MUI revisited

[rsn8887]

So, I have been back at my emulated Amiga to try out IGame and Whdload. And this made me think about MUI.

I think it is amazing that MUI is still, to this very day, completely unsurpassed by anything else on any system.

In fact, I have never seen another GUI library that allows the user to completely customize the appearance of every slider and button on a per app basis or globally, and that is modular so many programs can use it.

If I look at things like QT I could only puke. There's no customizability from the user perspective, and the API's are usually also terrible.

The only thing close are those terrible skinning tools for Windows or sometimes for single apps like WinAMP, but those are mostly broken, they always overwrite the complete look of everything, and they are not easily customizable either unless you specify a whole theme where everything is just replacement bitmaps.

So how can it be that MUI has never been surpassed? Not even an attempt has been made on any other platform? How can this be? I think the computer world should be ashamed at the terrible state of GUIs today.

Yes I think it is a great shame to the software world that even now twenty years later the Amiga is still the best when it comes to MUI.

And other aspects of the OS, too. For example locale support (no other OS has it apparently), and datatypes. Most other Amiga things have been surpassed, even though KingCON is not bad either.

[Michael Sykes]

Al least we have Classic Start Menu for Windows. It's not even close to MUI but imho a step in the right direction. I use it since win7(skipped Vista), because the later incarnations of the startmenu are so shabby.
I think it's a good question. Why isn't there anyting like MUI for Windows or Linux?
There are some tools out there but it's all or nothing. There is no "per app" skin/theme tool as far as I know.

[Amiga1992]

Some people (a lot of people) realize having a consistent UI throughout a OS and having all apps attain to the same, standard UI guidelines is a good thing.

Others like to bloat their machines and make them an undecipherable UI mess.

[rsn8887]

Ha! But the great thing about MUI is that I as a user get to decide whether I want consistency or whether I want an app-specific mess.

Also, I think the only marginally consistent and constantly progressing UIs that we currently have are OSX and IOS. But even there, many programs completely stray away from the OS, for example look at the horribly bloated Adobe apps.

Windows 10 is a complete mess of old school Win32, Metro, Windows 7 style and many programs that do their own thing. Even the windows explorer cannot decide on its own UI standard, with fonts and button sizes varying all over the place. If we look at Android, well, no words can describe that horrible nightmare. And then Linux, which at first glance feels a little like the Amiga, until you realize that you have to edit a thousand text files and cope with X-Windows. I think the prevalence of X-Windows held Linux UI development back at least five years.

As a side note, none of the modern systems have a unified installer like the Amiga had, that allows the user to turn on expert mode on almost every install.

I wish I never had owned an Amiga, then I wouldn't know what I was missing.

A while ago I was searching for a modern irc program that could rival amirc, and I couldn't find anything that even came close. There was only x-chat for windows, but it wasn't free. I feel part of the problem was the lack of MUI.

[Amiga1992]

MUI adds bloat to the Amiga system. I prefer the standard Intuition UI because it's fast, unobtrusive and takes no extra resources or toll to my computer power. Putting MUI on an unexpanded 68000 Amiga is a recipe for disaster, if it would work at all. As thus, it's not as good as it could be. Now if you had told me about something that runs great on EVERY Amiga, I would agree.

Nobody has a unified standard because they tend not to stick to guidelines.
Common installers are a thing on every OS, OSX and Windows have it, whether or not people use them is a different matter.

You need to put the rose tinted glasses down for a minute

[Michael Sykes]

Originally Posted by Akira

MUI adds bloat to the Amiga system.... Putting MUI on an unexpanded 68000 Amiga is a recipe for disaster...something that runs great on EVERY Amiga...

What the ....?
I think the question is "Why don't we have someting like MUI on any other System" but the Amiga. I mean who cares about GUI performance on any modern system? As if it would make any difference to add a new theme on lets say an i7.
I still remember something like "WindowBlinds" and it did not make any difference performance wise on my old XP PC.

[Locutus]

I for one am very very happy I don't need to write complex GUI's in MUI.

Qt does what i need well and is comfortable to me.

Also, for the enduser Qt is actually themable as fuck. i dont know what you guys want

[gulliver]

I personally much preferred Feelin on the Amiga. But it appeared too late, and so no one cared to write something with it.

http://www.feelin.fr/

[jPV]

Originally Posted by rsn8887

Yes I think it is a great shame to the software world that even now twenty years later the Amiga is still the best when it comes to MUI.

Yeah, I'll fully agree. I was amazed by MUI back in the day, and still am when using MUI5 on MorphOS. But especially considering how it already was back in 90s when other platforms were totally stone age compared to it.

I think it's just a great concept to give users as much as possible freedom with easy visual configuration. You can see immediately how every change affects and no need to tune any text files. And the global vs per program settings is done nicely.

Most of the programs are fine with the default global settings, but you always have some programs and needs for individual configuring. I, for example, want to tune mp3 players a bit differently from generic settings (like make them use _very_ small fonts for playlists, and have little something in their look, etc) and then tighten the GUI of IRC clients by removing the button borders and having very small fonts on users lists etc. Others may have different opinions, so it's good that user has the power to configure everything by his will.

It's also nice that coders can give custom configs for their programs, but user can choose if he wants to use them, or global settings or purely own configs. Some programs may be better with special custom configured GUIs, but it's really nice that those can be made with the common GUI toolkit and no need to go to totally custom hard coded versions.

[LuMan]

Originally Posted by Akira

Others like to bloat their machines and make them an undecipherable UI mess.

Well, if that's what they want to do, then let 'em.

Don't forget that a lot of developers used the MUI approach to ease development and improve the user experience. Running it on an unexpanded A1200 made no discernible difference to performance, and made it possible to use apps such as Miami, YAM, AMFTP and many more.

Also, MUI doesn't start as a decipherable mess. You really need to work at it to get it that bad!

[Michael Sykes]

Originally Posted by LuMan

Also, MUI doesn't start as a decipherable mess. You really need to work at it to get it that bad!

LMAO - so true.
Even on my unexpanded 1200 it was fast enough if the theme did not include large bitmaps. But a HDD is recomended.

Now I use foobar2000 as main music player on my windows system just because I can configure the GUI to my personal needs. And I would appreciate it if more software had this kind of functionality.

[jPV]

Yeah, and when MUI came available and progressed, almost all serious users had 020+ already. 000 is too slow for many other things too, and it's pretty useless to complain if some productivity software doesn't run well on it. And especially when the subject is about features and modern systems.

Another example about the scalability of MUI in my use is that I have configured picture viewer, movie player, mp3 player, etc to be in fullscreen with quite big buttons and very big fonts on my "media center" machine. I can see and use all programs I happen to need from the other end of the room, thanks to MUI You really can tune it for all needs easily.

[Samurai_Crow]

MUI 3.3 was slow and bulky. 3.8 was better but it was too late to avoid the whole ClassAct alternative. Now we have two BOOPSI implementations.

[meynaf]

MUI 3.8 is still slow and bulky, and sometimes a little bit on the buggy side as well - but it's just a matter of implementation. Gee, i wish i had the time to rewrite all that thing in asm...