Lisa Dusseault wrote:
On Nov 17, 2005, at 12:28 PM, Nicholas Bastin wrote:
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.
I think the exact details of the sameness/uniqueness matter greatly.
Some examples from my own experience are use of hotkeys vs. style.
E.g. it drives me batty that the Office applications on Mac don't use
the same hot keys as Mac apps. The one that gets me all the time is
the command-G for "find next". This isn't apparent at all when you
look at the apps but only when you use them. On the other hand,
visual-only differences and application-specific differences don't
matter to me. I hadn't noticed until just now which of my applications
are what I think is called "brushed metal" style and which aren't.
It doesn't theoretically matter that Firefox has tabs and Terminal
doesn't -- except that Firefox has habituated me to the command-T
shortcut for creating a new "view" and Terminal brings up the font
dialog when I hit command-T.
+1 on Nicolas and Lisa's comments: what matters is behavior, not really
look.
Note however that even when using Ajax, most of the commands (handled by
the browser) are platform specific (cut/paste, save, contextual menus,
etc...) so you can develop crossplatform without investing too much in
coding for platform idiosyncrasies. But it all depends of the framework
you use. Browsers are indeed pretty good frameworks (albeit limitated).
But check out X11 for instance: I'm still getting caught when using
WingIDE on my Mac by Ctrl-C/V instead of Cmd-C/V... The fact it's the
same controls than on Windows (which I rarely use) is of little solace.
For a desktop app, there's more to worry about: drag and drop, themes,
accessibility. Most of these are platform specific and really important
for users. It's not so much about consistency than it is about
interoperability (between apps running on the same platform). That may
not matter for iTunes but it will surely matter for a PIM like Chandler.
Cheers,
- Philippe
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
