To all,
I personally know the reason why at OSAF you have chosen to stick to
"THE" UI of each platform, but that was long ago (2 years aprox) and day
to day we are seeing more apps with a unique UI regardless of platform.
Back then it made sense not to put a hindrance (or another one) to the user.
Today, we are seeing apps that look the same regardless of their platform.
iTunes for example.
The chrome theme is the same across platforms.
The differences upon Mac OS and XP are really very little (I would say
the most notables are the window controls)
The rest IS or looks just plain the same.
On the other hand we have apps like the AJAX calendars that have their
own UI, some are horrible, some are not, but since you open it up from a
browser, regardless of the platform it looks just plain the same.
It seems that we are heading towards this direction, we use apps not
systems in the end.
As an example, I had to buy an XP machine for an app not for XP (I
wouldn´t have done so).
On the other hand I have seen also lousy implementations of what I am
talking about, with clunkier interfaces, mostly, probably because of
common code (so as not to have to re type specific GUI code for
different machines).
But examples like iTunes makes you think.
If you look at iTunes from a 5 years perspective (past) lets say from
year 2000 looking into the future (if that was possible), wouldn´t you
know whether it was a mac app or a win app, but probably you would had
no problem at all using it.
I personally believe, by this way, OSAF would be much more in control of
the product, from the UI experience regarding consistency.
That way there wouldn´t be any second class citizens (speaking of XP
users, like myself).
For the future, wouldn´t it be nice that Chandler had a unique UI
regardless of platform?
Wouldn´t it be very recognizable if anyone is using Chandler by a
glimpse of someones computer monitor?
I welcome everyones opinion on this matter inside and outside OSAF.
Yours,
Daniel
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
