I should make it clear that when I first brought the subject up,
I wasn't referring to "rainbow interfaces", or even those that offer
custom skins or themes to make them look good without functional reason!
<g> I had "Form follows Function" beaten into my head for two years
when I was an Architect major, and it's about the ONLY rule I ever apply
to design of any kind.
I've seen all kinds of visual and functional atrocities in the
Windows world, but the worst are those that offer interfaces in which
there is no apparent relationship, or improvement between these two
concerns. I fear Vista suffers from these kinds of problems because
although, ( and putting aside it's many small but annoying glitches ),
it has made some functional advances, the new desktop interface is a
joke! It's much more difficult to understand and use is the complaint
I've been hearing. Before I got out of the hospital in March, I had the
opportunity to talk to quite a few users about its problems because the
Hershey Medical Centre upgraded to all new Dell machines with 16 inch
flat screens...all of them pre-loaded with Vista Ultimate. Not one of
them that I could find among the literally hundreds of clinics and
departments there have bothered to make proper or intended use
of the new category system.
I've tried using it myself in a couple different ways, but it's
just too difficult, and takes too much time in my opinion. And on the
functional side, they have made many of the "standard" methods all
Windows users are accustomed to harder then ever...like having to
constantly confirm actions multiple times! I REALLY hate that! And
I've not been able to find any way of turning them off!
I have no use for visual stimulation alone when I'm working on
the computer. But what I appreciate, and what I've been working on to
replace most of the need to deal with the new desktop, is an interface
that is quick, easy to comprehend, and even easier to use. And I want
the individual applications that I install on my system to have as
minimal an interface as possible to allow it the functionality needed.
The worst of these newer apps I've seen so far is DisKeeper, which has
no valid reason for being as convoluted and difficult to use. The best
I've seen is sported by the new game, Supreme Commander, which I
consider to have the most functional and unobtrusive interface ever seen
in a RTS.
from Robert Meek dba "Tangentals Design"
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Freelance Windows Programming for XP and Vista
Also proud to be a Moderator of the "Delphi-List" at elists.org
"Reality cannot be explained...only enjoyed or endured as your current
perspective allows!"
Starting point: Should we spoil our users like kids, or should we treat
them like adults?
____________
Why everybody is speaking about Office GUI like it is something
revolutionary?
I didn't saw major improvements in functionality or GUI design between
the old Office 97 and office 2000 (except those 'beautiful'
incompatibilities in the DOC format and the 'brave' feature called 'Hide
all useful menus').
If we want to speak about an application that created a revolution in
the GUI world, then we should speak about Winamp.
Anyway Microsoft gives us no chance when speaking about building sexy
interfaces.
The best stuff they invented until now is the 'Transparency' feature
added since Windows 2000.
I think the so called Themes the Microsoft came up, are looking
incredibly dull comparing with Mac, especially with those !RED! buttons
on blue captions. If they wanted to create contrast, they succeeded big
time!
I am not speaking yet about Vista since I didn't try it until now and I
am not in the mood to do the transition very soon. I want to let others
to do the hard work first (like finding the bugs, writing drivers,
creating compatible hardware, posting solutions and tweaks on forums...)
For my applications I prefer to add a extra function (something really
useful) then to spend time designing rainbow like interfaces.
Is true that the users are attracted first by the way a interface looks
(isn't this true everywhere?) but they will also get bored by that
interface and they will want a program that is able to do something
useful instead of showing sexy colors.
Even if you provide to a 6 years old kid an infinite amount of candies,
sooner or later it will ask for a soup also.
My opinion is that if your users are grownup peoples doing business,
they won't care about a colorful interface (especially if they have 3
days until the dead line).
If your users are 'young adults' (and your software is something like an
online-chat program) the cool interface is a must have.
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