On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 2:24 AM, Lars T. Kyllingstad <[email protected]> wrote: > dsimcha wrote: >> >> == Quote from retard ([email protected])'s article >>> >>> Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:10:24 +0000, dsimcha wrote: >>>> >>>> 2. Native look and feel. IMHO this is very overrated. I've never >>>> found that a Java-ish or GTK-ish or whatever look and feel instead of a >>>> native Win32 look and feel got in the way of me using a program >>>> effectively. >>> >>> The win32 look and feel doesn't look native on linux/mac/solaris. >> >> Right, the implication here was that I mostly use Windows and I've never >> really >> cared if an application I use has a GTK-ish or Swing-ish or whatever look >> and >> feel, as long as the application is well-coded, responsive and does what I >> need. >> I'm speaking purely from personal opinion/experience here, but I don't >> understand >> why people care so much about platform-native look and feel as long as it >> works >> and is usable. > > I think native look and feel is a lot more important in, say, a web browser > or a word processor. I don't care so much about which GUI toolkits Gnuplot > or Mathematica use...
Non-native file dialogs which are bizarro (like gtk) or underpowered (like some Java ones) are the main thing that drive me crazy. There's a lot of nice stuff built into the native Windows file dialogs. It's very annoying when some non-native app takes all that away. Also there are standard key-bindings. Though probably any non-native app could be made to follow the platform conventions, the chances that a non-native LAF app will fail here are generally greater. On Windows these are things like Alt-F4 to close app. Ctrl-F4 or Ctrl-W to close a sub-window or document. Ctrl-Tab to navigate tabs of a notebook-like widget, etc. Also the way Alt works on Windows for controlling menus is something I've seen non-native apps futzing. So basically I don't care much about non-native *look*, it's the non-native *feel* I find annoying. --bb
