Re: Usability of the GTK+ 2 file open dialog

[Michael L Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>]

On Wed, 2006-03-08 at 10:20 +1100, Daniel Kasak wrote:
> I'm not so sure about this. I can understand people wanting to have the 
> *option* of overriding the Gtk2 File Open dialog with a native windows 
> one, but I personally prefer the Gtk2 dialog - apart from it currently 
> now knowing about special locations such as 'My Documents', etc. 
> Admittedly, I don't insist on using the keyboard, so I can't comment on 
> how keyboard-friendly it is.
> 
> Having the Gtk2 dialog available on all platforms makes writing 
> cross-platform apps a lot easier. It just means I don't have to be as 
> paranoid about testing everything on every platform.

I recall similar arguments about Java swing. They argued that having a
consistent UI for one application across all platforms was more
important than have an app that acted in a consistent way with apps on
any given platform.  I think most people would now agree that the latter
is more important to most end users than the former, which is why we
have the WIMP theme, and Java Swing now looks as close to win32 as it
can on windows.

The GTK2 dialog, as it currently stands and is used by apps, cannot be
replaced cleanly by the win32 dialog boxes anyway (or by KDE dialog
boxes when using KDE integration) under all circumstances without
sacrificing some functionality, like the GIMP adding a preview pane to
the dialog.  So we're kind of stuck, I'll admit.  But things like custom
previews in the dialog box can be implemented per-platform (just like
the system tray stuff is in Gaim on windows).

Michael

>