On Nov 16, 2005, at 3:13 PM, Daniel Vareika wrote:
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.
iTunes is, relatively speaking, a terrible example. iTunes for
windows does not look or behave like a windows app. To the extent
that this doesn't bother users, it is because iTunes is a *very*
simple application. If you had Apple Mail, or iCal, on windows, in
the same shoddy way that the iTunes UI was ported, no one would want
to use them. Yes, they're great UIs on the mac, and the usability is
excellent, but they're completely out of place on win32 - they would
violate a huge number of Microsoft Human Interface guidelines (not
the least of which being "ok" and "cancel" button placement).
You should strive to make your application fit in on the platform you
intend it to be run on. You shouldn't create your own look and feel
and then replicate that across platforms, because that takes the user
out of their "comfort zone" with their applications.
For the future, wouldn´t it be nice that Chandler had a unique UI
regardless of platform?
When I sit down at my computer, I expect that all applications will
look, and, more importantly, *behave* the same way. The reason for
this is that 95% of computer users don't ever use more than one
operating system. You provide them no benefit by making Chandler
look and behave the same across platforms, while confusing them on
the platforms where Chandler would not behave like normal applications.
--
Nick
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