Source: omgubuntu.co.uk

by Ian Uymatiao

Desktop Linux does not always get a lot of press, but when it does, it usually has something pretty interesting to show; this one was no different. Canonical figurehead, Mark Shuttleworth, took the time to announce on his blog the new Head-Up Display (HUD) user-interface, to be released alongside the latest Ubuntu OS when it becomes available for download this April.

The new ‘HUD’ UI can best be described as a radical overhaul of the menu system that has become a staple of nearly every desktop operating system today. The menu system itself, where there is a list of nested commands that sits on the top of the window or screen, has seen little to no dramatic changes since the introduction of the GUI. Shuttleworth believes that this old system is archaic and inefficient, since its complexity can potentially prevent users from finding useful commands that could boost their productivity.

So how exactly does the new ‘HUD’ tackle this dilemma? With HUD, the old menu system is completely replaced by a single search field. It’s similar to advanced application launchers such as Quicksilver and Launchy, only it is used for application commands. This allows you to effectively ‘search’ for the command, rather than having to scour the menu system in the hope that such a command exists for the application. While one can certainly argue that keyboard shortcuts are a much shorter way of executing commands, HUD could lead to better discoverability of new commands, as well as a faster method for executing commands that do not come with a complementary keyboard shortcut.

HUD is still currently a work-in-progress, and an additional effort is already underway to make  it more capable than just searching for menu commands. You can look forward to trying it out for yourself when the Ubuntu 12.04 is released this April. In the meantime, check out this video (Introducing the HUD to Ubuntu)video to see Ubuntu HUD in action!

(via OMGUbuntu)