I am here to remind you of a post that was made in the ReactOS user forum, written by crappish (Mikko Tikkanen). In it the author wrote of the need of a consistent user interface, the need of people that actually have knowledge of such things, and how these people would have to be in charge of enforcing such an interface. They should be familiar with Windows, know how to make things accessible and newbie-friendly, and have enough creativity to improve on existing concepts. In addition to that, there should be someone who represents this team and can interface it with the rest of the project, and make sure everything is the way everyone wants it to be. Now, this representative has been chosen. But there is no team to back him up!

Primarily: Programmers who have sufficient knowledge to hack other people's code, even if said code is rooted deeply in system libraries. Skill in writing user interfaces and piecing together dialog resources. No advanced skills beyond that required. This is most important, since developers in this category can get straight to business and get started on improving ReactOS.

Secondarily: Interface concept designers who have advanced knowledge of human interfacing, easy access, logical positioning, and the creativity to improve and expand on existing ideas. This is a secondary category because a) right now there is little to do in this respect, b) there are already two (counting Mikko?) of these people in ReactOS, and c) for every 1 concept designer, there can be up to 10 implementing developers.

Even more appreciated, would be someone who fits both gloves and can write code AND design interfaces. Sadly, experience proves that these two traits don't usually come together in one person.

And! Just as important, though not actively recruited, I welcome icon designers, graphic designers, font designers (that includes you, wierd_w!), sound effect samplers, and programmers willing to implement missing UI features (think of things such as extended cursor/icon support, alpha blitting, runtime freetype configuration, recycle bin functionality, control panel, autorun support, etc), on individual application (mail me at mf@mufunyo.net).

Our first goal will be to make the surface experience of ReactOS familiar. Surface in this context means the things a user will see during and after bootup. This mainly involves modifying explorer; to display a consistent and familiar start menu, and to show a friendly explorer when My Computer or the Explore link is opened. This means making all the surface icons consistent (my task), modifying explorer's interface (the 'programmer' category), and figuring out the best layout for the start menu (the 'designer' category).

There is no plan past this first task, because I cannot predict how small or big the team is going to be, what feedback we are going to get, and how fast things will move.

And that's it for my first big announcement. I hope this will get some discussion going, and some balls rolling. I would also like to take this opportunity to request a mailing list for the UI team, this should have been set up right after the coordinator vote was over, but it wasn't-- so to whoever's in charge of that, I count on you. Thanks.

Please reply to this mail only on the general list or to me in person (if you're not on the list and only get digests), it is only crossposted in ros-dev to get a wider range of attention.