Hello, I really like the theme Jesse proposed on http://jesseross.com/clients/gnustep/ui/concepts/01/ui.png. I think it is very well done, it is elegant but still simple and easy to use. I would definitely like to see something like this as the default GNUstep UI.
The floating menu in this theme looks really nice, but I can also imagine a MacOS like menu at the top of the screen. I don't know which one is better from a usability point of view, but a menu on the top definitely has the advantage of being more familiar to most users because most UI's today a the menu on the top (like MacOS) or a vertical menu at the top border of the window. Also, while a scroll bar on the left of the window might be better then a scroll bar on the right from a usability point of view, users are more familiar with the scroll bar on the right because every UI I know has the scroll bar on the right. I think it is very important that GNUstep has a UI which offers users from MacOS/Windows/KDE/GNOME some familiarity. Designing a radically different UI will just stop people from using GNUstep because most people do not bother to relearn how to use an UI. Also good looks are very important if GNUstep wants to attract users. I am a KDE user since before KDE1.0 and I also have done some coding with Qt/KDE. Personally I think the Qt/KDE API is quite nice and the underlying technologies are well designed. KDE also has very nice and powerfull applications. Still many people prefer GNOME. The GNOME/gtk API's are probably not as nice as the Qt/KDE APIs (at least if you don't use gtkmm), but the end user doesn't care. They just care how something looks. And here GNOME is probably better then KDE. I am absolutely sure that most people will not start using GNUstep because it is based on better technologies then the rest. If GNUstep wants to attract users, it has to offer a visualy pleasing UI which is familiar to the users. MacOSX is probably one of the best UIs around today. I don't think GNUstep should clone the MacOSX UI, but I think something like the theme Jesse proposed, but a little bit more MacOSX like (menubar on top, scrollbars on the right) would be perfect. Apple had some good reasons why they changed the Next UI to a more MacOS Classic like UI. Most of their users were familiar with the MacOS Classic UI and it is not a good idea to force people to abandon everything they learned and start learning things from scratch. The same goes for GNUstep: Most new GNUstep users will probably be former KDE/GNOME/Windows users and they don't want to throw all their UI knowledge away and do everything differently. That said, there are of course other important issues with GNUstep. I think it is still too hard to install GNUstep and there are essential programs like a webbrowser missing. Greetings, Michael _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
