Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote: > If you only ever copy stuff that works, you’ll never do anything new.
That's like saying "if you only ever use words that exist in the dictionary, you'll never write a book". I know you don't mean that but if you're going to appeal to ridicule I'll happily throw one back at you. > Just because that’s what we’ve always done doesn’t mean it’s the best > way. It's inherently advantageous to copy what we've always done. It's familiar, there are reference implementations, and less easy to see, there's a wealth of information boiled down into those simple UI conventions - a myriad of variations that didn't quite work as well and have been avoided. An innovative approach can be better, of course, but it's not a level playing field. A novel approach has to do much, much better to overturn the incumbent paradigm. For example, it's been known decades that pie menus perform much better than drop-down menus. But they aren't used much, and that's mainly because drop-down menus are simply what people are used to. > A completely different approach, even if it turns out in the end to > be worse, is not a bad thing in itself. Sure, in development. Not for release. Dan -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------
