Ubuntu to sport new 'head-up display' menu

Ubuntu, a free distribution of the Linux operating system, might soon win over more users with its upcoming new look, highlighted by a replacement for the traditional menu.

 

Mark Shuttleworth, one of the backers of the Ubuntu OS, said they are working on a minimalist "Head-Up Display" (HUD) that will replace the menu bars and items.

 

"The HUD (connects) users directly to what they want. (It uses a) 'vocabulary UI,' or VUI, and closer to the way users think. 'I told the application to…' is common user paraphrasing for 'I clicked the menu to…' The tree is no longer important, what’s important is the efficiency of the match between what the user says, and the commands we offer up for invocation," Shuttleworth said in a blog post.

 

He described the HUD in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as "a smart look-ahead search through the app and system (indicator) menus."

 

A video demo of the HUD Shuttleworth posted on his blog showed the HUD will try to guess the command based on the first few letters the user types.

 

Shuttleworth also said the HUD is faster than mousing through a menu, and easier to use than hotkeys since one just needs to know what he or she wants instead of remembering a specific key combination.

 

"We can search through everything we know about the menu, including descriptive help text, so pretty soon you will be able to find a menu entry using only vaguely related text (imagine finding an entry called Preferences when you search for 'settings')," he said.

 

Shuttleworth indicated the HUD will be included in the 12.04 LTS version of Ubuntu.

 

"This concept of 'intent-driven interface' has been a primary theme of our work in the Unity shell, with dash search as a first class experience pioneered in Unity. Now we are bringing the same vision to the application, in a way which is completely compatible with existing applications and menus," he said.

 

Shuttleworth said that while menus are consistent in terms of appearance, they may become confusing when too nested, or require special key combinations.

 

Smart HUD

 

Shuttleworth said the HUD is "smart" because it can do things like fuzzy matching, and it can learn what a user usually do so it can prioritize the things a user uses more often.

 

But he also said Ubuntu will resurrect the "boring" old ways of displaying the menu in 12.04, in the app and in the panel.

 

He admitted there was controversy when they actively diminished the visual presence of menus in past Ubuntu versions, in anticipation of the HUD.

 

"If the HUD lands in 12.04 LTS, we hope you’ll find yourself using the menu less and less, and be glad to have it hidden when you are not using it. You’ll definitely have that option, alongside more traditional menu styles," he said.

 

Next step: voice

 

Shuttleworth hinted the next step will be to integrate voice recognition, gesture and touch into the HUD.

 

"We want to make it easy to talk to any application, and for any application to respond to your voice. The full integration of voice into applications will take some time. We can start by mapping voice onto the existing menu structures of your apps. And it will only get better from there," he said. — TJD, GMA News