"Brian Ravnsgaard Riis" <brian@riis.as> wrote [cut]
As a simple example, consider a message dialog box with a message the user should consider and then choose Yes, No, or Cancel. On Windows the three buttons would be centered and come in the order mentioned above. On GNOME the buttons would be right-aligned and be ordered "No", "Yes", and "Cancel". On OSX the "No" button would be left-aligned along the message text, while "Cancel", and "Yes" - in that order - would be right-aligned. And so far it's just layout issues.
For this you would provide a default platform-dependent layout. More interesting is that the message dialog box functionality is very similar on each platform !
My point is, basically, that the different platforms *feel* different, and users will expect a program to feel like the platform they're on. Java apps feel like Java apps all over. This is great for web-based applications (my NetBanking wouldn't be right without it), but not so great for desktop applications.
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My point is that it shouldn't be a "skin". You can change the look that way, but rarely the feel of an application.
This is really about the ability to customize the feel of the GUI. Maybe it should be designed with this capability ;-) regards Andy Little