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Hacker
BeOS Journal:
BeOS Wish List

Scot Hacker, ZDNet

Updated 3/20/98

With the release of R3, BeOS is becoming tighter, cleaner, and easier to work in on a daily basis. I'm actually spending about 80% of my time in BeOS now, and finding fewer and fewer reasons to boot into Windows. However, there are still some UI conventions that I miss, so much of this wish list remains unchanged. I have, however, gone through and deleted entries that have been addressed by Be between PR2 and R3.

I'd still like to emphasize that this list is not a criticism of Be; I know that they make hard decisions as they choose their implementation priorities for their small team, and I agree that SCSI support on Intel is more important than Alt+Tab. This is just my personal wishlist, nothing more.

I'll update this list regularly, deleting items as solutions to them appear and adding items as necessary.

Keyboard
Poor keyboard control is one of my pet peeves: I don't exactly consider the mouse my friend. The mouse should be necessary where dragging or drawing is involved, but that's about it. You should be able to do everything with the keyboard, and I mean everything -- without third-party enhancements.

* Give us an app-switching hotkey. Nothing slows people down more in daily operations than having to take their hands off the keyboard just to switch among apps. Bring back Alt-Tab! This was partially implemented in DR8, abandoned in DR9, and is unfortunately still missing. This is one of the greatest overall usability features in Windows 95 and NT, and I won't rest until I see an equivalent or better in BeOS.

* Let us cut, copy, and paste files and folders around by using standard keyboard commands. Once you get used to selecting a folder and hitting Control-C in Windows 95 and NT, navigating anywhere you want, and hitting Control-V to paste the folder, there's no going back. Don't get me wrong -- I love the BeOS option in the right-click context menu that lets me move or copy any file or folder from anywhere to anywhere without leaving the current view -- that's pure grace. But cutting, copying, and pasting files and folders around is not just a good thing, it's a great thing. Implement it.

* BeOS sorely needs system-wide conventions for advanced keyboard operation and manipulation. For inexplicable reasons, keyboard operations seem half-baked. For example, when selecting text in StyledEdit or anywhere else, you can hold down the Shift key and use the arrow keys, but you're limited to selecting entire lines via the up and down arrow keys, or one letter at a time via the left and right arrow keys. But if you want to select one word at a time with the keyboard (probably the most common of selection operations), you're stuck since BeOS doesn't support the Shift-Control-arrow-key function. In fact, there doesn't seem to be any way to move the cursor around one word at a time. The key point is that these conventions should work in dialog boxes and preference panels the same way they do in word processors. Two things come together here: consistency of user experience and the ability to manipulate the system as quickly as you think, without ever having to reach for the mouse. Long lists of hotkeys with consistent implementations should be part of the BeOS User's Guide.

* We should be able to perform actions on multiple running apps by holding down Control or Shift while clicking on entries in the TrackBar. For example, we should be able to close or minimize four of six running applications by holding down Control, selecting those apps on the DeskBar, and then right-clicking on one of them to choose close or minimize to affect those four apps simultaneously.

Tracker
* We need an option to display the full directory path in the title bar so that we always know exactly what folder we're looking at. For instance, if I open my Zip drive, the title bar correctly states that I'm looking at the Zip drive. But if I open a folder on the Zip drive, the title bar for that folder doesn't tell me what drive that folder is located on. If I leave the window in the background and come back to it later, it would be very easy to forget what drive that folder is on. Give us an option to display the full path in the title bar of Tracker windows.

* Selecting multiple files in Tracker views is not as easy as it could be. Holding down the Shift key while selecting multiple items allows you to select individual items but not the items between them in the list. In my ideal BeOS world, holding down the Control key would allow multiple individual selections and holding down the Shift key would allow the selection of ranges of files (note: I've gotten more accustomed to this as time goes on, and have simply learned to drag out multi-file selections. It's actually easier once you get used to it).

* We should be able to mount and unmount Zip disks and floppies automatically. Mounting and unmounting disks manually is a user-unfriendly aspect of the UNIX world that we shouldn't have to deal with in 1998, and there's a lot of weirdness with this in BeOS. For example, if I'm looking at my Disks folder and I manually hit the Eject button on the Zip drive, not only does the Zip icon not disappear or gray out but I can also still burrow through its folders as if a disk were still in the drive -- yet the folders appear as empty. On the other hand, if the Zip drive isn't visible to the Disks icon and I insert a Zip disk and let it spin up, it doesn't update the Disks icon instantaneously. This is inconsistent with BeOS' usually well-multithreaded behavior. The Zip disk will, however, appear under the Disks menu a little while later if I haven't already mounted it manually. All very strange. (Update: Be engineers say they're working on this one)

* If disks can be made to mount automatically, then put a Mount option on the context menu when we right-click on the Disks icon. Currently there's a Mount Settings menu entry in the Tracker, under the Disks applet, but this works inconsistently. For example, with the Zip and floppy drives empty and with Automount All Disks turned on, the Zip icon shows up but the floppy doesn't. Be needs to choose either the Mac method, where a drive icon shows up only when a disk is inserted, or the Windows 95/NT method, where a drive on the system is always visible but simply shows 0 files until a disk is inserted. I personally prefer the latter method, because I always know what hardware is connected to the system and no mounting is ever necessary. But the point is, get consistent and be easy to use -- whatever it takes.

* Put the DriveSetup applet in the Apps folder by default, not in the Preferences menu. What does disk mounting have to do with preferences? I would actually suggest a default subdirectory of the Apps folder, called System Utilities.

* Give us a hierarchical view of the file system, with all mounted drives accessible from any Tracker window. Give us a little drop-down list containing all drives so we can switch among them quickly without digging around. There's no reason in the world we should have to open four separate windows just to see files on a hard disk, a Zip disk, a network, and a floppy all at once. This should be a no-brainer. If users want to work in separate windows, let them. If they don't, then don't make them. Although this is certainly a big opportunity for third-party developers, I consider this fundamental enough to build into the OS. The Tracker is the main interface onto the file system, so make it display the entire file system by default or make it easy to navigate elsewhere in the file system from any point.

* Install a command-line window in the Tracker so that we can "ren *.txt *.html" without shelling out to the Terminal. Or install something similar to Windows 95/NT's Run menu on the TrackBar so that we can execute anything just by typing its name. Big time saver. And let us invoke the Run command with a hotkey.

Miscellany
* Why does resizing a window require finding the small spot at the bottom right of the window, as in the Mac OS? We should be able to resize a window by grabbing any edge. Under the current model, resizing windows often means moving the whole app up and to the upper left, then moving the mouse back down to the lower right, then grabbing and dragging. What's wrong with simply dragging any edge or corner? The current mode is to move the whole app when grabbing an edge. Do people really move apps around by grabbing an edge all that often, compared to how often you move them by grabbing the title tab? Just seems like a waste of good borders (because people would resize by grabbing any edge very frequently, whereas they move apps by grabbing any edge relatively infrequently, IMO).

* Why aren't there Window menus in StyledEdit and NetPositive? When you've got multiple text documents or browser windows open, there's no way to access them without returning to the TrackBar or moving the front-most windows out of the way.

* Give us an easy way to Hide All or Minimize All windows so that we can get to the desktop quickly. Minimize All should show up in a context menu when we right-click on the desktop, and it should be on the Be menu of the TrackBar.

* Make the PPP connectoid behave like a normal app so that it'll minimize to the DeskBar. Currently, it forces itself to stay open but doesn't show up on the DeskBar. That means it's not as easy to connect and disconnect from the Net as it should be, since you've always got to go digging around behind open windows. Better yet, put a Connect/Disconnect icon next to the mailbox on the TrackBar, for one-click access that's never hidden.

* Give us a "stay on top" option for the the DeskBar. We shouldn't have to move apps out of the way of the deskbar to switch apps with mouse, especially when there's no hotkey for same.

* Open/save panels should optionally remember a preferred size. Under Windows I use a TSR (extension) called lemmesee that allows the size of this panel to be customized to any dimension, and I'm sure there's something similar for MacOS -- this should be built into the BeOS.

* Customizing the contents of the Be menu will be unintuitive for new users. Could use a wizard or applet of some kind.

* Offer a way to resize or move apps around with the keyboard.


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