That's a fair argument, yet I take the liberty of declaring the website metaphor (a hypermedia running inside a native container) orthogonal to real apps.
It's an ongoing debate of course, most prominently alive on smartphones. Perhaps one day we will get there (Steve Jobs originally envisioned that, Google probably too), but as of 2010 the two remain supplementary with each their own strengths. As an example, most recently on this group we discussed the nightmare of catering to key-bindings for data intensive enterprise web-apps. On Nov 11, 11:46 pm, RogerV <[email protected]> wrote: > On Nov 11, 11:22 am, Casper Bang <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Nov 11, 4:10 pm, Reinier Zwitserloot <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > No argument from me here, and this is in fact exactly how JavaFX was > > > set up originally (you do all the painting yourself), but there's a > > > (in my opinion misguided) common request from swing users for their > > > apps to look native. i.e. they WANT the app to look different on > > > different platforms. > > > Of course, that's common sense usability guidelines - don't confuse > > the user just because you choose language X. Which is why I find the > > stated goal of a common UI layer a pipe dream, it can't be done > > without a good amount of compromising. The most successful multi- > > platform applications share a common core but bind to different UI > > layers. > > The old argument (conventional wisdom) of wanting to conform apps to > look native to the underlying OS has been undercut by the wild success > of web applications. Users have certainly acclimated to the various > web UI interfaces which are all over the map. > > The same philosophy of UI that has worked well for Adobe Flash/Flex/ > AIR applications can work for Java, i.e., it is not essential to look > exactly like the underlying OS UI aesthetics (and looking > substantially better can even be a plus). > > What's important is to have a rational interface that users can easily > figure out, and to where the application has good interoperability > with the underlying platform (clipboard, even notifications, screen > saver events, support of popular file formats for import/export, etc.). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
