Overall UI principle:
Good UI is "unconscious" UI. If the user has to stop and think about
something ("is A really different from B?"), then the UI has failed.
A quick glance should, immediately and without any conscious thought,
tell the user essentially everything about the interface. "This is
disabled, that is not." "This is the foreground object, these are
background objects, and that is the overall background." Three very
differnt things, which therefore should always LOOK very different.
Sometimes you do a good job of this (check boxes, radio buttons),
other times you do a very poor job (basic button, Tab Layout Panel).
And remember: "big targets are good (and fast) targets. Small targets
are bad (and slow) targets."
"Lighting":
Your text boxes have the top bar of the box black, and the other three
gray. it looks wrong to my eyes, If you're trying for a 3D effect, I
can't see it. Depth takes more than one pixel / line. I'm perfectly
happy with 2D UI objects (which would mean all for lines being the
same color). I'm willing to live w/ 3D. Right now, you have a "2.5D"
look that just doesn't work. I urge you to pick one look, and stick
to it.
1: Basic Button:
It's very hard to tell the disabled and enabled buttons apart. I
suggest either changing the background more when it's disabled, or
bolding the text when it's enabled. (Compare with Custom Button,
where it's quick and easy to tell if it's enabled or not.)
2: Hyperlinks:
Is there a difference between "followed" and "never visited"
Hyperlinks? Because if there is, I can't see it. If there isn't, and
it's possible to add it, I think it should be added.
3: ListBox:
It would be good to have enough entries for one of the selections so
we can see what it looks like when the Box has to scroll its data.
5: Tree
A: While the +/- works, I certainly prefer the triangle that turns to
the side or down based on the disclosure state.
B: The disclosure box is a rather small target to hit (I missed it
several times). It would be nice to make it bigger, and / or make it
so double-clicking on the text of the line opens / closes the
disclosure.
6: Menu Bar:
It's nice, but it COMPLETELY clashes with the menu bar on my web
browser (Sea Monkey on Windows XP).
I know you're trying to develop your own theme, but the apps created
with this theme have to live inside web browsers. Violently clashing
with the surrounding UI is inherently bad UI, no matter how pretty the
UI might be in isolation.
7: Disclosure Panel:
When I click on the Disclosure Panel, the text of the title gets
surrounded by a gray box. This looks OK when it closes, but looks
really ugly when it opens.
8: Tab Layout Panel:
Put me in the "hate it" column. Dark Blue on Slightly Less Dark Blue
is IMO a really bad color combination (and I say this as someone who
really likes blue). The unselected Tabs are different from the
background. Therefore, they need to have a different, easily
distinguishable, color than the background.
9: Cell Browser
It's "Browse through dynamic data", NOT "BrowseR through dynamic
data" :-)
Other than that it's fairly good. But I didn't notice anything that
caused me to think "hey, that's great, i want that!"
Greg
On Feb 16, 12:12 pm, John LaBanca <[email protected]> wrote:
> The GWT team is happy to (pre)announce that we will introduce a new, more
> modern CSS style theme in GWT 2.3 called "Clean". The new theme makes
> existing widgets look cleaner (more business-like) than the "standard"
> theme, and replaces the thick light blue borders with thin gray borders. We
> worked under the constraint that we would not modify the DOM structure of
> the existing widgets because we didn't want to break existing apps, so this
> new theme is purely a CSS overhaul.
>
> You can preview the new Clean style theme at the link
> below:http://gwt-showcase-clean.appspot.com/
>
> Please let us know what you like and dislike about the new theme, and if you
> are interested in switching your app to it. Once we release the theme, it
> becomes very difficult to change it without affecting existing apps, so
> early feedback is helpful.
>
> Thanks,
> John LaBanca
> [email protected]
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