Calum Benson wrote: > I don't know many "successful" Windows applications that don't broadly > follow the guidelines, though, apart from games. (And Office, which is > a slightly special case, because it's where MS have always pushed their > latest UI developments first... but the successful ones all find their > way back into Windows and the guidelines eventually.) Of course, your > definition of successful may be different from mine :) > > A mental experiment... Imagine John Smith who takes a sheet of paper, writes "2+2=4" and adds below: "The Great John's Guideline". A year later, I do some "2+2=4" calculations on the other side of the planet, not knowing about John existence. Do I follow John's guideline?
> I would say it's more the case that the HIG has been part of their > professional growth, to the extent that pretty much all the core GNOME > developers are now familiar with the parts relevant to them. Prior to > the HIG, many of the developers may have been capable of writing > applications that were usable in isolation (although, frankly, some of > them weren't), but I would say the HIG has helped them to write > applications that are more usable as part of a consistent, coherent > desktop. > > This means that the HIG has also some educational value. Do not want to quarrel about HIG anymore :) >>>> So here is that principle that I think make Google successful: reduce >>>> number of UI controls and expand application functionality while >>>> preserving UI/functionality coherency. I think that consumer electronics >>>> inherently follow this principle (TV, video recorders, phones, etc.) >>>> > Well, I somewhat disagree :) In general, it's just always not possible > to continue to reduce the number of controls while also expanding > functionality-- you often just end up with the typical nightmare > VCR/phone/remote control scenario where each control has multiple, > unmemorable context-dependent functions. > > What you can certainly strive for is a simple UI that does a few things > well, progressively discloses more complex functionality if need be, and > interacts richly and predictably with the other (hopefully also simple) > UIs around it... much like the original Unix command line philosophy, in > fact. > > The Google example you cite is a perfect example of that: their search > page user interface is so simple because it has precisely one function, > and the default behaviour and inherent complexity (as defined by the > search algorithm they use) is completely transparent-- and in most cases > irrelevant-- to the user. If you head for the advanced search page, the > UI is a whole lot more complex, albeit still clean and well-designed, > but most users never need to see that. That's pretty much the current > GNOME philosophy in a nutshell, too. > Another mental experiment... Imagine a commander and his soldiers at a war. To be effective our commander cannot use normal language, so he *reduces* it to a certain number of command words. Also, he wants to *expand* a number of his soldiers, because he needs a manpower to win. At the same time he cannot use too many soldiers (or too small number of words) because commands and reactions may become not *coherent* - there will be a mess. How does this metaphor apply to desktops? A commander is a developer, commands are widgets, soldiers are application functions. So this, say, "Gideon Principle" is like a path to an effective control. Quite possibly some theory exists about this, but I don't have time and desire to find references :) > >> My main thought about Gnome is very general: too much bureaucracy and >> politics, not enough technology and real activity ;) >> > > Well, I don't see it like that at all (although there are certainly > times when more cool stuff is happening than others, but that's just > natural), but maybe I'm just too used to working for bureacracy-laden > big companies :) Which other large open source projects would you say > are doing things better? > > It's FreeBSD, and I may try to explain why I think so ;) _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
