OS-specific Look and Feel

M.>> Are there other examples? I'm looking for web sites showing Mac OS X M.>> (Aqua) and Motif examples.

Making a program seem to be native is much more than just adding a set of bitmap images. The behaviour has to match too. IMO making the GUI look supeficially like that of Windows, Mac, etc would make things worse, because the user will then expect the behviour to match as well, and be annoyed when it doesn't. Whereas if the program looks weird, the user will not feel cheated if it acts weird too. People have adapted to the cross-platform web browser environment because it doesn't look like a normal program. Regards -- Don Cox [doncox--enterprise--net]

--- On 04/01/02 Don Cox replied:

I don't follow this logic. It sounds to me like you're saying that because REBOL doesn't fully emulate the behavior of the native OS/platform, we're better off avoiding UI conformity with the underlying OS altogether. Unless you're developing programs/apps exclusively for yourself or your close friends, let me say: caveat emptor-- this is high-risk advice. For better or worse, a few important things happened in computing during the past decade: 1, the GUI displaced the command line for the vast majority of desktops, 2, normal, ordinary people displaced technicians, programmers and sys admins as the leading users of software, and 3, roughly 94% of users operate in a Win/Mac GUI environment. It boils down to who you're writing programs for. If it's just for you, or your group of coworkers/friends that have similar skills and background, then, by all means, get as jiggy as you wanna get with tha look and feel. However, if you want to write programs commercially, or for people you may have never met personally-- hey, maybe even release your program in the wild using the SDK-- you should think carefully about the intended audience and design around the expectations of this group. The better the job you do meeting these expectations (for the interface, program behavior, user goals, etc.), the fewer people-problems you'll likely encounter.

Well yes and no. But my take-away from this would be,"If your program behaves like the web, adopt the look-and-feel of a highly regarded web page or site that is similar to your app. But if your program behaves like an application, adopt a look-and-feel that closely models an app with which the user is already familiar and comfortable." The short reason why people have adapted to the web is because the benefits and payoffs far outweighed the cost/learning curve. Some of the reasons are: * it uses a document metaphor, which users prefer to an application metaphor; IOW, it's a supermarket with prepackaged goods, not a combine harvestor * browser navigation and menu links are typically out in the open and not hidden behind layers of pull-down menus * there are often multiple forms of navigation to users (hierarchical site menus, linear/search and content hyperlinks) * it's relatively easy to author pages * almost every desktop has a browser Due to its strengths, the Web has become a loose standard (i.e., a content-driven experience with link navigation). But don't overlook that the web is a huge catalog of usability problems. The last 5 years have been described by some as the worlds largest amateur software development project. Generally speaking, if you're programming for others, it's not a good idea to create new and distinct interface innovations unless you've got strong evidence that you've leapfrogged the standard of the user's primary platform. What's best for REBOL is what's best for users, and vice-versa. I don't mean get in a snit with anyone over this. Best, Ed

Hi Mark, I grabbed a few screenshots of the etienne skins and put them here... http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/left/rebol/skin-grabs/etienne-skin-grabs.html Criticisms I've personally had regarding the Win98 skin, (the one that appeared quite early - there's a WinXP skin in these grabs, but not Win98, and I'm not sure who did the Win98 one), was that it didn't grab the user's personal Windows' colors, and didn't have a standard Win98 file-requester, but otherwise felt quite good. I'd say REBOL could get very close to most GUIs, but that it'd be a lot of work. Skins in my opinion should be totally seperate from the program, so we as programmers can write our programs using the default REBOL skin and the user chooses the skins of their choice One day I guess that skins directory that comes with View will be put to use. How long away that day is though remains to be seen. -- Carl Read

Will see what I can do.

The title-bars would match the OS the program's running on, so in most cases would be normal looking. That was KDE on Mandrake Linux, but on Windows they'd be the Windows' style, the Mac style on the Mac and so on.

I know. A GUI that behaves differently to what you're used to can be annoying, and probably doubly so to those who've only ever used one GUI.

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/left/rebol/skin-grabs/etienne-skin-grabs.html -- Carl Read