Interesting discussion here, thanks. Sorry if my previous comments felt dismissive, I would hope some other words would characterize them better... "realistic", for instance.

First of all, there is nothing that cannot be done, given enough effort. However, I didn't try to talk just about the basic differences... Yes, you can do a system with a reasonable effort that shows different size icons and buttons for the UI for stylus and finger, but at least I'm not a fan of doing things halfway, I tried to talk about "optimal" UI's. Optimal UI's should not feel like compromises.

Information density is basically split in half for finger vs. stylus, meaning how many controls or UI elements you can put on the screen. If you have a plan how you could design a system-wide style that would automatically accommodate the UI's so that the amount of information and the amount, size and placement of the UI controls in any given view would work for both stylus and finger optimized formats, please let me know about it.

My full quote tried to be: "It is not possible as a system-wide issue to design UI's for all the applications that would be 'optimal' for both stylus and the finger at the same time, unless nearly doubling the design and implementation effort." (emphasis added).

Yes you can do it by doing the design and implementation twice, and yes there are some small parts which you don't need to design twice, hence the "nearly". But just trying to squeeze stuff, have the same design, same components and same thinking for each of the UI views, will not be optimal for both stylus and the finger. The stylus does permit to place "more stuff on screen", whereas for the finger minimizing UI clutter and therefore having a bit more hierarchy works better. (Of course it's not as simple as that, but...)

A finger optimal UI won't be stylus optimal UI and vice versa. At least platform-wise, since people are going through different applications, in and out, switching between them, doing different tasks, different views and windows, having some apps stylus-driven (hey, i need to take the stylus out) and others finger-driven (damn, i need to put it back in) will not create a satisfying user experience.

Also the example about advancing touch UI's further with things like multitouch (nothing announced, sorry ) run contrary to trying to hold on to a dual stylus/finger UI style. (And multitouch is just one example, not a main driver.)

But also as noted in some of the comments here, nothing basically prevents "you" as the developers from doing otherwise.

I'd be more than happy to live with a UI that I find a little clumsy if functionality isn't reduced. As I stated above in an answer to qgil: It's not that I'll find the perfekt device anywhere on the market. It's all about compromise. I already live with a half-hearted compromise on OS2008, and I probably could live with Maemo5 if it doesn't restrict me any further.

The whole thing here took off not because somebody wanted finger-friendliness in general. The argument started because of suggestions like "only run applikations in full screen mode; only nerds switch between applications, anyway" - this is a simplification that reduces functionality.
Same goes for Fennec, which (at least that's my impression) is something like the Holy Grail for the finger-painting crowd at the moment. Compare the features (and how easily they are accessible) of MicroB to those of Fennec (few features, but hardly accessible).
Canola is another example... Easy to tap, difficult to use overall because of its tree-like navigation concept which doesn't scale to allow more functionality.
Also, I consider it a matter of functionality, not of UI design, if an application fails to present a decent overview of the information available, such as the RSS reader or the modest inbox.


I'm not arguing against the abstract concept of "finger-friendliness" as such, even though I don't support it either. I'm only against some of the more precise points made in this thread that I think are serious threats to the potential of the platform.
Also, I have yet to see a UI that is widely considered "simple" and does not achieve simplicity by dropping functionality. UI designers are lazy nowadays. They don't design UI anymore, they take them away (and with them everything that was driven by the UI). But I'm eager to learn and see what Maemo5 will have to offer here. I'll certainly not go and buy whatever netbook right now only because there's this vague threat of an over-simplified Maemo version in the future. Nokia will have to shoo me away with it if they don't want my money any more.

as to the topic of the thread, from the comments so far here and elsewhere I think it can be safely assumed that

1 there will not be a stylus with n900

2 the finger friendly ui is the main thrust

3 "fat scroll bars" will be gone, I personally see this as a pointer to a general canola style/pdf reader "arrows appearing" style

4 there will not be a d-pad

and most likely there will be a multi-touch announcement at ces!

1) I hope there is a stylus.
2) no qualms
3) ditto
4) i like hardware keys for different reasons

why would they jump up and give a "me too!" announcement at ces?
i will be very sad if they stand up and say "we can do what iphone did a while ago".
I dont even know where this ces thing came from anyway, but if they do you would think it would be a bit more classy than that.

I don't know about the lack of a d-pad, but otherwise I'd agree to this...also, no stylus hopefully means a capacitive TS, otherwise it makes little sense.

This forum would most likely burn with indignant outcrys after such an announcement, I can already sense that

Fingers on a capacitive touchscreen... What a great combination for selecting text for copypasting.

There's a reason why you can't do this on the jPhone.

Actually, there is at least one very simply and handy way to do that: the way a BlackBerry Storm does it.
http://gallery.techarena.in/showphoto.php/photo/16021 - finally a real-life benefit from multitouch...

And that's actually a good example why I think that going finger-only is a good thing (maybe not short-term, but after a while): it forces developers to come up with better thought-through UIs, which ultimately means better apps.

The only real casualty I see when going finger-only is sketching apps.

Finger friendliness doesn't go hand-in-hand with reduced functionality. I think, especially when you move away from a UI built on compromise, functionality will actually go up, rather than down. Don't think of finger friendliness as tripling the size of all default scrollbars. Think of it as smooth, inertial scrolling right from the view, which is certainly an improvement for both stylus and fingers.

What Ragnar `announced' is basically what we heard on the summit already.

So, it appears you both agree, and want a hardware button which takes you to the configuration screen of an application. Am I correct?

But this is one of the things where Linux is weak. Application developers do put 'Cut' and 'Paste' in the 'Edit' menu (often with key bindings to them) but something like Settings or Preferences changes throughout the UI. Worse, it should be easily accessible from the computer using a keybind. I don't know if GNOME HIG concerns this... but IMO it is important.

Its the same with /etc. Its a mess. Heck, some UNIX systems even put binaries in there. Now there are some projects to abstract /etc (with backwards compatibility), even so far, that the configuration format is all the same. Like on MacOS X which heavily uses XML for this purpose.

(As for multi touch. Apple didn't invent this. It was already in use in research projects long ago. There were demos about software synths using a touchscreen with multitouch long ago. There were demos about RTS game using a touchscreen with multitouch a long time ago.). Anyone who has been at Siggraph knows this Apple didn't invent this! They bought one of the innovating corporations in this field, and implemented the functionality on one of their popular devices. Multi-touch history. (Here are some nice touch screen videos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.) Still just another input device? I remember a time where I had only a joystick as input device because I had no mouse. Well, the mouse did open my eyes. And later, a trackball did, too. Now I use mainly a trackpoint.

chlettn,

of course its not the only casualty, in different environments having to use a finger is futile. Its getting cold round here, I can't imagine many people playing with their iphones stood at the busstop with their gloves on.

Same for driving gloves and gps.

Coming up with a vulcan mind grip for something thats as naturally intuitive as text selection is just stupid.

Thats not innovation thats backtracking and trying to replicate already existing well understood common functionality with something that takes a whole page to explain.