Re: ANNOUNCE: Style Guide available for review.

[Kai Wetzel <k wetzel welfen-netz com>]

Tom Tromey wrote:
[...]
> I think consistency is only a secondary goal when building a user
> interface.  That is, consistency is a tool we use to achieve the real
> goal, which is "ease of use" (as opposed to "ease of learning" --
> which is a distinctly different goal).

Yes, there are several ideals in UI design such as
ease of use, ease of learning, etc. and some means by which these
goals can be accomplished such as intuitiveness, consistency,
etc. Trying to realize these ideals quite often involves
making trade-offs.  What principles should be given priority and
to what degree depends among others on the target audience.
E.g. a "WordPad"-like "word processor" would very likely focus
on a gentle learning curve rather then ease of operation ;)

The thing I'd criticize about the UI hall of shame is that
they paint a b/w picture in order to make a point.
Arguable they don't, but some people tend to read it this way.
(Just as a slightly related aside :)

> There are probably other reasons to ditch consistency, too.
> 
> I think that, in practice, requiring a menubar everywhere is going to
> look silly.

Yes:O)

> In particular it's probably bad to have a menubar where
> the menus have very few items.

Funnily such menu bars have been seen ;)

[...]
> And nobody is going to be deeply confused if Help is on a button and
> not on a menu.
[...]
>    If the label File is not appropriate to the context of your
>    application, you can choose a different, more appropriate, label.

I like the phrasing.
I tend to suggest to use the "main object" of the app if
"file" seems inappropriate.  E.g. "Game".  No matter what
the final wording will be, I don't think "File" will
be ditched in many cases.

[...]
> I think in the long term we should consider something a little more
> radical, say along the lines of what Cooper proposes in About Face.

What in short, does he propose ?

[...]
> I notice the guide doesn't mention internationalization.

Good point.

> For instance, when the local writing system is right-to-left, we might
> want to reverse the menubar.
[...]

I guess so.  I'm not sure whether people who use apps
which are not properly localized to their need AND
right-to-left apps would prefer to stick to left-right
or use a mixed scheme (per-app).  I don't know how many
people have to use US apps in, say, Israel, either.
Maybe making it user-definable is best again ;O)

kai