OSNews

I know that very well, as I've been studying them for some times. BUT it takes some time to fully grasp the good and bad sides of an UI. Spontaneously, when you see an alien UI that does not respect the conventions you're used to, you have, as a human being, a natural tendency to notice what is absent rather than what is present.

E.g. when I see photoshop's UI, my first thought is "uuuugh why do I have to open silly menus when I want to access my tools ? And why are those buttons so tiny ? I can't click them with a pen tablet ! And who had that crappy idea of putting everything behind non-discoverable modifier keys and context menus ?". I suppose that if I took the time to learn it, I'd end up discovering some advantages in most of their UI choices.

Not all UIs are equal. But contrary to popular belief, you cannot measure the quality of an UI at first sight without in-depth knowledge of usability rules and the targeted user, or in-depth use... In books about ergonomy, you discover why who your user is matters more than generic rules supposed to apply to all human beings.

Your original point was that GIMP's UI is universally bad ("sucks" in your own words). My point is that this is wrong. GIMP has its issues, but it's quite good when you're used to working with it


Clutter and wasting space are opposite extremes PS tries to put lots of tiny widgets in few room while Gimp takes more space.

But consider that most computers have wide screens nowadays. As much as they're crap for actual work (I can develop this point), they have a single advantage : more width for tools. The GIMP tools are good for tablet use, at the expense of that extra width of widescreens that you don't need anyway. It's not about wasting space, it's about using it properly !


It's large (and old, too). Extract the part of it which you want to use in your argumentation.

Edited 2010-09-29 12:01 UTC