Slashdot Mirror

http://www.rha.com/ui_hall_of_shame.htm

http://www.pixelcentric.net/x-shame/

http://www.raizlabs.com/interface/hall-of-shame/de fault.asp

These sites all appear to have similar concepts. Don't worry, folks, I'm sure the Meatloafers will be busy guffawing in mulish fashion as they forward the house/UI anology to your inbox for the next ten years after it's no longer funnny.

See, that kind of inventing metaphors for supposedly retarded users is precisely one of the problems with this industry.

Well, you are very close to having a point. But not quite.

• Human/computer interface design is all about metaphors. A mouse cursor, a window, a clickable hyperlink etc. are all metaphors (resp. for command I/O, multitasking and a "World Wide Web" that actually doesn't have wires, either). Consider the alternative (command-line everywhere, full-screen text, BBSes one had to write down the phone number for).
• I was talking about security, not useability. Computer security is rocket science right now and is in dire need of convenient metaphors if users from the general public are to cooperate (which they must - witness the "Don't open those attachments!" injunction). Do you really expect all users to manually perform the dance of exchanging a session key (unique per MAC address, for scalable revocation, and 128-bit long, for security) with the wireless access point using their keyboard and a LED display on the a.p. (to prevent man-in-the-middle)?
• Exactly what in my post gave you the "snotty" impression that I consider users=idiots? Metaphors are great for all kinds of homo sapiens (including myself), because it allows one to operate a well-engineered GUI (e.g. Excel® - a good piece of software from Microsoft® if ever there was one) and discover how it works as one goes, without ever needing to RTFM. Worth a lot of time and money.

"what if someone walks through my invisible wire?"

The same thing as if someone walks through your remote's infrared beam. Physical circumstances are not the same of course (messing with 802.11 requires a microwave or a grotty old electric shaver, maybe), but this doesn't cause the metaphor to fall short. And even if it did, that would not be so much of a problem.

anyone who is used to Windows freeware and shareware knows that their interfaces are typically as high-quality as any other commercial application.

Windows comes with INTERGRATED support for writing GUI applications. Win32 is, above all, a GUI toolkit, backed up by a powerful window system. And all these are intergrated. Menus look the same, buttons look the same, dialogs look the same simply because Win32 supports it. There is a quite good array of widgets that one can use to write an application.

Of course there are problems. If you look really close, you will see that for every widget that Microsoft does not directly support, each toolkit has its own implementation. Take toolbars, for example. Microsoft apps have their own toolbars, Qt has its own, GDK its own etc. And they all look and behave differently.

This one of the problems with Linux (and Unix generally): there is nothing 'standard' beyond the X-Window system. There are Qt apps, GDK apps, custom apps, motif/lesstif, all behaving differently. Menus look different, buttons look different, toolbars look different...A good gui is the one that comes with a standard widget set. But since back in the 80s there was no such thing, Unix blew it. And Linux blew it, too.

By the way, don't think that all commercial, freeware and shareware are of good quality. Check out this site for examples of bad interfaces(and there are other pages devoted to bad guis).

Why are Windows programmers doing it and Linux programmers not?

Because when developing on Windows, you already have a lot of apps that do the same thing the same way. There is an establishment, making the developer follow the same path as previous developers. So, when one is developing on Windows, she thinks I must make my app look and feel the same as the other Windows apps, or otherwise my app will not be approved by the Windows community. But when developing for Linux, there is no such establishment. Even the IDE gives you the basic guidelines. Whereas on Linux one can see many different styles, so she thinks oh, its ok, I will do it as I like, since Linux guys are more flexible.

Because when developing on Windows, there is easy access to help files which show you the basic GUI guidelines. Just press F1 and voila, you get help on how to build a Windows GUI application, in every respect (even aesthetics).

Because the standard widget set forces you to a good design. For example, menu items are never too close on Windows, whereas it is quite hard to read the default KDE start menu, because it uses a large font not properly spaced.

Because Microsoft could afford spending millions in R&D.

Because the Apple guys have laid the way in GUIs for so many years, and then Microsoft heavily borrowed from them.

Because open source developers only cater for their needs. It's their code after all, I don't blame them. The open source philosophy is you need something ? code it!!!. In the spirit of this thought (example follows!!!), the default Red Hat 9 installation does not allow you to rename the desktop icons or edit them or change the destination executable or shell command/script. Why ? because the developer did not think it was important. Maybe because she did not use the desktop icons at all, instead hacking all day at the command line.

Because Microsoft does it for profit, and profit motivates people to be better (and glory, too - is that the driving force behind open source, after all ?).

Because open-source programmers are not educated enough on the aspects of Human-Machine-Interface. They are programmers, after all.

Mozilla can look like:

A kitchen sink

Mac OS X

Internet Explorer

the linux kernel. (it has as many lines of code as the linux kernel!)

While I certainly hope the projects improve their interfaces, it's not like they're only ones. QuickTime has problems (and used to be much worse!). RealOne's interface is ghastly as well. And don't forget Windows Media Player (scroll down to see a screenshot, helpfully described as "gorgeous", but certainly not "useful").

Yes, media players on Linux have crappy interfaces. Most media players, regardless of platform, have crappy interfaces. Perhaps Linux is worse at the moment, but it's not the condemnation that the poster suggested it was.

While I certainly hope the projects improve their interfaces, it's not like they're only ones. QuickTime has problems (and used to be much worse!). RealOne's interface is ghastly as well. And don't forget Windows Media Player (scroll down to see a screenshot, helpfully described as "gorgeous", but certainly not "useful").

Yes, media players on Linux have crappy interfaces. Most media players, regardless of platform, have crappy interfaces. Perhaps Linux is worse at the moment, but it's not the condemnation that the poster suggested it was.