Today I created a conceptual design of what the command line (something I am most intimately familiar with) might look like if it were invented today.
When you tap to edit a command, you enter distractionless mode, because you’ll need all the Asperger focus you can muster to wrestle with the Bash syntax:
Unlike the terminal, which is a simple IO device of characters and bytes, the modern touch screen is capable of much much more. There’s no reason to restrict output to characters only. Like Mathematica, a modern command line should be able to output graphics.
Furthermore, there no reason that “output” should be static graphics. It should be possible to interact with the output. Via the “Manipulate” function, Mathematica outputs a graphic that changes dynamically as you change the value of a slider:
Applying this idea, ulimit (which sets system limits for child processes) should output a dialog, with which you can configure the limits graphically:
Instead of “echo $?” to find out if a command failed, there’s an error indicator beside the command that was run:
Miscellany
In modernity, connectivity is taken for granted. In the unlikely scenario (ha) that a connection to the server is broken, the terminal should keep pinging the server until it’s live again, probably implemented with the Mosh shell.
What I Learned
I started the day by replicating the first 3 screens of Sebastien Gabriel’s Twitter app.
As you can see, I stole my design for the “Modern Command Line” here. You can find Twitter Lite’s PSD at S. Gabriel’s Freebies page.
I made one small modification to the original design. I added an “>” beside “sign in”, and a bouncing animation to draw attention to the sign in button:
One design problem I encountered was to find a monospaced typeface that matches Helvetica Neue. I simply tried a few pairs:
I liked Helvetica & Andale Mono the best (the first pair).
While I find Twitter Lite beautiful, I wonder if I were brainwashed by the flat design trend. Would I have found this beautiful when Skeumorphism was popular?
