On 23 Jun 2008, at 18:00, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jun 2008, Jonas Maebe wrote:
On 23 Jun 2008, at 10:41, Bent Normann Olsen wrote:
Yup, I know, but it's a 1-1 port from Win32 to Mac,
That's really a very bad idea, unless you are only interested in
supporting
Windows users switching to a Mac (although even for them the
application will
feel weird after a while).
So what do Mac users do with all these web-applications and "web
2.0" with
their other GUI rules ?
Is it really that hard to imagine that an application which uses the
conventions of a different platform is unnecessarily hard and annoying
to use? For example,
* if it uses different shortcut keys compared to all other
applications (both for menus and/or for text editing)
* if it has various menu items in different menus than you'd expect
* if it puts all buttons in dialog windows in the opposite order and
in different places compared to other applications so you intuitively
click the wrong button half of the time
* if it does not honour your system settings and requires you to
reenter a bunch of globally available information used by other
applications again in its own preferences
* if it quits when you close its last window while virtually every
other application stays open (apart from simple utility apps)
* if it puts up modal dialog boxes all the time which block the entire
application instead of just the document the dialog box pertains to
like other apps
* if it implements dialog boxes like a font chooser or colour picker
in its own way rather than using the default system ones you are used
to from all other apps
* if it insists on putting its shared libraries in global system/user
locations so they can interfere with other apps
* if it insists on spreading files all over the system instead of
grouping all these files in a single bundle so that an uninstall
operation requires an uninstaller or manual fiddling rather than just
"delete the bundle" like most other apps
* if it puts its preferences file in a non-standard location
* if it requires you to click "apply" buttons all the time in dialog
windows while virtually no other application has them (except if the
setting causes state changes which are not easily undoable)
* if it looks completely different from other applications so instead
of basically ignoring the looks and just focussing on the
functionality, your attention is diverted because it does not look
like what you are used to
...
If you have the choice between such an application and one which looks
and behaves as you've come to expect from other applications, what
would you choose? It's not about what is better or worse (nor about
Mac vs Windows vs Linux users), but simply about what you expect and
are used to from other applications running on the same system. It's
just as bad when trying to force Mac UI paradigms on Windows users
(like Apple does with Quicktime Player and iTunes, although they have
made them slightly more consistent with common Windows UI behaviour
over time after harsh criticism on the initial releases).
Jonas
_______________________________________________
fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org
http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
