On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 20:05, Nick Rout wrote:
> hard to say what else is actually new [in Gimp 2.0], and what is
> just a neater, more modern look to a great program.
Making a GUI look "neat" is quite hard :) The easiest way is to follow
the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/
which is what the Gimp developers have done. It is this application of
the HIG that is responsible for the quite subtle usability improvements
in The GIMP 2.0.
The following is an attempt to quell the flames that are sure to follow
me mentioning the GNOME-HIG.
The GNOME Human Interface Guidelines do have quite a few
GNOME-specific parts, but most of the guide is desktop-neutral.
For example, the labels used on buttons and the suggested spaces
between widgets are not specific to any widget set; you can find
many equivalent guidelines in the Java-HIG, which has a number
of the same authors (thanks, Sun).
* I am not trying to say that KDE has lower or higher usability
than GNOME.
* I am not trying to say that GNOME has lower or higher usefulness
than KDE.
* I am not trying to imply that The GIMP is part of GNOME (it is
not, if you are wondering).
* I AM suggesting that applying the GNOME-HIG is a good way to
improve the look and feel of many GUI-based applications.
--
Michael JasonSmith http://www.ldots.org/
