Re: Thoughts on Nautilus

["Jesse D. Sightler" <jsight mindspring com>]

Actually, many people (myself included) consider the Windows98 style to
be a very intuitve and comfortable system.  Of course it can be done
better, but that shouldn't prevent us from using many of their ideas
which have clearly been succesfull.  One needs only look at the current
information on MacOS X to see the success of many of the features
inspired by Win98.  Of course, the Mac people did it better, and hopeful
the Nautilus dev group will ultimate improve even upon it.

Remember, merely "looking like" something else should not imply that it
entirely feels and acts like the other product.  Many of MS's problems
are problems of implementation, not design.

Andrew Post wrote:
> 
> Matthias Warkus wrote:
> > 1. Don't make this a clone of Windows 98's IE-"enhanced" Explorer. It
> >    looks like it's going that way.
> >
> > 2. Don't make it a clone of Konqueror, either. 8)
> 
> I completely agree. I was disturbed to see a screenshot that looked
> identical to the IE-"enhanced" Windows Explorer. I have yet to meet
> anyone who truly thought that this feature increased their productivity.
> Rather, it slows Windows down tremendously and is a colossal waste of
> screen real estate. I mean, why should a folder with 5 files in it take
> up a quarter of my screen at 1024x768 resolution?
> 
> Why are the UI people settling only for being as good as Windows? No one
> would deny that the Windows GUI leaves a lot of room for improvement. If
> any GUI is worth cloning, Windows certainly isn't it. If you're just
> going to clone someone else's work, why don't you look at OS/2's WPS?
> 
> Finally, it is far more important to have an interface that's powerful
> and easy to use than it is to have an interface that's simply familiar.
> If the GUI is of high quality, it won't matter that it's unfamiliar,
> because people will be able to quickly figure it out.

-- 
---------------
Jesse D. Sightler
http://www.headlinewatch.com/