quote from: Cammy;612349
MorphOS has multi-select menus too.[\QUOTE]
Thanks for pointig it out! I shouldn't have worded my comment to sound like it hasn't. AmigaOS4 has a bad design choice in using a sub menu for showing icons as an additional file. You can't deselect it if you multiselected "show all" before, but you have to close the menu first. Drive me nuts each time - bad default.

Quote from: Cammy;612349
MUI doesn't have any unnecessary eye candy, that's purely up to the user[\QUOTE]

MUI was advertising the eyecandy and because people thought "oh, that's pretty" they weren't too shy to even use scrollbars in scrollbars. Which I hate on every Website today.

But of course that doesn't make MUI a bad tool for development.