World: r3wp

Right at the beginning of RebGUI I asked if anyone had good pointers 
to a consistent graphical style that we could follow (other than 
WindowsXP, Mac OSX, KDE, etc) ... in the ensuing silence I chose 
to go what I'm familiar with, XP. I'm still keen to have a modern 
looking REBOL style that doesn't look too out of place on Windows, 
Mac or Linux; but I'm not a gfx guy. Jaime's BEER interface (the 
GUI config front-end) is about the best I've seen far.

I've had good feedback on the GUI for my RebGUI application.

I think the interface mockup is outstanding. Was wondering what did 
you use to code it? I havent seen many applications that do not use 
the system scheme and still manage to look that sleek.

Congratulations 
and keep it up.

So, that's a direct compliment for RebGUI.

Overlooked that gui-interface for beer. Where is it?

Making the GUI look right and not just a copy of something else is 
tricky. I often think about it. I also had to deside with Canvas, 
both for the tool panel and the requesters. I went with a very basic, 
clean style for the requesters, maybe even a bit boring.

I see two needs. One is for 'normal' application like business application, 
where the GUI shouldn't for any sake come in the way. A basic, clean 
look is needed for that. The other is 'special' application, that 
would benefit from something more eye-candy like. Examples are a 
visual remote control, or a music player.

Geomol is talking about the presentation by Jaime at the devcon I 
think.

Ah, thought sdk had an update.

Graham, I was talking in general, but Jaime may have said something 
similar, I don't remember.

I'm wondering, if users on the different platforms, that REBOL runs 
on, would find it very strange to use an application, that doesn't 
use the normal GUI look for that platform. I remember some guy (a 
developer, I think) many years ago, that would trash an application 
immediately, if it didn't use the OS own GUI.

With REBOL, we have options. We can make our GUI look exactly like 
the host OS (maybe even read the system files to see, what theme 
is selected), or we can build our own, maybe better GUI.

I'm in favour of the 2nd as you can never mimic exactly ... but defining 
"better" is not easy.

I've found, that using thick lines (for example around buttons) makes 
it look old and childish/unprofessional. Using thin lines looks modern 
and professional. Also big contrast often makes for an old/unprof 
(I lack words) look, while less contrast makes it look top-notch 
or like an architect/designer would prefer.

Also soft (rounded) vs hard (square) corners and gradients as opposed 
to solid colors. MS and Apple have spent billions to get this right, 
and there is still debate about whether they have! ;)

In the 90'ies 3D styles were in, and it was overdone. It's interesting 
to see the GUIs choosen for games. Star Wars Galaxies use a solid 
colour for the edge of buttons, no 3D at all. Like the original Macintosh 
did.

flat, black, white, blue, orange. that's the way to go ;))

I love the original NextSTEP look. It's wonderfully grey, boring, 
clean and sober. Boring, because you'll not be distracted and you 
can get work done.

I agree with Geomol - most of the time I set border of my buttons, 
check-boxes, fields ... to one pixel size :-)

I noticed design of Beer. It was nice - reminded me of amiga - do 
you remember Newtek's Ligtwave?

The fundamental thing which makes one GUI better than others is consistency. 
 period.   design is all about making the looks and feel work for 
target a target audience, but if its inconsistent accross the experience, 
then its instantly unusable for anyone. 
.

IMHO that is  ;-)

IMHO ppl are more turned on widgets,  general functionnallity, simplicity 
than on esthetical issues.  Ashley when do you plan to release  new 
widgets (tabpannel with scrollable header, menu, listview) i'm going 
to start working on treeview widget as usual how do you want data 
to be submitted to it  (data block structure fo ex: [ node_label1 
[ leaf1 leaf2 leaf3 subnode_label2[leaft1 leaf2] etc.. ]])?

I am inclined to agree that consistency is important in GUI design 
(imo. down to the last detail, it reflects competency), but *the* 
most important thing is that form meets function, and a part of this 
is selecting the best possible visual metaphor for the task at hand. 
 While widgets are a means to this end, it's all too easy to overuse 
them.

Now having said that, style is important too.  To most observers, 
WinXP looks better than Win2k looks better than Win98 looks better 
than Win95 looks better than Win3x looks better than ... etc.  Now, 
if you go back the way and use a Win95-style app in WinXP (even the 
Rebol security requester) your (or at least my) first reaction is 
'what's wrong with this app'?

I've thought much lately about the difficulty in introducing a third-party 
style into any given OS environment (which we as cross-platform developers 
must consider short of using native libraries) and it is difficult. 
 The subtleties of eg. OS X and WinXP are far different, so is there 
a happy medium?  I'd like to think so, but having tried /View on 
OS X, I'm not so sure that my previous attempts at platform-neutral 
GUI style are as successful as they could have been (though anti-aliased 
fonts may be a key missing feature).

Chris - hopefully RT does solve linux and os-x situation with fonts 
....

as for me, I can accept different look, even a bit different app 
logic, but not behaviour - keyboard navigation ...

I am e.g. ok with IOS look, but can't stand styles, which don't work 
like native ones ... then each click, key-press which behaves differently, 
is pretty annoying ...

On the one hand, I think that 'form follows function' allows some 
deviation from platform-native style, though this is recommended 
more on a per-application basis (ahem, declaration of interest here). 
 On the other, we can select certain graphics based on platform (system/platform) 
... sorry Petr, still on a riff here ...

we are imo in new era of alternative designs - back to the amiga 
days, where OS is NOT the main part. Your context is the app you 
are working with.

... and maintain small libraries of OS specific graphics.

Petr, I'm going to disagree with you here (re. alternate designs). 
 I think I've made my position clear...

Carl's idea, that e.g. 'list style has to allow borderless design 
is pretty right. Go and look at MS - they WILL come to our living 
rooms with some devices, and you would not want your OS to pop-up 
- but apps will be important. Well, I speak of a different target 
market, but ...

e.g. http://www.mythtv.org, look for screenshots of UI - very View 
like ...

database related apps are different, of course. But then look even 
into MS - they are changing UI guides every 2 - 3 years, with new 
OS, or new Office ...

Your point?

that some kind of apps do not strictly need to keep OS metrics, as 
OS is then just a medium - irrelevant ...

I have heard many times, that if someone will not keep OS guidelines, 
then such app will be throwed out the window. Hah! What an excuse 
.... look at ad-aware - it does not know even keyboard. Look at those 
antivirus suites .... so- my point is, that we don't need to necessarily 
be 100% compatible - that is old ...

Well I'm going to disagree then.  Unless your alternate style (or 
indeed, functionality) is good, then I think users will question 
the competency of your app.

Ah well, riff broken -- back to work...

I work with 300 users, met thousands, I don't agree with you too. 
Someone created a myth imo ... I think that who pays most attention 
is - computer geeks to have something to talk about :-) Each IS here 
has its own set of logic. I am after consistency, but not necessarily 
consistency with OS as a crucial point of app UI usability ...

In that case, you could have agreed with my original point and let 
me finish...

just to not understand me wrong - I reak KDE (or was it GNOME) material, 
few referenced here articles on that topic, I can agree, but I just 
don't think that different design is a show stopper. at Devcon, there 
was a mention of Skype - how does IM messengers keep most other OS 
apps usability logic? :-)

reak=read

shadwolf
	tabpanel with scrollable header - being added to 0.3.8
	menu - see note below
	listview - being added to 0.3.8

 treeview – data structure should be simple & consistent with other 
 widgets ... sub-blocks are the obvious way to go but I'll leave the 
 implementation choices to you ;)

Menu Widget


I am of the opinion that a menu widget is more trouble that it is 
worth as:


1) Its use is being discouraged in modern UI design (toolbars have 
made them obsolete to a great extent) - they feel just so Win95 these 
days

2) Mac OS X does not use them at all (at least at the application 
window level)

3) A fully-fledged menu widget is practically a UI in its own right 
with menu entries having icons, toggles, key shortcuts and various 
other mini widgets

4) The underlying REBOL popup system needs fixing first (this also 
impacts the edit-list, drop-list and context-menu widgets)

5) It's just too complex to meet the definition of a simple RebGUI 
building block widget - our time is better spent on other widgets 
that are required

6) How many users clamour for menus these days? Most folks I've met 
prefer pressing a single button / icon and positively detest multi-level 
menu selection

All my opinion, so feel free to disagree.

UI Design


Chris / Pekr touch on very important points here ... we have to live 
with the fact that we are trying to create a cross-platform UI. This 
UI must:


1) Look & feel relatively familiar to users on Windows, Mac and Linux

2) Be internally consistent (e.g. RebGUI widgets behave in a consistent 
manner, have a similar look to each other, etc)

3) Be externally consistent where expected (e.g. scroll buttons at 
each end on Windows, grouped on Mac; tab-panel look, etc)

The way to achieve this, IMHO, is:


1) Don't try to mimic one particular OS too closely (i.e. try to 
pick a neutral look - I think users of an OS are more tolerant to 
something that looks different as opposed to something that looks 
like it belongs to another OS)

2) Adopt the lowest-level of common functionality across OS's where 
possible (e.g. down arrow functionality is pretty well defined)

3) Make allowances for minor, but common, differences (e.g. tab-panels 
are rendered quite differently between Windows and Mac, system fonts 
differ, buttons appear quite different)


So in practical terms I want to gradually move away from a WindowsXP 
look and start adding a few conditional look & feels depending upon 
OS. These will not fool anyone into believing a RebGUI app is native, 
but at least Windows users will not be left feeling it's a Mac / 
Linux app or vice versa.

menu: I agree, what I like a lot are circular context menus (right-click). 
There icons are arranged in a circle around your mouse cursor. Makes 
selecting the function very fast and is totaly easy to use. Adding 
a tooltip feature to show a short text in case of a mouse-over makes 
sense. More I wouldn't add.

Look & Feel: Getting close to OS look but still let it look different 
is a good idea. Users won't expect exact behaviour. The GUI must 
be simple to use. That's it. Tooltips are IMO a very good quick-and-dirty 
help-feature.

Shadwolf/Tree-Widget: I used Cyphre's one. The main trouble I found 
out is changing the tree. A path access structure would be nice. 
Things like: add-entry tree/1/2/3 "New Entry" or with a named path: 
my-tree/material/copper/price or so.

I'm looking forward to see a tree-widget in RebGUI. This will make 
it mostly complete for a good bunch of applications.