What operating system and UI toolkit is this?

The Bloomber GUI carries a vast amount of information in a very compact format:-

Fixed cell monspaced characters are used so that data falls naturally into rows and columns, experienced users can locate the figure they are looking for instantly.
Fonts are used to indicate (I think!) age and importance
Colours generally indicate the direction of the change (blue = increase) (red = decrease)

Traders stare at these screens obsessively, either waiting for some trigger price or trading volume on an individual stock, or, trying to divine an overall trading pattern in a market segement which they can take advantage of.

Most of these conventions stem from when a Bloomberg terminal was just a "dumb" teletype with colours. But they work, they are fast and efficient and traders have years of familiarity with the conventions.

This is similar to the user interface used by travel agents to book flights. Its essentially the same interface that was used in dumb terminals from the 80s. There is a "modern" GUI interface available but experienced agents just hate it and continue what is effectively an emulation of a dumb terminal.

@peter: this looks very much like a character-cell interface, albeit with multiple fonts. That's pretty old-school, no? Is the angle that the text appears at the actual angle, or is that just the way the picture was taken?

John Saunders 2010-03-12 01:50:36

Just because something's the standard doesn't mean it's appearance is pleasing. Have you ever SEEN Craigslist? Awesome site but it looks like poo.

Eric 2010-03-12 01:52:06

I've no particular opinion on the matter, but crap and standard are by no means mutually exclusive.

dmckee 2010-03-12 01:58:46

@John, you're right it isn't fancy and it looks old but that's actually a fairly recent screenshot. Keep in mind that these screens pack a lot of information into some fairly tight real estate. James mentions below that monospace fonts allow columns to size eaisly, that's a good point especially because you know the ticker is going to be three or four characters.Also, bankers live in excel, so it's handy to keep formatting similar.And at the others claiming that the "standard" shouldn't always be followed, my point was it is tried and true, and users know what to expect.

pnewhook 2010-03-12 14:31:01

@peter: I'll concede it's a good UI for its audience. But considering its audience is people who require a UI to look that way, that's not saying much. I'm betting modern tools could do a better job of meeting all of the requirements - except the requirement to not change.

John Saunders 2010-03-12 14:33:50

@James: based on what you say, neither the Bloomberg or the travel agent UI were designed in a modern world. They exist as they are today only because of the constraints under which they were created decades ago. Any new UI design might take them into account, but should not be heavily guided by them. It should instead be guided by the modern requirements. I would be shocked if a design based on modern requirements turned out to look like these ancient UIs.

John Saunders 2010-03-12 02:51:14

Thank you for the detailed answer! Although I had to give some credit to the above since he told me it was GTK

Anin Teger 2010-03-12 03:57:55

@John Saunders. The point is that "Amadeus" the booking system did actually completely re-write the system including a new modern GUI. The users did not like it (and for very good reasons!) and stuck with the old terminals until an emulation was provided.

James Anderson 2010-03-15 01:28:08

@James: one failed project doesn't disprove my point, especially if they used the Waterfall process. In that case, they would not have received user feedback until it was far too late to fix the problems.

John Saunders 2010-03-15 03:38:39

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What operating system and UI toolkit is this?

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