From: Joel de Guzman <joel@boost-consulting.com>
Suman Cherukuri wrote:
If Boost UI can adapt to the native L&F it'd be more useful and will be widely accepted. If we decide on one UI for any and all the platforms, we may face a lot of challenges in acceptance.
Coming from a Mac background, I used to believe that. Now, I dare say that that way of thinking is passe. Sure, one can opt for consistency. But DON'T force it! There are those who do not agree with the thinking that "you can have any color as long as it is black" anymore. That's the model T way of thinking IMHO.
Hmmm. Both sides make reasonable points. Gratuitous differences are asking for trouble. Ugly and bland interfaces give the sense of low quality; that's often what I think when I see a Java app. You cited games and WMP in another post. Neither category is ugly or bland (at least when considering modern, high quality games). Still, gratuitous differences cause problems. Some games require one click to select something and another to choose what was selected. Some only respond to the keyboard when choosing an option or making selections, despite supporting the mouse for other things. Those differences are jarring. WMP is highly specialized, so it might be forgiven for looking and acting differently, but when things are not in their usual places, the user must hunt for them, which increases frustration. Some apps don't use the same keyboard shortcuts for the same things. That's frustrating. When they are common things like cut, copy, and paste, the differences can be maddening. My point, then, is that choosing the non-native route must be done carefully or it *will* turn off users. Still, an alternative L&F isn't *necessarily* a turn-off. -- Rob Stewart stewart@sig.com Software Engineer http://www.sig.com Susquehanna International Group, LLP using std::disclaimer;