Re: why I don't use GNOME

["Michael T. Babcock" <mbabcock fibrespeed net>]

Oh no, another Mac-Windows flame war ...

Ilan Volow wrote:

> dialogs with
> "Ok" on right and "Cancel" on left

This is a huge argument -- you shouldn't arbitrarily say that one is
proven better than the other.
A) People's eyes move in from the lower left usually ... so defaults
should be there, but ...
B) Western people consider movement (progress) to be left to right, so
the "go on" option should be on the right ...

> underlined accelerators

Underlined accelerators are one of the few UI design elements of Windows
I always enjoyed, along with the icons for certain options on the left
of the menu option ...

> menus attached to windows

Application menus are application specific, not OS specific -- whether
it allows for muscle reflex or not (and I haven't met many Mac people
who actually benefit from such issues because of small mouse pads,
etc.), menus at the top of the screen are _less_ intuitive, although
potentially easier to use when you know they're there.  Note: I don't
have to change focus to Gnumeric, then go to the top of the screen to do
a "File -> Save" when its sticking out to the left of my E-mail window.

> ten years of the worst Microsoft UI design
> misakes being carried on in GNOME

I'm sure you'd love to create a site that describes some of the goals
about this project so others can jump in ...

> Not that I don't want to make a UI
> better than the mac's, but if you have to copy
> someone, it's better to copy who knew what the heck
> they were doing.

PS, Microsoft and IBM and others have had very high-priced UI teams do
work on their products, whether they ended up working out or not.  Not
all Mac features are loved either ...

> Now most of my GNOME programs on my machine have
> mac-like (Alt) keyboard shortcuts :).

BTW, if you had a keyboard with the Ctrl where most Caps-lock keys are,
you'd understand why old-time *nix people use Ctrl instead.

> As far as app listers go,the best layout I've seen
> is implemented in WindowMaker. It puts nice, big,
> Fitts friendly buttons representing currently running
> apps against the border of the screen. Using the
> middle mouse button to bring up a pop-up menu with
> currently running apps is also a very nice touch. If
> one or two things were handled just a little bit
> differently, the WindowMaker method would come close
> to being the perfect solution.

The Mac-finder like button on the eMac Enlightenment theme works really
well too.

I may have a copy, or I may not (Apple doesn't want anyone to have it
... )... E-mail me.

:-)

--
Michael T. Babcock (PGP: 0xBE6C1895)
http://www.fibrespeed.net/~mbabcock/