Re: UI design [was Owen Taylor's paper]

On Tue, 2002-09-17 at 20:17, Gerald Henriksen wrote:
> The issue isn't what's best or worst but rather having a consistent
> way of doing things on a platform.

I think there is more than one issue here....competing interests in
fact...unlike windows or apple and the proprietary unixes...linux is
much more centered on choices...and the availability of choices.  
I for one am not sold on the idea that there is room for only one way to
present information.  I MIGHT be willing to be persuaded that UI
elements like button order in the dialog windows really matter to
productivity (though I think I could argue consistent placement is more
of a crutch for the lazy...how many people really read the text in
dialog boxes anymore?....even stuff like shrink wrap licensing..click
and go, is people really do...zero parsing of information in the
dialog...which is bad bad habit IMHO...and consistant button placement
is only helping people be lazy..hell i'd rather have the okay button in
the dialog be randomly placed, that would sure be more fun).  But I
think I'd be hard pressed to believe that UI consistency (like button
order, or the same menu layout from one web browser to another) is more
important than the availability of a choice between KDE styled and Gnome
UI's 

So how do you successfully balance choice compared to consistency?
Ripping out all the kde native apps is certainly too much to sacrifice
in the name of consistency....and not offering mozilla in the kde
desktop becuase of UI differences seems silly too.  Redhat even with
Redmond-like market share of the linux market can't dictate to
developers that applications must conform to a certain UI standard...

Redhat's way or the highway isn't going to work as a development motto.

In a best case scenario toolkit choice when building the app should be
so configurable that UI styles could be themable...or you could easily
rebuild an app with different toolkits.  But unfortunately Redhat has to
try to make a workable compromise in a landscape were developers get a
lot of choice in toolket and UI standards...and compromises never
satisfy everyone...and seldom do they satisfy anyone completely.  There
are several issues when building a distribution of software and
prioritizing those competing issues is a hard compromise...if you want
UI purity you are going to sacrifice something in terms of application
choice...and in the end its really about which applications are
available.    So Redhat is trying to find a compromise between choice
and consistency.  And the one thing Redhat is really good at is finding
that balance...finding the workable compromise that makes a bets fit for
most people....thats why they have a large market share.  Its not the
Redhat is technically superior in specific respects...but becuase Redhat
is a collection of compromised promises... And I see the blurring of the
desktop environments as yet another attempt at finding that balance
point for a new sort of compromise. 

If there is no obviously correct way to do UI design...but only
consistent ways, the linux community will never do UI design as well as
closed systems like MS and Apple and Java or even the unixes with thier
failed CDE...because the community gets to choose how they develop
applications.  So if comes down to just opinion..or worse to tradition,
developers will always try to do something new when building an app even
something in the UI.
 
-jef