Re: [Usability] Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines vs the HIG

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Mon, 18 Dec 2006, Bill Wohler wrote:

> Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 21:44:44 -0800
> From: Bill Wohler <wohler newt com>
> To: Usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines vs the HIG
>
> Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> writes:
>
> > For the most part I would hope you could follow most parts of both
> > guidelines without needing to reject the other.
>
> By and large that is mostly true. The two major differences that jump
> out at me are the use of sentence capitalization for field labels in
> the HIG versus headline capitalization in the JLFDG and the order of
> the buttons in dialogs.

The Gnome button order took some getting used to but now I wouldn't have
it any other way.

As best I understand it Swing was intended to be internally consistent
above all else, rather than making sacrifices to other platforms.  It felt
much like an overreaction to AWT which took things too far the other
direction and limited itself to the lowest common denominator for the sake
of best portability.  These two extreme approaches left room for the much
more balanced approach of SWT (from IBM as used in Eclipse).  I'm not sure
what exactly the current state of play is with the various Java GUI
toolkits.

I'm afraid I am not as familiar with Java as I used to be - the
relicensing of Java as GPL will be a big incentive to refresh my memory -
and wouldn't even know who to ask about the current and future direction
of Swing and if they might be willing to make concessions on button order
or any other integration issues.  I do hope someone more knowledgable can
speak up on the subject and if you find out more please do let us know how
your project works out.

> Thanks for the feedback, and sorry about not including the URLs.

No worries.  Hope that helped.


Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/alanhorkan
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