Re: Look and Feel

[M. Uli Kusterer]

Hi,

 I did a few replies via the newsgroup, but it seems they're no 
longer forwarded to this list. So I'll jump right in and try to catch 
up with where the discussion's gone by now.

At 8:48 Uhr -0600 13.02.2005, Jesse Ross wrote:
> Exactly. I've been a Mac user exclusively for about 8 years, and 
> when I first touched GNUstep, the left scroll bars seemed awfully 
> awkward to me. Are the NeXTSTEP-style scrollbars a user-design 
> error, or am I just so accustomed to the left right scroll bar that 
> it's habit?

 Does anyone have a URL of a document for what the reasons for 
left/right scrollbars were? UI research results? I personally don't 
care where they go, but in the interest of supporting custom views, I 
think it'd be a bad idea to allow switching them at runtime. For 
localization it's okay, because in that case the Gorm files will need 
to be relayouted for the localized text anyway.

 The only argument I see for or against any of the approaches so far 
would be reading direction, and it'd work in favor of both:

1) Left means when you read left-to-right you immediately see "now 
comes a scrolling area". It also makes alternating between 
editing/scrolling a tad easier for left-aligned text, but not for 
centered, right-aligned or other lists.

2) Right means when you read left-to right, after you've read, your 
eye comes to the scroll bar, like the "read more..." caption below 
Slashdot postings.

I can see the merit in both, but I'm a GUI nut. So I'd prefer to see 
this decision be made for a GUI usability reason.

> We want GNUstep to be usable. We want to make user's feel 
> comfortable. We want to stand out. Sometimes we have to make 
> decisions that favor one over the other.

He has a very good point there. While in cases where usability would 
be really negatively impacted, we should go for UI in my book, there 
is something to be said for keeping small things next-like. Tear-off 
menus definitely are handy, and they even work with incremental 
disclosure, but IMHO the palettized main menu is distinctive enough 
that I'd leave it in there.

Similar arguments could be made for other aspects, but I think with 
one or two prominent "holdovers" from NeXT (that we might not have 
taken otherwise) and half a dozen brave new UI decisions, the GUI 
should have enough distinct-ness to keep it recognizable even if we 
had to dump all other NeXTisms -- which isn't necessary anyway.
--
Cheers,
M. Uli Kusterer
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