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Suck On Skins And UI
kisrael writes: "Today's Suck.com talks about how the freedoms designers now have in UI appearance-- starting with the the Web, moving to Skins for WinAmp, ending with the latest versions of QuickTime and the
preview release of Netscape 6-- are ignoring visual and interface standards that users have come to rely on." A lot to think about and discuss here: personally I'm a big fan of skins and themes, but it only takes seconds to find countless awful themes. There are exceptions, but they're rare.
The newer HTML/CSS/etc. specs require certain standards in size and placement of controls, and other such things, and the only way to accurately match the specs is to implement the same controls on every platform, instead of relying on all platforms to have the same native controls (which is not gonna happen).
By that point, they were already pretty much there as far as themeing (sp? theming?), so they figured "what the hell?" and made a uniform engine for all of the controls in mozilla.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
I'm not against consistancy by default; I don't want my GTK windows popping up with random themes in each. But I want to option to make special apps stand out with the use of skins for a variety of reasons. I believe skins are just a tool. Though they can be abused quite easily, I think they have some good potential also.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Software exists to please the user, for most users this simply means getting the task done without confusing them. You are only one user. There may be a couple thousand like you, but you are still in the minority. It is fine if developers want to create skins, but they should realize that if they make this the default (or the only option), it has negative consequences for most users in most cases (except for most of these open source projects, which appeal mostly to "geeks").
So if I designed a "cool" (obviously subjective, but so are themes) bus with obstacles that only a jock could clear, this is fine by you? Forget old people, handicap people, geeks, etc. Because "you" are scared, maybe we should ditch modified busses to? Sounds pretty reasonable, if your intent is to serve as many people as possible.
Personally, one of the things I absolutely adore about Linux is that so many things are customisable to a degree simply not permitted by Windows.
:-)
From an everday usage point of view, the thing I most hate about Windows is the tendency for new windows to jump to the top and steal the focus. It drives me absoutely crazy, and yet, I have found no way of disabling the feature (if anyone knows of one, please let me know!!)
Not so under Linux - with WindowMaker and Enlightenment at least, this and a whole host of other features are completely customisable. I can set it up just the way I like it - I can even have shaped window borders, which I love (yes, I know you can have similar things under Windows, but so far, I've only found two programs - WinAmp and Yamp - that allow you to do this...).
The same thing applies to skins. Yes, I know that there are an almost unbelievable number of bad ones out there - but no-one is forcing you to use them. The ability to apply a skin/theme to a program lets the user make it look more pleasing to them, which helps make using it more enjoyable. More often than not in my experience, the default skin/theme(s) that ship with any given program (mp3 player, window manager, whatever) are "plain but functional" at best. That's fine; I'd much rather the programmer(s) concentrate on getting it working well than looking pretty. Let others do that; after all, that's part of the Open Source way
I agree that we need to be careful about designing UIs, to try to make them as easy to use as possible, but that shouldn't be at the expense of customisability and aesthetic considerations.
Surely good software can look good too?
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
While skins are simply obnoxious most of the time, they are finally making UI designers consider flexibility. I find it depressing that so many UIs rely on their own hard-coded interface, especially when that interface sucks.
Take, for example, the humble web page. Assume the existance of a user who has figured out that the monitor is not a piece of paper and would prefer white text on a black background. Now, see how long that user can survive in a web where stupid designers set background color to white while allowing the user to keep their preferred font color (which is white, in this case.)
Many programs make this assumption. MS Word uses your preferred background, while forcing a black font, going for a HGTTG-style black-on-black interface. Ghostview for unix used to do this too.
Skins are usually annoying, but if a designer is considering skins, they're far more likely to use the appropriate UI toolkits and implement the extendability properly. This, in my opinion, is better for everyone.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
I think anything that offers the user a greater choice is a good thing, as long as it is not at the expense of decent performace.
I would say though that many themes are implemented in the wrong place IMO. Themeable widget sets for example are an excellent idea (even better if the theme can be selected at application level like with MUI for the amiga for example (does gtk+ allow this?)), because the application programmer doesn't have to do any extra work to make his/her app themeable (and ithe code is also therefore smaller and probably more easily maintained)
On the other hand, themeable individual apps (winamp, xmms, etc) seem a bit daft to me. If your widget set doesn't allow the themeability you want in your app, why not propose some changes to it, or consider a new/different widget set instead of potentially effectively bypassing a users desired appearance.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
I doubt the validity of this statement. People using their computer primarily as a tool for typing documents probably don't customize their machine because they don't know how. If they did, I would bet they would. I've worked at various companies, and "regular" users who only use their computers for word processing and excel also like customizing their desktop with a background picture of their family and their favorite colors, just as they would customize the layout of their desk with personal belongings. There are probably thousands of users using the skin customization program for IE, based on the easy install through activeX and the relatively easy install of skins.
The only barrier is understanding and effort. Of course, some people like decorating their house, and some don't.
As for the number of bad themes around, I would base that on the fact that, a) it takes effort to make a nice looking theme; and, b) one man's trash is another man's treasure (within an obvious bounded range).
--
Is the default score to browse at 1 now, or is it just me?
...freedom!
The freedom of the user to choose what he or she wants what appears on their desktop looks like.
What the Suck crew have got right is that where you have to use skins to use an app you want to use - one very important choice is taken away from the user, and that is the choice to have that app look the same (consistent, not boring) as every other one on their desktop.
But that is a problem with specific skinned apps, not with skinning as a concept. As a concept, skinning works, Richard Stallman said "users should always have a choice", he was talking about free software, but it applies to user interfaces as well. If a person wants their desktop to look like the Star Trek LCARS system, let them - it doesn't mean the rest of us have to. Similarly, if a person wants Netscape 6 to look like the rest of their (Windows|Mac|Linux|etc) desktop, they should be allowed to.
You can't legislate for what people find easier to use, or more pleasing on the eye, or more useful for impressing their friends (or whatever reason people customise their desktops), all you can, and should, do is allow them the freedom to do so anyway they choose.
--
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
winamp has a good many themes that do not mess with functionality
Winamp, which popularized this whole app theming thing, is an excellent example of an application where themes, while they may not help functionality, certainly don't hurt it. It's a simple app, with a few buttons and an information display area. Most people who cannot program their VCR can use it to play tapes. They also don't have a problem using the CD player, and that's really all Winamp is, so making the buttons look like brushed aluminum doesn't really slow most users down.
Additionally, Winamp is a parasitic application -- meaning that it usually runs alongside other applications, and the user rarely runs Winamp exclusively. The user spends little time working with Winamp itself, they're busy using their main applications, with Winamp playing in the background.
What's needed is to spend more time working on the basic usability of applications and widgets. Go read (as mentioned before) the Interface Hall of Shame. Read AskTog's rant about the differences in how Windows and the Mac handle cascading menus.
Lemme tell you about my little improvement to widget usability. I'm working on an application that works as a Win32 Appbar (like the Start menu). It can be docked to any edge, and can be auto-hidden, staying out of the way until the user moves the mouse over the edge the appbar is docked to.
When I first started testing it, I set the appbar properties to auto-hide and stuck it at the top of the screen (my Start bar, like most people's, is at the bottom). This sounds fine, but turned out to be a major irratant -- every time my mouse pointer hit the top of the screen (like, say, when I was going for a menu), the damn appbar would drop down! I'd then have to move the mouse pointer down, wait for the window to retract, then, slowly, move back up to the menu (without moving too high!), then make my selection.
A simple timer, with a user-defined delay, solves this problem. When the mouse moves to the appbar's edge, a timer is started. If, when the timer expires, the mouse is still on the edge, the appbar will show itself. If the user clicks on the top edge (indicating they want to see the appbar immediately), the appbar will show without waiting for the timer.
That's the kind of work UI designers should be doing.
Alan Cooper once said that the web has set user interface design back 15 years. I agree. Instead of ensuring that your applications can be themed by every 31337 h4x0r with a warez copy of Photoshop, make the interface work better.
"200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
I like to skin winamp as much as the next man, but skinning things as fundamentally core to the os such as basic windows and menus does not lead to a productive environment.
WindowBlinds had a novelty value for about 5 mins before it was rapidly removed. I need a clean, consistant and clear interface to get work done.
Finally, haven't we learned anything from the bad web pages of days past? Pause the playing in winamp and the single most visible feature, the track time, begins to blink. I had paused the playback because I didn't want to pay attention to the player and now it forces my eye to come take a look. And while I'm on a rant, since when has the exact second of music that I'm listening to become the most salient feature of the interface? In my winamp window I find that I'm listening to "Funkadelic - Good Thought," with half of the title truncated, but I well informed that I've stopped at 7:12 (blink, blink, what, no milliseconds?) and that this particular stretch of music is encoded at 160kbps and 44kHz and that it is in stereo (no, not, mono that word is greyed out). I've got a volume slider that I know is a volume slider only because the volume changes when I move it, I've got a similarly unlabled balance slider for all of those critical balance changes that I always need to apply while listening. And finally, I'm happy to report that the "shuffle" button is twice as big as the "play" button, because, of course, you use it twice as often. Here's an improved winamp skin in only one line of ascii:
too bad I can't really make this a skin. If I want to "pause" the music then I press pause; if I want to "stop" the music then I can exit the application. I added the "forward track" and "backward track" as convinient chrome. If I want encoding details, I can pop a menu; if I want to shuffle, same thing.Okay, I think I've gotten that off my chest.
While I like skins as much as the next guy, I have some serious problems with some projects which are using them as a replacement for good UI design.
For example, Mozilla. For months myself and others had been providing dozens of reasons to implement native UI widgets instead of the hacked up bitmaps they are currently going with. Reasons?
- Non-native UIs are generally slower than native ones, for whatever reason. I guess this could be fixed with enough work.
- The 'look' of the UI is not consistant with the rest of the OS for those who choose not to use themes. Most people, believe it or not, will probably never switch their theme - or want to. Why should their browser stick out like a sore thumb?
- If the look matches, the 'feel' usually does not. This is more important than it may appear to be at first. Something as subtle as how hierarchial menus are handled will often annoy or frustrate even advanced users.
- Using non-native widgets (basically, bitmaps) often stops system-wide skin/theme programs from working. Your non-standard look and feel is rendered internally inconsistant.
- Using non-native widgets is usually done so that less effort is needed to go cross-platform. Laziness. Do you want your Linux or MacOS program to behave like a Windows one, or vice versa?
In the end, I have rarely/never seen a non-native interface, outside of the occasional game, that didn't look like a really ugly port.
After much time conversing with the Mozilla folks, who presented a laundry list of reasons for the UI that were refuted time and time again by myself and others, the truth came out: AOL is giving these guys very little in the way of a budget to make an acceptable cross-platform browser. The way it was explained, we'd only end up with a Windows version if they DIDN'T go this route due to funding shortages. I fully blame AOL management for this.
However, I still feel it is a mistake. Already reviews have been very mixed, even for a beta quality release (Netscape 6). It's not the obvious bugs and performance issues that bug me, but the so-called 'features' that appear very poorly thought-out from the start. Some of it is very very cool, but without a decent UI design, it's not looking good.
I just hate to see AOL/Netscape's internal politics breaking the browser before it ever had a chance. If only Mozilla were truly 100% autonomous...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
i think this site was posted as a quickie a while back, but i'll post it here since it applies to this story:
http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm
this site is loaded with examples of poor UI design. they do a good job explaining exactly whats wrong with each example; its actually quite educational. its mostly windows and mac stuff, but i think i remember one or two examples from linux apps...
--Siva
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In my opinion, those people who most use themes and stuff of that nature are the kind of people who enjoying using their computer for hacking and learning. Those who just see the computer as a tool for typing documents are not going to go mad over a pretty new widget look. Therefore, those that are most likely to use themes are the most likely to adapt to the changes without any problems.
Now weary traveller, rest your head. For just like me, you're utterly dead.
Most skinnable applicaations Suck(tm) because:
- They require skins. I can't make WinAmp look like a normal Win32 application. Skinning should be an option.
- Being bitmaps, they are resolution dependent. WinAmp on a 1280x1024 desktop is ridiculous, the controls are about a micron high. Double-size? Oh great, ugly pixel jaggies. You say I can just get a "bigger" skin? Well, what if I switch res? Why can't I just use it without having to go find these silly extras!?
- They don't use standard controls. Oops, you can't use tabs, alt-accelerators, or the arrow keys,to navigate the controls. (Sure, accelerators work, but they are hidden, unlike the visual cues.) How many times have you been typing in a stupid homebrew text widget, and all the standard keys like Home/End/etc. don't work? GTK doesn't even always get this right.
- People with visual or motor disorders probably can't use it. If I use a standard control, I can make the font larger if I can't see it; or if I might be blind I can attach voice navigation to it. Not on a skin.
- They tend to ignore components of good UI design as much as most cruddy web sites do.
UIs are UIs, including the web, including apps, including skins. A lot of UI research has taken place over the years. As computers go mainstream, we shouldn't be ignoring it, but heeding it even *more*.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
I am personaly starting to get concerned about the advent of skinning along with some of the other changes in UI design. A couple of years ago you could sit down at a windoze machine and use just about and applications main features without thinking. Now even microsoft break their own UI guidelines (Have you noticed the way the latest office bypasses MDI?). GUI's under Linux has been struggling with the lack of any decent rules for UI design (At least none anyone pays any attention to) and I feel that something should be done to create a more consistent interface.
For the rest of us who want to get things done, something simple would be enough. I propose that judging on useability standards be applied to the DEFAULT (or default few) skin/desktop/window manager. For all others, go ahead and customize it to your desire. (It is customizable, right?)
There is no reason to bitch about skins. The thing to bitch about is poor UI design.
The average user wouldn't know what the hell I meant by "skinned app." If you're going to get into skins, you probably know enough about computers to not get terribly frightened when suddenly the 'look' of your program changes.
If there's anything that can be rightfully bitched about it's poor design in the default interface. We Geeks may know enough to get a better interface/skin, but the average user may not. If the default breaks consistency, the average use is stuck with a crappy UI. (example: Sonique though cool looking isn't rectangular in it's default start-up state; they make up for this in coolness and still putting the X in the top-right)
The ability to change the interface/shape of the app is a little worse, cause things will have both moved and changed looks when you change a skin (eg: Sonique, K-Jofol), so even a Geek will get lost from time to time. It's a hazard we put up with.
The biggest advantage to skins/shape changes is they allow you to update the interface about as easily as you update the program. If I release an app that's got full skin/theme/shape support and my design is royally crappy, I can shift stuff around based on user feedback really easily. It's almost like the OOP applied to UI design.
Computers are fast becoming the multi-purpose appliance of today. They are the typewriter, the fax, the e-mail, the internet, the jukebox, etc. If you look at all of those equivalents in real life you will find totally different designs. I see no reason why this can't be in a computer. The best design of all would be to make the computer totally transparent to the user, but that is a far way off.
So.. do not bitch to me about how skins are the downfall of useability. It's just the fact that we're entering a period where computers are used by everyone, not just those of us willing to 'train.' Programs are still being programmed and designed by programmers, not UI experts and designers. Hell, the easiest way to remedy this is to make it as easy as possible for the aforementioned to change stuff about the app and move it around and.. hey! Isn't that what skinning is?
Apparently various versions of Unix (mainly the BSDs -- I don't think anyone who cares about data security is quite ready for free software yet) are the weapon of choice in go-ahead legal and corporate planning departments. The cluelessness of most VPs is greatly overexaggerated; half of them had PCs as status symbols in the old days, so they can use DOS (which works just like Unix), and they quite like the idea of a CLI. And the old Hewlett Packard Financial Analyst calculator is another example of how tech-savvy finance suits can be if it's something they care about rather than something dull and non-revenue generating like network adminisatration
It's getting to the stage where Unix is reaching the corporate desktop -- I've seen a couple of job ads for secretaries and receptionists which state "must be able to use basic Unix commands". So I guess it's probably time for me to throw the good old Mac away and get with the winning side. I don't understand why all the techie elite types are keen to throw away their only unique selling point at all
--montoya
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Never do that. Just because they're your parents, doesn't mean they can get a free ride. Lawyers learn this early on in their training -- if you want your advice to be considered valuable, charge for it. Ask the most popular cheerleader in your high school -- once you've got a reputation for giving something away, it's difficult to charge for it in later life.
Yeh, but it's your mom and dad, you say. You think you have a point, but you don't. First it's mom and dad. Then it's bro and sis. Then it's Aunty Murtle. Pretty soon you're getting woken up at four AM (after being out drinking martinis to three) in order to get down to some fucken city drunk tank to knock out a misdemeanour plea bargain, gratis, for your third cousin twice removed's stepchild from her third marriage. And it's always "Oh Johnny, could you do this just once? We're faaaammmilleeeee! Have you forgotten where you came from?" Yak yak yak. No, I haven't forgotten where I came from, it's just that now I don't have to fucken go back to that craphole in South Bklyn, I choose not to.
The way I play it, is that I don't make my family sign a check. But if they want my professional services, they should be prepared to give me some of theirs. So I get my car washed, my plumbing done, my dinner cooked, and on occasion a little recreational fellatio (only from relatives no closer than first cousin, naturally -- I'm not a fucken pig).
With more and more people having net connections, and all manner of what have you, it strikes me that technology types are going to be almost as much in demand as lawyers in the next few years. So I'd advise you guys to learn a few lessons from the legal profession. We learned the lesson from the teamsters -- Gas, Grass or Ass, nobody rides for free.
--just call me streetlawyer, ma'am
-- the most controversial site on the Web