What version of Windows is mindslip using? I've always found Mac OS applications to be a thousand times more consistent than Windows applications. Maybe he's just talking about MS Office, though, which apparently will be part of Windows soon enough.
And Microsoft spending money on usability and human interface testing? Puh-leaze! Apple wrote human interface guidelines back in the mid-80s before Windows even existed. Microsoft simply copied the Mac's GUI, and did a poor job of it at that. Windows 95 and 98 were much better than 3.1 (and even added a few features that Mac users envied and eventually copied), but 'consistent interface' are not words I'd use to describe any version Windows or its various applications.
More research needs to be done for human interface guidelines and usability in general, though. Neither X nor Mac OS nor Windows is anywhere close to the ultimate GUI.
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How is your Mac II holding up?
What happened to buildings one and two? :^)
What version of Windows is mindslip using? I've always found Mac OS applications to be a thousand times more consistent than Windows applications. Maybe he's just talking about MS Office, though, which apparently will be part of Windows soon enough.
And Microsoft spending money on usability and human interface testing? Puh-leaze! Apple wrote human interface guidelines back in the mid-80s before Windows even existed. Microsoft simply copied the Mac's GUI, and did a poor job of it at that. Windows 95 and 98 were much better than 3.1 (and even added a few features that Mac users envied and eventually copied), but 'consistent interface' are not words I'd use to describe any version Windows or its various applications.
More research needs to be done for human interface guidelines and usability in general, though. Neither X nor Mac OS nor Windows is anywhere close to the ultimate GUI.
See Jakob Nielsen's book, Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency and his Alertbox column for May 1997 titled "Web Design vs. GUI Design" for more talk about user interface design. The Anti-Mac paper is also interesting reading.