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Mozilla to use same Widgets on All Platforms
edgy
writes "Mozilla is going to use the same
web form widgets across Windows,
Unix, and Mac, so that the web pages look exactly the same
under all OS's. Can web developers apply styles to these
widgets so they can make it look like whatever they want
across all OS's? According to Mozillazine, they
can. Sounds very cool! " The page actually has screen shots of the
widgets. How long before someone make a GTK theme that looks like these?
They aren't bad.
I never did like the way widgets looked in pages
under Netscape. I can't wait for Mozilla!
What is the XPToolkit? Who makes it?
The problem I always had under windows95/98/NT was that textareas could only take a max of 32K characters. Ok, some of you say "why would you need that much in web browser?" But thats kind of like bill gates saying "64K oughta be enough for anyone", so...I hope that limit is gone now on all platforms. It works fine under linux...and of course, IE 4 does not have the problem because microsoft wrote a custom widget for it.
whoever came up with the "combo box" widget should be shot. that's a windows-3.1-ism, isn't it?
whatever its origins, it earned a mention on the interface hall of shame. and i've seen new computer users get confused over it. it's proven bad design. oh well. other than that, the widgets look pretty good. of course, any new widget set must be themeable to be taken seriously these days, it seems, so it'll be interesting to see if that gets included.
nice stuff anyway
According to the status quo. If you're going to change the status quo, you ought to have some sort of reasoning for doing so.
I have to say: it does seem like a rather bad idea to unilaterally implement mouse-over changes in these types of widgets.
But, I was never in favor of toolbar mouse-over-ing, either.
On all major platforms, the native widgets do not provide the flexibility required to completely support CSS1+2 (e.g. transparency, or "strikeout" text style). Therefore a non-native widget set must be used for Web content.
Users prefer to have everything look consistent. However, the effort required to have the non-native widget set look and feel EXACTLY like the native widgets, ESPECIALLY when that means obeying the native platform's theme settings, is intractable. This is especially true when the native platform is upgraded in a way that tweaks the look and feel of the native widgets (e.g. MS comes out with a new look for W2K, Mozilla's Windows-look-alike widgets now look stupid). The argument was strongly made that if you can't look and feel exactly like the native platform, then it's better to not make the attempt ... getting it nearly right will just make users think it's meant to BE right, and they'll get unhappy. Therefore the non-native widget set should NOT attempt to look just like any of the existing platforms.
The supporting argument was made that people are already used to seeing various looks and feels in Web content, e.g. buttons made with Javascript hacks.
For non-content UI, such as dialog boxes, where full adherence to CSS is not required, native widgets can and should be used. (However, a nice feature having a common non-native widget set is that when the native platform is missing a widget, you can just use the XP version instead.)
As far as I know, it was NOT important that a common widget set helps people create Web sites that look the same across platforms. First of all, it's not true, and secondly, XP look is what CSS is for.
Rob (roc+@cs.cmu.edu)
IE on Solaris looks incredibly like a Windows app, not a CDE app.
>If I'm using Linux, I want my software to look like Linux software.
What does Linux software look like? Many apps come with their own wiget sets (gimp, when gtk was only for gimp; xv, etc). There are numerous wigetsets available for Linux to include Xaw, Xaw95, NextAw, Qt, Tk, NextTk, Gtk, XForms, Motif, just to name a few, and I would guess that you are already running at least half of these.
>And what's with this "controls changing their look on mouseover" bullshit?
Yeah, Tk and Gtk is stupid for doing stuff like this.
I think that this will inevitably be a good thing, not in the sense of the cross platform look stuff but for UNIX it will eliminate any dependance on an outside wiget set, and thank god be then end of those ugly and slow Motif widgets that they are now using.
OS/2, Mac, Win95; hell no. That's the MUI 2.3 widget set for the Amiga, down to the font and pixel. Check out aMozilla for the new screenshots...
Most of that looks okay; pretty Mac like, sure, but the Mac has pretty nice widget sets.
What I can't *stand* are those Windows-style combo boxes! I've always loved the Motif combo boxes (although they got signifigantly lamer in version 2.0), and in fact I was instantly sold on GTK the first time I saw it when I noticed it had old Motif-style combo boxes.
The windows ones suck even worse on web pages. Try this: go to www.theonion.com on your UNIX machine. Check out the pretty green combo box for choosing your issue in the upper left hand corner. Now go there on a windows machine. ICK! Ugly!
It's an abonmination, I tell you.
Anyone who uses Java in a webpage when not absolutely necessary must DIE. I like my widgets. I like my colorscheme. I don't like browsing a web page to cause my browser's memory consumption to double. I don't like web pages that take 30 seconds to load over my ISDN. And I *especially* don't like panes which scroll kinda jerky on my 500 mHz system.
Java sucks! It's one thing if you have an applet for people to be able to play a game (say, poker) on your website. It's another thing if you duplicate the browser's functionality just to show how cool you are. Websites like that usually turn me off to the point of just leaving.
Actually no.. Because the IE4 rendering engine
doesn't use native widgets either because of the
very same reasons Mozilla isn't going to use them: z-ordering, clipping, transparency etc.
Most of you are missing the point. Regardless of whether or not the individual widgets are attractive, having universal widgets means that the layout of a form can be made to look optimal on all platforms. The web designer doesn't have to worry about buttons and text fields being different sizes on every platform, and doesn't have to test his page on every OS under the sun to make sure it appears properly (i.e. a row of buttons doesn't wrap to the next line).
They will not use gtk like it has been told? Great.
And yes, these widgets do look pretty good although the frames could be thicker (1600x1200 resolution) and I'd prefer a sunken motif- or next- like scrollbar.
At first, I liked the combo boxes in Motif, however it was Netscape which drove me to hate them. They're really nice if you only have around 10 choices, however if you have a lot of choices it can be annoying. What always happens to me is that I'll be filling something out online, and I'll get to a combo box that has a ton of choices, and the choice I want is in the third column. What happens then is I end up with columns on top of columns (I don't run a very high resolution) and overall it's just a bad situation.
On the other hand, I do agree with you that the Motif combo boxes look better. Maybe if someone combined the two they'd get something pretty and usable. Then again, maybe they'd get some useless deformed thing. Oh well, IMHO it's worth a try anyway.
(1) security: if a javascript window pops up, you know it's a javascript window, not a local app, because its widgets are subtly different from your native widgets.
(2) rendering: it is now possible to make a web page render exactly the same on ALL systems. purists, take heart: you can continue designing pages exactly the same way you've been designing them; it's just that the non-purists now can really use HTML as a layout language.
Oh come on ...
Just how difficult can it be to figure out a #$#^$#^% radio button or drop-down list?
Users can be dumb, yes, but really. Lets be realistic here. Not having native look n feel radio buttons etc is NOT going to confuse even the thickest of users, I'm sure.
This is pathetic.
A button is a button. If it doesn't look quite the same inside my web browser as it does in other apps, SO F-ING WHAT??
Users may be a bit thick sometimes, but come on, this idea that people are going to find it *confusing* just because the button on a Web page doesn't look the same as everywhere else is BS. Users are not that dumb, even the real thick ones can figure out what a radio button or check box is.
Frankly this sort of stuff is barely an issue to me, I can't see why people are getting in such a huff about it.
- David Joffe
but since it is open source i can change it.
those who are complaining are invited to fix whatever they see wrong, a branch in mozilla would in no way weaken it
I posted on one of the mozilla newsgroups about this very thing a few weeks ago. The response I got was that cross-platform widgets would only be used if the OS did not have an alternative for it.
Somehow, I doubt confusing all users on the Windows platform by giving them Mac-like widgets is really going to help Netscape's market percentage much.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
I think we have a winner for a survay topic:
The new Mozilla widget scheme:
( ) Good
( ) Bad
( ) Huh?
I read the internet for the articles.
Well, say you're writing a program with a web-based interface. A CD-player, say, so you can control the playing of audio CDs through the CD-ROM with your web browser. So you spend a lot of time messing with tables and colors and such to make it not only functional, but pretty. Then you decide that you want to add a pull-down list so you can select a song to play from those on the CD. And the pull-down widget is black text on a white background, with a black-on-grey pull-down widget button. And it clashes horrendously with the green-on-black and dark grey you've used for the rest of your interface. Short of writing a Java program so you can mess with the interface any way you want, what are you supposed to do?
You customize the widgets, of course. Except, as things stand, you can't...
This isn't at all a hypothetical situation. The machine with the CD player on it is in pieces at the moment, but if you want to look at it, there's a screenshot of my desktop with it running on fvwm.themes.org, under circuit-theme. Then just imagine how sucky it would look with a standardized widget sitting in the middle of that display...
I think this would be good for Security purposes. It would make it far easier for a user to distinguish between a native program and a borderless javascript window popped open asking them to input their quicken password into a form.
.gifs you could plug into that, and I really wanted to have a couple of those. I'd like to be able to use some of those from I think it was the GNU Web Browser project contest?
I wish I had the URL handy that I believe i saw on Slashdot a while back that had a nifty demonstration of exactly what i'm talking about in IE4. It would pop open a borderless javascript window that looked and felt like a Win95 PPP wizard that of course asked you to enter your name and password. Having done tech support at an ISP, I know that many people would fall for this trick. It would be slightly less likely to happen if the widgets had a different look for web pages.
I'll just be happy to get away from the ugly Motif look under linux for once:) Since Mozilla is open source I'm sure we'll be able to theme it, so everyone *SHOULD* be happy.
If anyone is listening i'd like to see the little N-Scroller widget (i know it has a name, but i'm drawing a blank) themeable easily as well. I remember back in the days of jeez must have been Netscape 1.0 or 2.0 that the mac people had some animated
The more you know, the less you understand.
Back when Netscape released the source, I thought that it wouldn't get that much attention. I was mistaken! The Mozilla people have turned the WWW browser space on it's ear! What with the new layout engine, compliance with standards, cross-platform code and simple widgets - I'm beginning to look forward to getting a copy of Mozilla going very soon.
Mozilla just plain rulez.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
You see the same thing with style sheets that turn off the underline on links. You end up having no idea what's clickable until you float your mouse pointer over it.
On the other hand, it is nice to have an "active" look to a control for when you're filling in a form with the keyboard. But not when you're just moving the mouse around.
Yep, it looks pretty friggin' ugly to me, but as long as we can change it, I don't care.
For that matter, I'm in favor of having a themeable UI library that can (a) look like any other widget set and whatnot (i.e. themeable) and (b) support all the calls of the other widget sets (their APIs and whatnot).
Then we can recompile everything against that, have only *one* library (as opposed to athena/athena-3d, motif/lesstif, GTK, Qt, etc.) and choose our look and feel for either the whole desktop, or on an application-by-application basis, or different for each virtual desktop, or whatever we want...
Heck, GTK would be a good start, since it's somewhat themeable, and there's so much interest in it already.
It's all about freedom of choice, which UNIX already offers, more than the other platforms do, and it'd be great to allow a consistency of user interface if desired, without having to rewrite every application with a new, incompatible toolkit, and still not necessarily be tied to a single API...
Of course, I don't have the necessary experience to do this, it'd require someone with the expertise of, say, Rasterman, or whoever made the other toolkits in the first place... (Xaw3d is a good example) But it's a project I'd love to see, and would be happy to support, test, or debug.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I'm just drooling at those tabbed windows. Take that and shove it MSIE ;-)
Seriously though - the tabbed windows are just another non-standard entity, cool as they may be. Where are those defined in HTML 4.0 ? Oh, that's right - they're not. I guess they can be used for building NS's GUI, but I fear for web pages that go back to displaying "Best viewed with Mozilla"!!!
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Nice or not, part of the appeal of the web was
that you could define forms which would look at
home on whatever system the user had -- Windows
widgets for Windows, Mac for Mac, etc.
Unless! These widgets are themeable, and the user can choose to override the theme with their choice.
This "cross-platform UI" bullshit is so incredibly wrongheaded I can't even begin to describe it. It will be the death of Mozilla, I swear it. I can tell you right now that Macintosh users will reject it if it's too nonstandard. That's why Internet Explorer is such stiff competition on both Macintosh and Windows -- it integrates with the operating system, it doesn't try to replace it or snub it.
And what's with this "controls changing their look on mouseover" bullshit? I mean, this draft is better than the previous (where a button didn't have an outline unless you put the pointer over it) but really, what are these people thinking?! Enabled controls should look like enabled controls. Period. Does Netscape have any objective human interface studies that they can show us to demonstrate that such behavior is really warranted, especially with respect to applications that use such controls when the operating system itself doesn't?
> "... not look like any one particular platform, to avoid the perception of platform imperialism."
However, they bear a quite noticeable resemblance to the Mac UI.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
It's not about whether or not it looks nice or not. It certainly looks nice, and the Mac UI is pretty nifty (I prefer it over Windoze any time). But they stated that they wanted the widget set to not look like something else, and almost everyone posting here agrees that it looks like Mac, which is against their own statement.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
I agree with the argument about making the widgets in webpages look the same across different operating systems, it simply spoils the "consistent look and feel" metaphor of any given platform. We Linux users may not give a shoot about it, as we are in part used to disparate user interfaces. But it would give a Mac user nightmares to have one application that doesn't conform with the user interface standards of the Mac OS. Same for the other platforms.
I've always liked the purpose of the XPFE ever since it was announced; I'm aware of how much easier it makes it for the developers to add or change features in the code base that would be reflected on all target platforms with little or no platform-specific modifications. But actually forcing the user to do with a different look and feel on at least a single program is definitely an affront to the user. The possibility of allowing web developers of specifying a look and feel for their pages, and only for their pages is quite an advancement, though. I'd prefer the following: make the default look and feel be that of the hosting platform, but allow the web designer (and the user as well, why not?) to change it. This would allow the inclusion of the new feature, without making it into an insult for some.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
In your post you stated the reason why cross platform widgets are preferable, they are great for web developers because we no longer have to worry such things like a drop down menubox will be unreadable on UNIX (because the motif widgets use the bgcolor as the color of the widgets, as you probably know) or the button or text box takes the font from the outside font tag (on win32) or it uses the standard system font (mac). Or that the widgets are 1 or 2 pixels bigger on one platform than another. All these items cause forms to be a big headache for web designers.
Also a web page doesn't behave or look like a native app so why should it use the same widget set. I think it would help a novice determine that a web page is different from an app on the system and be easier to understand.
I know all these benefits will be nil when the user uses another browser, but the unified widget set alleviates the problems for at least 50% of the time, so there is a benefit.
cristiana
Well, maybe not ugly, but certainly uninspired. Granted, to get a truly cross-platform look and feel, there's a lot you can't do (OS/2 doesn't support anti-aliased fonts, for instance, and the Mac prior to 8.5 didn't either), but I still think they could do MUCH better. Looks like they need to hire a real graphic designer (rather than someone who's read the GIMP how-to).
--
Timur "too sexy for my code" Tabi, timur@tabi.org, http://www.tabi.org
That's a good idea. Let's just make the whole image, and change that whole image depending on where the mouse is.
You NEVER use images for replacement forms, and you NEVER use Java* because is proprietary non-standard garbage.
If your page isn't 100% usable on Lynx, it's not worthy of the web. No web page should -ever- use JavaScript or Java. Standards, people, think standards.
You can't assume that the browser is anything - anything. You have to assume it's Lynx - IE - Netscape - any of the new browsers.
Themable in compliance with the OS. Indeed! The "look and feel" of an OS ought to be decided on by the browser (aham! colors too) and OS...
HTML 1.0 produces more reabable web pages than any other version because the browser actually decides the look/feel - how life ought to be.
Where can I find the arguments in favour of one cross-platform widget look'n'feel? I can see the arguments for a consistent API, but native widgets will surely be faster (unless native widgets can't do what's needed), and changing the look'n'feel from the hosting OS is inconsistent and confusing to users. And I can't see it being much of a boon to web developers, because all their advantages disappear when their pages are viewed on other browsers. However, I'm sure this has already been discussed to death - can someone summarise the arguments?
(BTW, please don't bring themes into it... I don't want to have to alter something to ensure Mozilla looks and acts like every other app on my OS, and that's probably the case for most people)
You can only do so much with javascript and mouseOver() images. Form widgets, for example, can't be customized with Javascript. I'm not that proficient in javascript, but I've never seen it done. I'd love to see themeable widgets though, that would open up alot of UI possiblilities, we've been stuck with accepting the old plain grey widgets ever since Mosaic.
-Ben
bensmith@biz1.net
I use mac and linux, and I must say, the Mac UI is pretty dang spiffy. Enlightenment is the only big leap forward in OS UI development since the macintosh, and, we all have to admit, alot of window managers and other OS's are designed to look and act alot like the Mac UI.
-Ben
bensmith@biz1.net
Good question.
I dunno, If I got too much time on my hands, or if I'm a masocist.
-Ben
bensmith@biz1.net
The main arguement is for windowless widgets. Basically, a native widget is in it's own window, and can't take part in the Z-ordering on the page, nor can it be given properties like a bitmaped background or set to be 50% transparent...
The idea is to have two code paths, which will give the same widegets at first. One for the forms and another for the chrome and dialog boxes etc. Then you can replace the chrome/dialog widgets with a native widget library (eg based on GTK) if you want. Then the app will look like the platform, and the forms will still maintain their Mozilla look. You could also use native widgets for the forms if you wanted, but they wont look as nice.
In terms of themes, the forms will be controlled by the pages style sheet, and the applicaiton widgets would be controlled by Mozilla's style sheets (which will be downloadable vis the web), or by the native widget implementation.
-Jeremy
PS. These are my conclusions from the mozilla discussions, and may not represent reality, since I not doing the coding...
I was so looking forward to having netscape with gtk widgets so that i could have a consistent look on my desktop. This is completely ridiculous making a whole new widget set for the sake of some my program is more important than your os bullshit. Mozilla will have significant problems for two reasons. One, implementing a new widget set isn't easy even if they are using html4/css to do it. Mem leaks, core dumps and unexpected behaviour will be standard fare for a year. Two, mozilla and hence netscape (if netscape supports this) will lose signifigant market share. Sure, they will probably keep most linux users, but what will mac users pick?? A browser that looks natively mac (ie) or the other browser? ie.. windows users... this is a no brainer.. they will use ie. period. End of signifigant mozilla market share.
oh well, perhaps this is what I want. Competition will determine the best browser. I'll be looking to either start or jump on a move to take NGLayout and port it to GTK+. My guess is that mozilla will fork very soon.
---- I like compilers
wouldn't you say? They look nice.
---
Wha? TV & Movie Theme Songs? Oh yeah....
It'd have been nice if they'd consulted an expert in the field.
Too many GUI things are being designed by people who have absolutely no hard data to back up their ideas. The result: non-optimal design.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I spend my time using Netscape on Windows and Linux, and I must say, I'm not too fond of the Motif widgets under Linux. For one thing, the scroll bars are two narrow to grab, and the drop-down text boxes look ugly. Not to mention that the font rendering is usually smaller and harder to read under Linux(even when using the exact same TTF's). In my opinion, this is a great step towards making Netscape looking exactly the same regardless of what platform you're on. I believe this is a good step towards supplanting IE as the dominant browser under Windows. Since IE is only supported on Solaris and Macs, a universal browser by Netscape under any platform may change the balance of power.
The fact is, Win95 widgets are too different from MacOS 7.x widgets are too different from Motif widgets are too different from MacOS 8.x widgets and so on.
Since for any kind of tight page layout the size and behavior differences between platform widget sets is too great for an interface to look and work right on more than one, web interface design has had to tend towards sprawl and wasted space. With HTML 4.0 and decent stylesheet support, HTML/XML combined with stylesheets and good DOM support can be used as the windowing UI design language of choice. There is no GUI interface that you can't create with 5.x-generation browser engines... except...
As I think we all learned in the days of Java 1.0.x, even the best of the layout managers couldn't really achieve the goal of fully abstract UI design that would render usably with significantly different widgets sets. Even with GridBagLayout, a Java UI designed under Windows would often prove too tight to fit on its canvas when run on a Mac or Unix box. Developers ended up spending inordinate amounts of time rearranging blocks of widgets in their layouts and expanding the canvas in order to account for all the differences. There was also the matter of the way MacOS in particular lacked keyboard equivalents for much UI navigation, along with other subtle differences in the way the "same" kind of widget (a pulldown, a select list...) behaves in different OSes and widget sets.
This led to Netscape creating its own across-the-board widget set called IFC, which they later turned over to Sun as the foundation of Swing, which allows both pluggable skins with more tolerance for abstraction, and for those cases where abstraction just doesn't cut it, the ability to force a specific widget set.
Scrolling web pages are okay and all, but they're not the way people usually like to get work done. If we want to be able to build HTML/XML interfaces that offer the same tight feel of a traditional windowing GUI when they're being rendered under one, we need to be able to get specific about our widgets.
Where this might have been horrifying in the old days, as an example of HTML being bent into a design language rather than one of abstract interfaces, code written for a scheme like this can safely be written with the same kind of mode-independence "purist" HTML has always had, the difference being that now design specificity can ride on top of it.
I have two arguments against the current draft of the widgets, and they both stem from this mouseOver foolishness. I want to know instantly when I look at a page what is interactive content and what is art. The buttons don't even have a border until you put the pointer over them! The only result to come from this is that all Mozilla users will have to pixel-hunt for their buttons. Also, I don't like having things flicker when I move the mouse pointer. It's distracting, and it doesn't really help the user find anything.
0 1 - just my two bits
These look alot like OS/2 widgets to me (at least Warp 3... I haven't seen 4). I always found OS/2 widgets too cartoony for my taste, but, embedded in a web page, perhaps that is ideal.
----
"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
XPToolkit is a project at Mozilla. Check out http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/ for the details.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Yeah, Mac users will certainly reject non-standard widgets. Look at MS Office 4.2, which was slammed for looking too much like Windows (although it didn't).
That is, except for the Mac users too busy hating Microsoft to load IE!
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Good to see the Mozilla project actually taking shape. Maybe it will even be compilable soon...
;-)
They look nice, but too small, and I hate that mouseover crap.
Internet Explorer is such stiff competition . . . Enabled controls should look like enabled controls. Period.
you might have to pick just one or the other. IE and most new microsoft programs have widgets that change on mouse-over etc. -- very, very much like these new mozilla widgets. (those widgets aren't actual HTML pages rendered in IE; just most of the rest of the GUI. it's very inconsistent)
also, i don't mean to be rude, but i guess i'm not the only one who has noticed that when somebody follows an unsubstantiated assertion with this sentence: "Period.", that can generally be taken as a tacit admission that the preceding statement is blatantly contrary to fact. just a thought.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
But there is at least one good side to this:
It will be great for embedded use of Mozilla. One of the companies I do consulting for is building a (Linux based) set top box thingie (well, not really going after the same market as WebTV etc., but..), and have been considering Mozilla for the browser, but since we won't be running X (too damn big - flash isn't cheap), we would've had to implement the entire widget set.
It's not that big a deal - the new UI code in Mozilla is pretty lean - but with this, hopefully we'll only have to implement a thin drawing layer instead. That would be great. I'll have to take a new look at the Mozilla source soon.
GTK doesn't have a fixed look, it has whatever lookp is on the theme you use.