On 2011-12-02 20:54, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
Actually, I absolutely hate WinAmp (and all programs that are entirely
skinned). And WinAmp in particular is super butt-ugly. *And* the UI overall,
esp. the library, is screwy (read: buggy and poorly architected) as all
hell. iTunes is irritatinnly all-skinned, too (on Windows, anyway), but at
least it actually looks half-way decent as far as skinned apps go (and it's
not so buggy). The only benefits WinAmp has over iTunes is that it's not so
absurdly bloated, doesn't infect you with useless always-resident processes,
and it actually handles Ogg Vorbis worth a damn.
On Mac OS X iTunes looks mostly native. There are few widgets that
doesn't have a native look, like the scroll bars and the column headers.
But they look so good and fit in with the rest of the GUI, the iTunes
look could just as well be the native look.
Unfortunately, I've been using WinAmp as my primary player despite my hatred
for it because the iTunes lack of Ogg Vorbis support is a deal-breaker for
me, and I still haven't found any other music manager that's any better.
Foobar 2000 came pretty damn close, but as I recall, it had some sort of
deal-breaker limitations (don't remember what), and the fact that it's a
freeware program that's *not* open-source makes me very uneasy about relying
on it.
The closer you get to entertainment, the more fancy the UI becomes I
think :D
It makes sense in a videogame or a TV-connected media center PC. But those
are exceptions for valid reasons: They themselves essentially *are* separate
environments. Seeing system dialogs in a videogame is just too jarring, in
both aesthetics and interface, especially since such system UI's aren't
designed for games[1]. And connecting a PC to a TV for media purposes
effectively amounts to a different platform that has fundamentally different
UI requirements.
The problem with widgets in computer games is when they look like a
specific widget but doesn't behave like one. For example, a scroll bar
is a perfect example. On most platforms the native scroll bar has a bar,
sitting on top of an other bar and two buttons with arrows. The behavior
of the widget is:
* You can drag the first bar to scroll
* You can click on the second bar to scroll
* You can click on the two buttons to scroll
* You can use the mouse wheel to scroll
There are very few games that have a scroll bar that have all the above
listed behaviors
[1] The Wii/PS3's system UIs (and XBox1 Live, IIRC), by contrast, actually
work out very well since they're designed specifically for set-top
videogaming (Probably 360's too, but I'm less familiar with that, especially
the newer 360 UI). 'Course in the Wii's case, I suspect it's more a std lib
they make the game developers use rather than a true system UI like the
PS3/360 seem to be, but the effect is much the same...
--
/Jacob Carlborg
