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KDE And Gnome Cooperate On Interface Guidelines
An anonymous reader submits "Competing infrastructures may foster improvement in each desktop, but the Gnome and KDE hackers still know how to work together when needed. The Free *nix desktop has been improving quickly. Red Hat's unified desktop was controversial, but obviously the right decision for regular users. Now that KDE and Gnome have decided to combine their Human Interface Guides, it can be done right--by the developers themselves. Note: they also want to involve 'people working on other non-KDE non-GNOME HIGs.'" Update: 02/03 20:19 GMT by T : Apparently not everyone's browser can read http://freedesktop.org, so the initial link up there now sports a "www" as well. And it's .org -- sorry.
Presidents Bush, Chirac, and Hussein were found making out in a hot tub.
As long as we always have things like Fluxbox in addition to KDE/GNOME, I'll be happy.
Hell must be frozen over now.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Cats and dogs... Living together. Panic in the streets.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
http://www.freedesktop.org/ works.
We're losing sight of what the most important issue is here. Should a unified desktop be called GNODE or KNOME?
They are a great minimalist "desktop environment" and should get a say in all this.
-
People wondered what impact Apple and their interface would have on the other 'nixes. I am pretty stoked to see what comes of this. We could be looking at the golden age of desktop 'nix right around the corner. If KDE/Gnome can just come up with something unique and useful , and chuck the Win98-ish crap....
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Microsoft!! Look at the beauty of XP. MS Linux:)
One of the thing that is really bothersome about Linux Applications is that they all operate differently. Dialog boxes are arranged strangely, different Window Managers put different buttons for managing different windows in different places. There are way too many save and open dialog boxes, with more appearing each time a Developer writes a new Linux Application.
The situation is quite a bit better if you settle on KDE or GNOME. Each one has user interface guidelines. The problem is still pretty acute, though, since neither one ships only (or even mainly) with programs that conform to their respective user interface guidlines! And of course most third party applications conform to the guidelines in the same way that Krap and Garbage conform to the formal dress guidelines for a wedding.
It is very encouraging that KDE and GNOME are working to standaradize their guidelines throughout Linux. It would be a lot better for the two if Applications from one didn't look like they fit into the other, but at least familiar buttons, dialogs and shortcut keys would operate in the same manner. This is almost as encouraging as it was discouraging when Apple decided to throw away their excellent interface guidelines and develop new and bad ones for OS X.
What's next, vi & emacs developers frolicing in the fields after a nice picnic? Then what? What fuel have we then for the flame wars?!?
If Red Hat's decision had been "obviously right", it wouldn't have been "controversial".
Best Fit is when something is made so that it is as good as it can be, not when it is weighed down by things that are unnecessary
The idea of human interface guidelines is restrictive from the start. Nobody know's better than the coder who codes and application how it should work. Having guidelines written beforehand that should say how it works doesn't make complete sense.
Look at apple and their rejection of tabbed browsing. Thats something that has adapted from systems that work well, yet they're saying "no not on our turf".
Then turn around and the apple web site is all tabbed anyway. Websites have better interfaces as they are made to fit each purpose.
Each application needs freedom. Having them all with exactly the same system is like a monoculture.
it's a bummer that sarcasm is so hard to write via text
Actually, they are just hosting both of the sets of guidelines on the same site, not agreeing on one set of guidelines for both toolkits. In the end, this is a good thing, because the two widget sets are radically different on a few key points, making agreement on human interface guidelines fundamentally improbable.
It is a sign; the free desktop guidelines were sent to us to aid in our defense.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
start here
finally ego's are starting to subside and we are working together. i have dreamt about this for years, a common human interface guide, that will work consistently. i do not need 100 differnt ways to do something.. nor do i need 100 different widget sets. i just want something that works the same way every time
You're joking, right?
Red Hat's unified desktop was controversial, but obviously the right decision for regular users.
It was neither the obviously correct decision, nor the correct decision. Give me a vanilla KDE desktop any day over the monstrosity that is Blue Curve.
... the longest-used, most consistently enforced set of user interface guidelines in the industry for some ideas.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Apparently the www matters.
At least it will be possible to quickly identify the differences between the guidelines now, but not as much as I hoped for.
are the developers.
They think and know too much about *how* the system is *implemented* rather than how it will be *used* - which is a very different thing. They tend to be function oriented rather than task oriented.
On the plus side, having UI design guidelines is a good start and at least it gives something that can serve as a basis for discussion.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Apparently FreeDesktop's web admin doesn't know what a ServerAlias directive is.
LFS. Have you built your system today?
I love how everything in OS X seems to be well thought out; XP on the other hand, may have been assembled after the MS Christmas party, you know the one where Ballmer dry humped Bill's leg and everyone laughed, got fired, and re-hired in the same night.
I hope that linux can get moving with the standardized (yet infinitely customizable) interface. Maybe throw in those spiffy vector icons (eye candy!), some way to never visit the CLI if I don't want to, and a way to make configuration eaiser.
But I digress. A standard desktop will only encourage linux. Those who want to run the u1tr4 l33t desktops can still do so, and the people who just want an easy alternative to windows will have one. Or buy a mac :)
So for many, many months I was using my OpenBSD machine thinking "Man oh man this looks like Windows. It even has a Start menu." Everything worked exactly as a Windows machine except for pokey games and the slight lags I'd notice once in a while.
My dream was shattered when I realized I was just VNC'd to my Windows machine.
Trolling is a art,
But I hope that application designers will work to ensure that their applications are tiled window manager friendly. Popping up new windows is harmful to the interface, and screws up the display in tiling window managers like ion.
because not everyone likes gay porn, especially Apple's style
Since the Bitstream people were kind enough to be the first to donate a good TTF for use with Linux, would it be likely that Gnome/KDE would standardize on Bitstream Vera as the default (true type) font for their desktops?
This post was confusing for me "obviously the right decision for regular users" I'm not sure if that is meant in the real meaning of the word, people who use regularly or used to mean normal. I think it's the second. It's a little nitpickey, maybe I'm just confusing myself
Wow I suprised to see how many posts there were to this article, I mean does anyone really care? So their combining, were they so different that this will cause any form of true annoyance?
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
I'm a graphic designer who's done a lot of interface design, as well as being an avid follower of human-computer interface trends and issues.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how someone like myself would help contribute to an Open Source project? While I am not a programmer by any means, the interface is definitely somewhere that can use some help in all the Linux distros I've seen and used.
Also, being a Mac person, I don't really know which direction to turn in; i.e. does Gnome need help? Debian? etc. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Should be .org. .com is some crappy ad site.
Linux: harmony and understanding
http://comic.escomposlinux.org/ecol-07-e.png
Please note the corrected URL points to www.freedesktop.org, while the old one was freedesktop.org, NOT freedesktop.com.
If we can't keep the org/net/com/new TLD of the day straight, how can we expect others who just want it to work to keep it straight?
A hint to the Slashdot editors, who somehow managed to forget to proofread their post and URLs for the first time in memory. What is happening to Slashdot's high journalistic standards?
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
We KDE users will never mingle amongst you gnome-using elitist beardie weirdies! gnome is dead, long live KDE!
Or perhaps they got the hint from OS X.
The URLs ares
freedesktop.org and www.freedesktop.org
not freedesktop.com and www.freedesktop.com
which seem to be placeholders for a domain squatter.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Or if you look at the bottom of the page, the site is hosted by Redhat. Perhaps the same people who had the hint at Redhat tried to move the effort out into the community in general.
The truth hurts, doesn't it?
Love,
~dlb
It works great in IE :) tee hee
begin sarcasm;
Hey, MS is releasing a version of linux soon too. Check out their website..
MS Linux
end sarcasm;
http://www.freedesktop.org/ Website hosted by Red Hat, Inc. Is this a cry for help? They need to fix the abomination that is blue curve?
Well OSX didn't take their software and straighten it out, like a teacher and the students.
--------
Free your mind.
The link at the end of the story that points to freedesktop.com should probably point to freedesktop.org (or even www.freedesktop.org since the non-www version seems to cause trouble for some people). Unless, of course, slashdot really meant to provide some free advertising to the lucky folks at freedesktop.com.
"Update: 02/03 19:56 GMT by T: Apparently not everyone's browser can read http://freedesktop.com, so the initial link up there now sports a "www" as well."
Appreciate that. I'm stuck with this low market-share browser that couldn't handle the URL. Appreciate the bone.
This can only be a good thing for both desktops. It will also make life easier for programmers who wish to support both desktops.
It shows that KDE and Gnome can have healthy competition while at the same time, work for a common goal, unlike unhealthy competition where one tries to be incompatible in the hopes of gaining an advantage. It is too bad that some proprietary companies don't understand the long-term benefits of healthy competition verses unhealthy competition.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Hello readers,
Please allow me to introduce you my UI review which I've written a couple of days ago. It explains various aspects of the current GNOME GUI situation and illustrates them by using a bunch of pictures. I think posting this here is a good idea so you as programmer get a sight of the whole situation that personally I see. This text has been discussed with the members of the GNOME germany community on IRC and various other members of the GNOME community that work directly or indirectly with the modules on CVS. It has been read, verified and signed to be a good source of information. I really like to encourage you to read this so you can avoid problems within your future projects if you see the system as a whole. This text can be found here and was sent to the mailinglist which can be read here and last bot not least OSNews.com announced it big on their mainpage where many people can read and comment about it here. A copy of the text has been sent to Bill, Callum and Seth.
In case you read the text already. Let me encourage you to read it again because I made some heavily updates to it (also verified by the community).
Greetings.
oGALAXYo
A UNIFIED THEME FORMAT.
Finally the KDE Team stopped being crying babies. I've always thought that it was very unprofessional for them to whine constantly about how Redhat had it "in for KDE". The problem with Linux is it needs a common desktop with different themes. I don't want two different control panels.
I think the web browser should be Mozilla, the office suite should be Open Office, email client Evolution, and NOT a bunch of substandard incompatible(i.e. you cant cut and paste between KDE and Gnome apps). I DON'T like Koffice and the rest of the garbage BUT I DO like KDE's Graphical User Interface more than Gnomes.
This is a very good step, because we should take the best from KDE and Gnome and combine it into one effort.
A shared compound document model across both platforms!
Or twm for that matter. Do you really want bloated eye-candy in exchange for efficient
functionality offered by fvwm?. Hell will freeze over before I install Gnome or KDE.
Think that's funny? Get a load of this.
http://www.microsoftlinux.com/
And the guy's serious. Makes a good point too.
freedestop.com is not freedesktop.org
Lasers Controlled Games!
As long as the agree on the ordering of "Ok" and "cancel" in the bottem right corner of a window, I'm happy.
Too bad Timothy has no idea WTF he's talking about.
Apparently not everyone's browser can read http://freedesktop.com
Not only is freedesktop.com -NOT- the site in the article, but the browser has nothing to do with it.
$ ping freedesktop.org
ping: unknown host freedesktop.org
$ ping www.freedesktop.org
PING freedesktop.redhat.com (66.187.233.246) from 192.168.0.3
Under Timothy's logic, my version of BASH can't read it either. I'd better upgrade to Windows Explorer or something more "standard".
Timothy:
It's a server config issue. Whoever admins freedesktop.org (Redhat apparently) doesn't understand Apache config well enough to allow requests for http://freedesktop.org. Is it you by chance?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Of course, this is just a way for RedHat to move over to the KDE without getting egg on their face.
I've got a friend of mine -- who should really be commenting on this stuff himself, but seems to have fallen from the face of the planet -- who is (was?) highly involved in some Gnome development.
He was always talking about how SUN funded all these usability studies on Gnome and basically neudered it. They basically LCD'd (lowest common denominator, not liquid crystal display) the whole environment. This is part of the reason that KDE looks like crap under RedHat -- since all the cool stuff was taken out of Gnome, and RedHat wanted Gnome and KDE to look very similar, guess what happened to all the KDE features... *poof* gone.
It really seems like KDE is doing the right thing.. and this is painful for me to say, being a big RedHat fan (while it's unrelated, I work right down the street from them), but I really feel like they're stuck in a common big-business problem of "Well, we dumped all this money into it, so we can't stop using it or we'll look really dumb."
I agree on unifying the desktop.. but man, RedHat did a job on KDE.
Left the corrected version previewed but saved in a tab. Since I'd previewed, and it looked fine to me, I was wondering what the comments were talking about. Braintremor, sorry.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
No, I just left it in a tab after I previewed, didn't realize I hadn't updated / thought I had. Sorry!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
So browsers are now supposed to support URL's for DNS names that don't exist?
ping freedesktop.org
ping: unknown host freedesktop.org
Why? Simple: The KDE/GNOME problems aren't even close to being a problem for the mainstream Windows users. The barriers keeping them from converting to Linux are app and data compatibility and availability, and the pain of migration.
While I applaud this effort, it will only benefit those already on Linux. It's equivalent to trying to get people to convert from gas to electric cars by offering them better floor mats in the new vehicles.
No-one's browser should be able to read "http://freedesktop.org/", since no nameserver returns an A or CNAME record for the domainname "freedesktop.org"
Can someone explain why a browser would be so broken that it would return a page for a domain that simply doesn't exist?
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
I'm just wondering why they don't start by uniting the sound systems ... having two interfaces is not so bad, as long as they interoperate reasonably well. And by that I mean the very basics, like clipboard and sound. Uniting the sound API shouldn't be that hard, and moreover should reduce the nuissance of killing/restarting artsd everytime I want to use sound within a gnome application .
The Raven
dumbass, if you had read a single thing put out by KDE + GNOME you would have realised that both looked carefully at every major published style guide out there including BeOS, Next, Apple, Sun and even Microsoft.
why can't slashdot posters read before they run their fucking mouths?
A few stories ago (on /.) librsvg was mentioned, and how great the gnomedesktoplooks with it. We might be ready to start building icons, widgets, themes, ... for svg,itwilllook great,but it could be better...
... and store them in the file system (think about config files too here) so both KDE and Gnome can use a common base of SVG themes.
How about putting KDE's and Gnome's heads together to think how to create themes, icons,
We're all (both KDE and Gnome) just starting to get SVG working, get it done right now!
Maybe they will both agree to use less memeory as well. I have a box with about a GIG it in and I have seen both KDE and Gnome eat 750M.
"See, use Ctrl+C (sometimes?), but if you're in a console, just highlight it... But don't highlight anything otherwise, or you'll lose whats in your clipboard".
And what about PASTING! Highlighting to overwrite in one sequence copies what you highlighted to your clipboard (overwriting your precious clipboard text)! GFD! Mozilla got around this by using a special key sequence to highlight the entire location bar without copying it, but what about EVERY OTHER TEXT BOX YOU USE!!!! </rant>
RedHat's unified desktop was not controversial. The damage they did to KDE was. If KDE and Gnome functioned and looked exactly the same, few if anyone would have a problem. The problem is when RedHat removes features and abilities from KDE that are available in Gnome, which creates the impression that Gnome is a better desktop. "Unified" is a euphemism--what they actually did was CREATE differences that didn't exist before.
Why re-invent the wheel? Why not just adopt Apple's guidelines as-is?
... by requiring users to hold down the apple key while pressing the mouse button for operations that in the UNIX or Windoze world would use the right mouse button).
... so even the X Window System, which so many love to deride and hate, offers an improvement over Apple and Windoze.
Because Apple's 1 button mouse is an affront to humankind.
Seriously, Apple's interface is nice, and they will likely borrow a plethora of good ideas from Apple, but they should not adopt their standard "as is" without question. There are bozo aspects to Apple's interface, the one-button mouse being the most obvious (and before you suggest Apple doesn't need additional mouse buttons, think again. They've had to cobble on the equivelent functionality in a much less intuitive fashion
Finally, they can have my single clock middle-button paste feature I've enjoyed under X all these years when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Windows and Apple do not make cutting and pasting text nearly as easy as X
Focus follows mouse is another example of a feature common in X window managers, lacking in Windoze, and certainly not the default (if available at all) under Apple OS.
So, while Apple has much good to offer, they are not the be-all, end-all of GUI interfaces, anymore than Microsoft, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, or any other particular entity is. They come to the table with a great deal of experience, and a great deal to offer, but God(tm) they are not.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Work is underway to give OpenOffice first a Quartz interface then a full Aqua interface. The current OpenOffice for the Mac depends on X11 and is clearly labeled as a "Developer's Pre-release".
OpenOffice on OS X only exists in it's current form so that the backend code (common to all ports - filters and so forth) can be debugged insofar as the non-GUI parts don't like Darwin. Once the core is solid and clean on Darwin then it will get an interface that is more pleasing. If they had to make a native interface for it before doing anything else, it would take much longer for a solid OS X port. The roadmap is here.
You're larger point may be valid but the OSX port of OpenOffice (as it currently stands) is not a valid example.
Some sound cards have multiple dsps. I believe the Soundblaster Live! has one super dsp that can be multiplexed into a number of devices. Perhaps a Live user can elaborate. I use an ES1373 based card in my home rig that has a full record and playback dsp0 and a playback only dsp1. I usually have artsd running on dsp1 (I don't use any apps that record through arts) and I leave dsp0 open for whatever. The ES1373 helped with my hassles in that regard quite a bit.
To a certain degree,yes. I would like to see a loose coupling between look and behavior. The previous article about SVG could help in the look department since all desktops are basically circles,squares, and rectangles in various permutations. Our desktops are presently in a state of flux, hence the various desktops you see. By seperating the two we also make it easier for UI designers to make changes without being programmers, and programmers to make changes without being as heavily involved in the look (someone still has to handle "behavior"). Better tools for both could eleminate many of the look and feel issues we constantly have to deal with, and also makes it easy to play "what if..." with the desktop without as heavily a penalty one presently pays.
However, I'd debate that it was not only not "obviously right", but that it may not even have been "right", full stop.
vms developers dranking beer with unix developers, C and C++ developers smoking pot, droping acid, watching pr0n... mass hysteria... Armagedon...
That way the defaults chosen are up to distro makers.
I don't know about you lot but I have been waiting for a long time for the two factions to decide to cooperate.
Having two competing desktops has been useful and productive in the past due to forcing each other to go just that extra mile in an attempt to be better than the other lot. Unfortunately nowdays, it has become increasingly counter-productive in winning over users to the GNU/Linux system.
The old pioneering days are over, it is time to pat each other on the back for a job well done and get merging (or at the very least cooperating) to ensure a coherent user interface.
Having multiple desktop environments is a Good Thing. But having them incompatible with each other, as well as their applications, is a serious bad thing.
Of course it isn't the only thing that holds the regular user away from Linux, but that's another subject.
I've been wondering about that. MacOS X makes consistent use of the bright, clean white pinstripe look that defines Aqua. Now many of their new apps use the brushed metal look. Can't Apple pick one and stick with it? They're both nice, but seeing both on screen at the same time is a bit jarring. Perhaps their are two rival graphic artist teams fighting for domination within the company? (And I suspect that many of these applications are independently reimplementing the brushed metal look, a great way to ensure that each app looks and behaves slightly differently from everything else.)
Search 2010 Gen Con events
focus follows mouse is possible in windows.. :) .. so unless you're completely f**ked and need to use Win95 ( a version of which you may still be available online, i think ms no longer has on their site.) , then you can have various niceties that you miss from X-Windows in MS operating systems :) :)
if you download and install TweakUI (available on MS's website) you can get that option..
it's the 1st thing i do whenever i get a new windows installation
TweakUI is available for Win98, WinNT, 2k and XP
though, i will admit that i think ffm (focus-follows-mouse) shoudl be the default
--vat
There's a reason why there's a such dearth of people doing usability for open source software.
In general, both GNOME and KDE developers usually do an excellent job of chasing away people with UI design abilities. There's this attitude among the developers that HCI is a far less important endeavor than, say, something technical like programming. And the developers will let you know it every step of the way. The developers also tend to have the attitude that principles of cognitive psychology (the things you need to exploit in an interface to make it very usable) are a load of bull or nothing more than just one person's opinion. It won't matter how many journal issues you might cite. You can't reason with people who think that Fitts' Law is a TV show about lawyers.
Also, if you're a mac person, it's really going to annoy the hell out of you that GNOME and KDE developers refuse to believe that microsoft is capable of making really bad UI design decisions. One of people in charge of this new-fangled GNOME/KDE truce told me that Microsoft UI design incompetance was "a myth". Guess he never saw multi-row tabs.
One thing you want to do is to look at the first year and a half of the "gnome-gui" list (that was the main gnome usability list for awhile) versus the GNOME usability mailing list of today. Notice how the first year or two of the old mailing list had people from a wide variety of UI design backgrounds who brought really good usability ideas to the table. Over the last several years, the GNOME usability movement has degenerated into a "hackers good ole boys club" consisting of a bunch of linux programmers who seem like they'd rather be spending their time in vi writing bash scripts.
Until there's a good direction to turn to, a distro or open source project that actually values the input of usability folks, you're probably best off staying where you are. The current batch of projects and distributions are committed to shooting themselves (and their end users) in the foot.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I have just one request for whoever is going to tackle this task (and it won't be an easy one):
Please stop copying windows.
Just because windows does it doesn't mean it's not total garbage. Go to Nextstep, to Apple for examples. Copy from the people who know what they're doing. Take the good parts from windows and leave the crap behind.
We will all thank you so much. If we wanted windows, we'd be running it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Cool. So instead of taking 6 or 4 years of getting to where we are, it will now take 20 and we will have to allow for major viruses and worms.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Or perhaps it was a reaction to rh8 messing up their software (doubt it, havoc is a rh employee, and he's involved with this)
Does that mean that Apple is bad at UI design?
KDE isn't only coders, and Gnome is probably the same.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
homepage.mac.com/max_08/themes/brushed.htm
I have to wonder too... it seems Apple threw the HIG out to the pinstriped window. No wonder I don't like the default MacOS X interface. Give me MacOS 9 any day... now, with a good theme (see above link) MacOS X is quite nice.
The problem here is that people have gotten confused about what the "clipboard" is. The clipboard is not what selecting something with the mouse changes and not what your middle mouse button pastes. Selecting with the mouse changes the primary selection, and the middle mouse button pastes the primary selection. "Copy" copies the primary selection to the clipboard; merely selecting something doesn't, it just changes the primary selection to refer to what you selected. "Paste" inserts the contents of the clipboard in place of the current selection (which could be a "zero-length" selection, in which case it amounts to inserting at the point of the selection, e.g. insert at the text cursor in a text window).
I'm sorry, what?
I consider myself reasonably computer literate, and I was completely confused by this explanation. If I have to read this twice to understand how the X clipboard works, the average user is never going to understand why Control-C doesn't work...
Your problem is that you don't understand that not everyone has the same preferences as you. There's a lot of people (even here on /.) that would readily tell you that everyone should standardize on Windows, that the web browser should be IE, the office suite should be MS Office, email client Outlook, and everything else should be by MS as well and all independent software vendors should either go down the tubes or be bought up by MS until there's only one software vendor in the whole world.
Luckily, we still have some choice left, and it seems to be growing every day. Some people actually like Konqueror, Koffice, Kmail, or even other programs like Opera, VIM, and elm.
What KDE and GNOME seem to be doing, which they should, is standardizing the UI guidelines so that KDE and GNOME applications aren't radically different from each other (in needless ways), and so that it's easier for people to use GNOME applications on KDE, and vice versa. I applaud them for this first step, and I hope they'll work together even more in the future to make their environment work together better. Some possibilities, off the top of my head, would be to have look-n-feel settings apply to all applications, and for printing to work seamlessly between them too.
It's funny you bring up those few apps that are 'unique' in the way that they deviate from the Apple norm. They have a brushed metal appearence.
The core guidelines were formed at a time when the Desktop model was all-important, and each window contained a document.
Now, the brushed metal apps were originally designed to be used in contexts that have "real-world examples". This was mainly in the form of a VCR or Radio for QuickTime and iTunes, respectively.
However, with some additions such as Safari and the Address Book, Apple is (perhaps unintentially) creating a new paradigm, the 'Application'.
Unlike the traditional 'document' windows, these windows do not consist of a single edited file, but instead provide an interface to interact with some sort of dynamic system (such as a music library, the www, or Saved Addresses). These windows are entirely different from documents, and are more often than not used for read-only access to these collections of files.
In fact, I believe that some distinct difference between these 'applications' and 'documents' should be a requirement for any GUI. You do not interact with these different models in the same way, so they should be distinguishable by the user.
Matthew Thomas has been criticising UI aspects in Mozilla.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
How much of that 750M is buffer, and how much is cache. Now tell me again how much MB were used by KDE or Gnome. Unused memory is wasted memory.
Johan Veenstra
After Gnome and KDE come to terms on what the new HI guidelines should be they should then create a new weel defiend API in which most of the functionailty is pre-defined according to HI Guidelines.
On Mac OS X using Cocoa or Carbon, Interface Builder takes care of almost all the HI issues, though you can still violate HI guidelines if you try hard enough, Everything from layout to spacing is pre-defined.
Personally, I feel this would get developers to make Apps that actually follow these new guidelines since the developer had a tradeoff of gaining a rapid GUI development platform that follows UI guidelines as well as having to write less code to do it.
From experience, the Interface Builder provided with the Mac OS X developer tools is the greatest GUI development tool, i have ever had the pleasure of working with, if KDE/Gnome provides me with something similiar I would consider doing development on the linux platform again.
-"I'm one of those Mac people that will break a bottle on the bar and hold it to your throat for bad-mouthing my system"
What is this "usability" you speak of? I've never heard of it in all my years of Linux GUI programming.
Apple started using TrueType fonts on their OS because Postcript fonts where never thought to look good on screen. That's where the hinting (and probably other features of TTF) come from. As I understand, and been told from friends in the graphic design market, TrueType fonts are, on the other hand, worse for printed works.
I agree thought that on Linux TTF fonts don't look as good (althought that might change with the release of freetype 2.1.4), but that has nothing to do with the font format.
I would prefer the use of OpenType that promises the best of both worlds and more, but well, meybe in the future...
I have used the TweakUI focus-follows-mouse mode. The problem is that no Windows software expects the "window manager" to work like that, and as a result you get a lot of display glitches and other unexpected behaviour.
Involving the entire community in every aspect of an HIG debate is a recipe for disaster. More on that in a moment.
If you ask me, the community would be better served by a building a unified theme standard first. Any attempts at building a unified HIG will be meaningless until this is done first -- You cant institute change from the inside out. You have to work your way from the outside in. I mean, think about it --- Your apps will be pretty, but having inconsistancy outside of the app will defeat the whole purpose of having it in the first place.
Neh, but what do I know. I tried to make this dog and cat live together in '98 and got burnt at the stake for suggesting that Gnome employ consistant design principles.
What will ultimately work will be a series of guidelines developed and issued by a small, protected group of people (NOT coders) working and debating in private, while ocassionally asking the community et al for their input. Taking all the little details and laying them bare for the public's parousal is a sure fire way to see that your ideas get completely enbalmed in red tape. Mark my words -- Design by a 10,000 person comittee will fail. Design by a 5 person comittee with dedication and honest intentions will succeed, and marvelously so.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Subtile humour, I call it :)
Anyways, it was changed long ago. Check the latest comic strips.
wtf? Sounds like somebody's taking things a bit too seriously around here...
no, you got burned at the stake because you presented an unproductive, insulting voice.
red tape is a term used when ineffective people meet with resistance. that resistance is there to make sure dumb ideas don't get thru the weed-out process.
design by a 10000 person committee ? what does the number of people have to do with it. maybe you mean to say that design by a large committee
hasn't, in the past, agreed with YOU ? i think that's what you really mean when you say that, as you cross your arms and stamp on the floor, tears running down your cheeks.
i'll help you (yet again) on this...if you don't listen to it...well, i tried.
when you are a jackass to other people, insulting, condescending, and/or being not nice, then those people are most likely not going to want to work/talk/play with you. that's why they haven't thus far, in the past, for any extended period of time.
when you find yourself alone with your desktop/development ideas, consider that this could be the case.
and also, by claiming that you're NOT this big of a jerk in real life, that it's all a put-on...that's a cop-out, and irrelevant.
i'm sorry if you:
a- had a bad childhood
b- lost your job
c- someone broke up with you
d- your mom/dad was mean when you were little
e- have for whatever reason a chip on your shoulder
but these are not valid excuses for being an immature jerk. you have posted someone's personal info (again, not mine) many times over.
for what ?
"punishment" for calling you a jerk ?
boy you sure showed him, didn't you ? hope you're proud of yourself.
how about trying to contribute something insightful to the discussion ? or would that be too hard ?
"A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
-- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
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