10/GUI is an experimental user interface proposed by R. Clayton Miller in 2009. The interface aims to boost usability and increase comfort by combining the best of both worlds of mouse and multitouch-based computer interfaces.

Miller introduced his new interface with a video lecture/demonstration of his technology. The first two minutes of his video simply explain the unpleasantnesses of current mouse-based and multitouch-based interfaces. Miller then moves on to suggest separating the touch interface from the screen and placing it in a similar position as that of a laptop touchpad. This allows the user to easily see the images onscreen around his "pointers" and to move multiple elements and once and use gestures.

CON10UUM

The real revolutionary part of 10/GUI is Miller's new window management system. Unlike pretty much every operating system since Mac OS, which display windows scattered (or arranged, if you prefer) across a desktop area, the CON10UUM window manager holds all of the open windows in a horizontal accordion format, and through various gesture commands performed on the touchpad, the user can switch windows, elongate them, and access other commands. All windows stretch to the entire height of the screen in CON10UUM, and it should be noted that the desktop-as-folder notion is absent from 10/GUI, much like it is in KDE 4.

Impressions

While the concept seems refreshing, and certainly the idea of full-hands multitouch seems to have its uses, Miller seems to overreach in his conclusions about the usefulness of his software. The horizontal window layout makes it difficult to quickly move between windows, especially if, like me, you tend to have upwards of five applications open at once, most severely a browser with 10-15 tabs initialized. For obvious reasons, CON10UUM is not designed with tabbed browsers in mind. It seems to me that technologies like Expose and desktop switching have reduced the need for a window declutterer, and the 10/GUI paradigm ignores the fact that sometimes it's useful to be able to see three different applications' windows all at once.