I dont use any of the UIs, but IMO the old one looks much better and simpler. The only benefit of the new one is the presenting more results on the page using a scroll bar (instead of the 5 for the old one).

Again this is just an opinion based on the how the screenshots look. Maybe its time to submit this to OpenUsability.org ?

I disagree with some of your assertions, but I do understand a number of your points.

Rather than framing this as a "bring back the old UI" argument, maybe we can identify some more concrete weaknesses of the new UI and improve it.

The old Best UI isn't coming back, although the code is still out there (but bitrotten), so you should feel free to hack on it yourself if you like. ;)

Anyway, to your statements:

* There's too much whitespace

Your screenshot is interesting, because the tiles to seem to be wider for you than they typically are for me.  This may simply be a bug, or caused by a very long title in the screenshot you posted.  If you make the window wider, the two Documents should both fit on a single line.

* Google puts all its information inline

It might be worth experimenting an inline pane, but there's no doubt that the new UI makes it possible to both (a) fit more results on the screen and (b) present more information about those results.  To fit the same information inline, you'd only be able to see about 3 results in the size of the screenshot you attached.

* New UI shows too little info in exchange for the screen space that it
consumes

I disagree with this, the new UI in most cases shows more information than the old one did.  A common complaint about the old UI is that files never showed the full path; that was added as a tooltip, but those could be very long and still aren't very discoverable.

* New UI feels badly organized

"Feel" is an important aspect of software usability, and often one that's hard to identify, but if you could try to articulate why this is the case, it would be helpful.

* Old UI navigated through your results, not through results of certain types

We should try to keep the number of categories to a minimum, but in our usability tests people had a hard time finding results when a bunch of different data was presented homogeneously.  Indeed, Google does the same thing with their different types of searches (web, images, news).

* Old UI had a combobox instead of endless checkboxes in the menu. In any case
put all those checkboxes somewhere else. It's unpractical.

The new UI originally had radio buttons, but we got feedback from users that they wanted to search in multiple categories, so the checkboxes replaced them.  The "Everything" and "Nothing" items are there to make selecting the checkboxes easier.  I think the issue here might just be that we have too many categories; I don't think a combo box would be any better.

Now, specific problems with the old UI:

* Paged results

The only way to see more results was to go to the next "page" of them, and you could only go forward or backward one page.  This is necessary for the web, but it sucks in desktop apps.  The inline paging we have in the new UI is a lot nicer.

* Homogeneous results

All the results look exactly the same, and can't be discerned visually.  If you're looking for a specific type of result (like a conversation), this is a problem.

* The small text was too small to read

I think you intentionally attached screenshots that both have 5 results in them.  And while the old UI definitely includes more information in a glance, we had a lot of complaints from users about the smaller detail font being too small to read.  If we increase it to be the system default font, you would be able to fit significantly fewer items on the page.

We did usability tests on both user interfaces in our lab here at Novell.  I know that some of the videos are up at http://betterdesktop.org, but I don't know if the original Best/Holmes ones are.  I will ask about that.

(In reply to comment #2)
> I disagree with some of your assertions, but I do understand a number of your
> points.
> 
> Rather than framing this as a "bring back the old UI" argument, maybe we can
> identify some more concrete weaknesses of the new UI and improve it.
> 
> The old Best UI isn't coming back, although the code is still out there (but
> bitrotten), so you should feel free to hack on it yourself if you like. ;)
> 
> Anyway, to your statements:
> 
> * There's too much whitespace
> 
> Your screenshot is interesting, because the tiles to seem to be wider for you
> than they typically are for me.  This may simply be a bug, or caused by a very
> long title in the screenshot you posted.  If you make the window wider, the two
> Documents should both fit on a single line.
I tried again, it behaves as you say which is fine. The problem seems to be that the horizontal arrangement forces you to have as min-width the width of the biggest cell, which in some cases produce ugly results like the one in my screenshot.

> 
> * Google puts all its information inline
> 
> It might be worth experimenting an inline pane, but there's no doubt that the
> new UI makes it possible to both (a) fit more results on the screen and (b)
> present more information about those results.  To fit the same information
> inline, you'd only be able to see about 3 results in the size of the screenshot
> you attached.
You are right in both points, but still I would insist that the old inline style was better.


> 
> * New UI shows too little info in exchange for the screen space that it
> consumes
> 
> I disagree with this, the new UI in most cases shows more information than the
> old one did.  A common complaint about the old UI is that files never showed
> the full path; that was added as a tooltip, but those could be very long and
> still aren't very discoverable.
I disagree with you, I don't find useful info in the info-pane. For example in the Conversations section I see:

(12:44:33) diego: it's fine <b>with me</b> ...         Some Buddy     Monday

and in the info-pane i see:

Name:    Some Buddy
Date received: Monday
(12:44:33) diego: it's fine <b>with me</b> ... 

That's obviously a waste, in the case of files and alikes, there is useful info shown but they are just two lines at much (full path and search coincidence).
I also noticed that Images say "Modified" and documents "Last edited" which makes some sense but breaks the consistency a little (bah, not worth to be called a problem, just a little detail I found).

> 
> * New UI feels badly organized
> 
> "Feel" is an important aspect of software usability, and often one that's hard
> to identify, but if you could try to articulate why this is the case, it would
> be helpful.
You are right, I was a little vague :).
I was referring to the horizontal issue that of the first of your comments, the horizontal arrangement causes mysterious effects like the one you explain to me in your first comment. Also since there's a lot of horizontal padding in the sections (not in each cell, but in the "bigger cell" that has all the cells of let's say Conversations) you don't "feel" there's a reference "wall" or limit.
Checking this I just noted that Conversations has no right-padding but Images and Documents have a lot.

> 
> * Old UI navigated through your results, not through results of certain types
> 
> We should try to keep the number of categories to a minimum, but in our
> usability tests people had a hard time finding results when a bunch of
> different data was presented homogeneously.  Indeed, Google does the same thing
> with their different types of searches (web, images, news).
> 
My idea to fix this was to have a Combobox like the old one, let me explain:
1. Jane looks for "Miami"
2. A lot of results appear, some of them emails and some of them pictures
3. Jane clicks the combobox and selects Pictures
4. Jane browses happily through her Miami pictures

So the user doesn't think about _where_ is his/her stuff in advance, but when he/she sees the results he filters them in realtime.
Maybe a widget similar to f-spot's query widget, where you can remove and add tags (in this case categories)?. 

> * Old UI had a combobox instead of endless checkboxes in the menu. In any case
> put all those checkboxes somewhere else. It's unpractical.
> 
> The new UI originally had radio buttons, but we got feedback from users that
> they wanted to search in multiple categories, so the checkboxes replaced them. 
> The "Everything" and "Nothing" items are there to make selecting the checkboxes
> easier.  I think the issue here might just be that we have too many categories;
> I don't think a combo box would be any better.
I missed to explain my idea (look before this paragraph), in the case I want to see all my "Miami" picture results I would rather prefer selecting Pictures instead of selecting None and then again open the menu to select Pictures.

> 
> Now, specific problems with the old UI:
> 
> * Paged results
> 
> The only way to see more results was to go to the next "page" of them, and you
> could only go forward or backward one page.  This is necessary for the web, but
> it sucks in desktop apps.  The inline paging we have in the new UI is a lot
> nicer.
The new UI makes these in a nice way, but as I said before I still have some issues with it.

> 
> * Homogeneous results
> 
> All the results look exactly the same, and can't be discerned visually.  If
> you're looking for a specific type of result (like a conversation), this is a
> problem.
Not if you have a clear way of filtering your results, and a solution similar to the current one can be made. I would say to go nuts and try with colours.


> 
> * The small text was too small to read
> 
> I think you intentionally attached screenshots that both have 5 results in
> them.  And while the old UI definitely includes more information in a glance,
> we had a lot of complaints from users about the smaller detail font being too
> small to read.  If we increase it to be the system default font, you would be
> able to fit significantly fewer items on the page.
> 
Well I just grabbed a screenshot of Nat's videos because as you might guess I don't have the old beagle UI at hand :). As you state, the font can be a problem that is resolved with the new UI.

> We did usability tests on both user interfaces in our lab here at Novell.  I
> know that some of the videos are up at http://betterdesktop.org, but I don't
> know if the original Best/Holmes ones are.  I will ask about that.
It would be worth (at least) reading the results

As you say, instead of bringing back the old UI this should be a "improve the new ui" bug. I will change the title to reflect that.

Thanks for your positive reply Joe.

I guess this is wontfix now.