Interview with David Faure of Mandrake & KDE
JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an interesting interview with David Faure, the french KDE developer who works for Mandrake Software. His code can be found on Konqueror, KFM, KWord and he is also the main bug hunter for KDE. David talks about KDE 3's enhancements and speed improvements, the future of KWord, the debugging tools under Linux, and even Gnome2, .NET, MacOSX and Mozilla."
I expect the average Windows user would take it pretty well. Your average Windows user is used to dealing with software that has private theming/skinning support (WinAmp, Windows Media Player) and software that ignores the global theme settings and does its own thing (most CD burning software, Cable modem branded Internet Explorer, RealPlayer, QuickTime). Your average Windows user is used to Microsoft changing interface styles leaving a glaring difference between new and old apps (addition of gradient title bars (originally on MS Office only), the new XP widgets).
Many software developers feel the need to be arty and throw the standard Windows interface out the window. It's unfortunate, (It hurts usability and accessability), but it's the current situation. Windows is no better than Unix with X-Windows. The only way to get highly consistent theming in Windows is to use Microsoft applications exclusively. To get highly consistent theming under Unix, pick either Gnome or KDE and stick with it.