The user interface for OS has several requirements.
Efficiency
Due to being limited in processing power, it needs to be as efficient as possible. Refreshing the whole screen constantly would take a very long time, look very bad, and feel very unresponsive. In order to make user inputs feel snappy and maintain a fast response time, the interface should never redundantly update information/components
Input flexibility
One of the special things about this is the wide variety of input methods available: Joysticks, rotary encoders, touchscreen, keypad, remotes, there are all sorts of different input methods all of which should fundamentally be supported by design. Adding additional input sources should not require much effort but rather integrate seamlessly.
Adaptability
It is important that the user interface is able to adapt to different resolutions, screen sizes, and screen orientations. This way OS will be able to run on a variety of different display models and be ready to scale in the future
Approach
One method for laying out user interfaces would be a component/container-based approach. Everything that can be drawn on the screen is a component. Components can be things like buttons / images / text or a container. Containers are components that can hold one or more other components. A component's size and position is determined by the container it resides within. The container can query certain information from a component such as a minimum size, and some size flags:
Normal: The component takes up any available space
Expand: The component wants to take up as much space as available, collapsing normal components to their minimum size
Requirements
The user interface for OS has several requirements.
Efficiency Due to being limited in processing power, it needs to be as efficient as possible. Refreshing the whole screen constantly would take a very long time, look very bad, and feel very unresponsive. In order to make user inputs feel snappy and maintain a fast response time, the interface should never redundantly update information/components
Input flexibility One of the special things about this is the wide variety of input methods available: Joysticks, rotary encoders, touchscreen, keypad, remotes, there are all sorts of different input methods all of which should fundamentally be supported by design. Adding additional input sources should not require much effort but rather integrate seamlessly.
Approach
One method for laying out user interfaces would be a component/container-based approach. Everything that can be drawn on the screen is a component. Components can be things like buttons / images / text or a container. Containers are components that can hold one or more other components. A component's size and position is determined by the container it resides within. The container can query certain information from a component such as a minimum size, and some size flags: