Sense is correct. We should spend time submitting patches to make
things "look better", and not impose guidelines that developers will
just ignore anyway.
On 09/18/2011 03:43 PM, Sense Egbert Hofstede wrote:
> On 18 September 2011 20:11,
Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jonathan Meek wrote on 07/09/11 19:33:
>>>
>>> Actually, I intended something more in depth than
that. I asked one of
>>> the designers and am going to attempt to begin work
on a comprehensive
>>> HIG. Everything about the design needs to be thought
out, not just
>>> 'integrate with this.' The problem with this
undertaking is that there
>>> are so few applications that can be considered
"Ubuntu" applications.
>>> Less and more than you would think. (Though, I've
only heard from one
>>> person, and his design choices may not be the
consensus of the entire
>>> design team)
>>> ...
I'd hope it isn't. ;-) But Thorsten Wilms was right: what will
developers make out of it? Interface guidelines are useless unless
they
actually change developers' behavior. For example, Microsoft has
extensive Windows UX guidelines on MSDN, but given all the
"copying
Apple" worry in this thread, it seems nobody here has even heard
of them.
Now, imagine these responses from application developers if you
wrote
some interface guidelines for Ubuntu:
* "Ubuntu design guidelines? I've never heard of them."
* "Jonathan Meek? I've never heard of him. Why should I do what
he
says?"
* "Ubuntu? Ubuntu's just a distro, what business do they have
setting
'guidelines' for applications?"
* "I use Fedora for development, why should I care what Ubuntu
wants?"
* "Ubuntu? You want me to take advice from the people who
designed
Unity? Hah!"
* "I read a couple of pages but it was really boring."
* "Gnome already has guidelines, this is just another example of
Ubuntu trying to go their own way. Shame on them."
Improving the design of Ubuntu applications is a design problem in
itself. And even if those criticisms are unfair, they're going to
come
up. So if you want to make a difference, you need to have a way to
minimize, or be able to address, each of those criticisms.
>>> Provisionally, Mr. Gifford is correct. The are going
to be started on,
>>> and presented for peer review. I'm debating how to go
about this now
>>> less than I am whether to go about it at all.
>>>
>>> I would like some opinions to feedback into this. I
know what the
>>> designer said were good designed Ubuntu applications,
but what do
>>> people here think are some? And why do you think
that? (This includes,
>>> looks, structure, and behavior as well as
integration.)
>>> ...
This is the biggie. If guidelines are to be credible, they need to
be
either self-evidently logical, demonstrated to succeed in real
Ubuntu
applications, and/or written by people who designed successful
Ubuntu
applications. The Windows, Mac, and iOS guidelines can all use
applications designed by the OS vendor as examples of what to do.
But
there are very few applications targeted for Ubuntu first, let
alone
Ubuntu exclusively. I think guidelines will be premature until
that changes.
>>
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>
> Guidelines are very great and such, but like you already
said, many
> people will not even bother to read them. Even if we manage
to get
> everyone to read the guidelines, then there is the issue of
> interpretation. You cannot have complete and perfect
consistency if
> you don't want the guidelines to spell out the code that the
> developers have to use.
>
> We always say that we should take away the difficulty of
choosing from
> users when they do not have the tools or knowledge available
to make
> the right decision. The same logic applies here to
developers. Most
> developers are not in the right position to make good
decisions about
> interface design or about the correct implementation of a
guideline.
> To do it right, we should take away their choice.
>
> That means: do not spend time implementing what we know about
design
> in the text of guidelines, but spend our time implementing it
in code.
> We should make GTK+ (and maybe Qt too) look better. Locate
areas where
> things don't look so great and submit patches for them.
Propose better
> default values for the properties, submit code that generates
pretty
> menu bars, etc. We should take away choice by making the
easiest
> solution available to developers the solution we want, e.g.
writing
> beautiful and good implementations of standard behaviour
(tabs, Ubuntu
> One, media playing, things like that) that developers can
just plug
> into their applications. Because those methods will be the
standard
> way of doing things, the easiest way of doing things, they
will use
> them and with that they will automatically be consistent with
the rest
> of the desktop.
>
> If the current solution for this problem is too hard, we
should try to
> find a solution that we can handle, a solution that involves
coding
> and designing under control of the right designers.
>
> Regards,
--
Cheers,
James Gifford
http://jamesrgifford.com
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