Linked by ephracis on Mon 23rd Jan 2012 13:18 UTC
This is a call out for help on creating a consistent and native feeling on Mac OS X and Linux. As I have never owned a Mac and haven't used Linux as my main OS for over 3 years I need the community of OSNews to help me do this.
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RE[5]: One UI to rule them all?
by ephracis on Tue 24th Jan 2012 07:33
in reply to "RE[4]: One UI to rule them all? "
Member since:2007-09-23
ephracis,
"But that makes my question even more relevant: what would YOUR dream interface on YOUR system look like and behave like?"
There was once a time I would spend a great deal of time tweaking my desktop to individualize it to my personal tastes, but I no longer find it worthwhile to do so. I'm more interested in applications that just work well.
For example, I use wireshark because it works great. I'm comparing it to other apps right now, and I'm noticing differences I never noticed before. Rather different handling of alt-keys, different menu fonts, but I honestly never even noticed those before because it's not all that important to me.
On the other hand, I've seen some rather stupid themed apps that not only look out of place, but they can actually get in the way of usability which really bothers me. Examples of these are certain anti-virus tools and my motherboard tuning utility which is in the shape of an animated car engine that displays on every boot (shame on you gigabyte). Not only are they ugly, unprofessional, and out of place, but they're also unnecessarily difficult to use.
As far as I'm concerned, just keep your design sensible, and that's good enough for me on any platform. I would say to focus more on how well it works than how it looks, although frankly that seems to be the opposite of what everyone else is doing.
"But that makes my question even more relevant: what would YOUR dream interface on YOUR system look like and behave like?"
There was once a time I would spend a great deal of time tweaking my desktop to individualize it to my personal tastes, but I no longer find it worthwhile to do so. I'm more interested in applications that just work well.
For example, I use wireshark because it works great. I'm comparing it to other apps right now, and I'm noticing differences I never noticed before. Rather different handling of alt-keys, different menu fonts, but I honestly never even noticed those before because it's not all that important to me.
On the other hand, I've seen some rather stupid themed apps that not only look out of place, but they can actually get in the way of usability which really bothers me. Examples of these are certain anti-virus tools and my motherboard tuning utility which is in the shape of an animated car engine that displays on every boot (shame on you gigabyte). Not only are they ugly, unprofessional, and out of place, but they're also unnecessarily difficult to use.
As far as I'm concerned, just keep your design sensible, and that's good enough for me on any platform. I would say to focus more on how well it works than how it looks, although frankly that seems to be the opposite of what everyone else is doing.
You bring up some very interesting points. When I talk about interface design I think of more than just the graphics. The way something behaves or how it is placed is also an important part of the interface.
If you would imagine that you run Stoffi but you didn't know it, because you thought it was part of the DE you were running, how would that be? Everything from keyboard shortcuts to menu layout.
I will probably not need much help with choosing the font and whether or not to have a drop shadow on my context menus. I will just look at the DE and choose to follow their lead on that. What I need help with are the smaller details, the one that only true and heavy users will notice (like handling of alt-keys).
RE[6]: One UI to rule them all?
by Alfman on Tue 24th Jan 2012 12:57
in reply to "RE[5]: One UI to rule them all? "
Member since:2011-01-28
ephracis,
A pragmatic question here...it sounds like you are aiming to build many localized versions for most/all desktop environments. Will you have one *nix version which auto-detects the desktop environment and changes it's engine accordingly? Or will you have many different downloads? Too many choices could be confusing for users, and users might end up with the "wrong" one.
Are you going to have a bitmap theming system? Or are you building native controls using the native toolkits?
There are pros and cons of each.
Using native controls, most of the control's visual & interactive functionality will automatically adapt to the host's defaults.
However if you ever plan to incorporate a theming system that allows end user's to change their theme using bitmaps (aka winamp), then don't expect the native controls on each platform to support it in a compatible way. You could always make a separate version where you render your own components, but that's a heavy maintenance burden in my opinion.
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Member since:
2011-01-28
ephracis,
"But that makes my question even more relevant: what would YOUR dream interface on YOUR system look like and behave like?"
There was once a time I would spend a great deal of time tweaking my desktop to individualize it to my personal tastes, but I no longer find it worthwhile to do so. I'm more interested in applications that just work well.
For example, I use wireshark because it works great. I'm comparing it to other apps right now, and I'm noticing differences I never noticed before. Rather different handling of alt-keys, different menu fonts, but I honestly never even noticed those before because it's not all that important to me.
On the other hand, I've seen some rather stupid themed apps that not only look out of place, but they can actually get in the way of usability which really bothers me. Examples of these are certain anti-virus tools and my motherboard tuning utility which is in the shape of an animated car engine that displays on every boot (shame on you gigabyte). Not only are they ugly, unprofessional, and out of place, but they're also unnecessarily difficult to use.
As far as I'm concerned, just keep your design sensible, and that's good enough for me on any platform. I would say to focus more on how well it works than how it looks, although frankly that seems to be the opposite of what everyone else is doing.
Edited 2012-01-24 00:02 UTC