Striped Background in OS X Revisited

[Richard Gaskin]

Scott Kane wrote:

>> Expectations have indeed been lowered by sloppy developers, but I see 
>> other people's laziness as our competitive advantage:  apply nothing more 
>> than the discipline we learn from Day 1 designing for Mac OS, reading the 
>> HIG and applying as appropriate, when we move our apps to Windows the 
>> integrate better with Microsoft's work than some of our competitors who've 
>> been there for years.
> 
> Indeed.  And your observation is a good one.  Microsoft always gave me the 
> feeling that they were going to have a GUI too!  But we'll make it different 
> enough to be different.  Plus the MDI concept has had a *huge* impact on 
> Windows HIG and app's in general.  I was surprised Linux desktops are so 
> similar to Windows and not Mac.  Though my main work is still on Windows 
> boxes I really do find the Mac cleaner and tidier.

Some of the most loyal MS enthusiasts have set them back the farthest. 
I remember reading an early Windows C programming book by a leading MS 
API author (Pretzold maybe?) who described the then-new Windows GUI as 
if it were some sort of necessary evil that was going to require a lot 
more work from developers than DOS, rather than as a revolution to be 
embraced.

Fortunately for both the Windows-only crowd and us multi-platform folks, 
MDI is fading away.  The Win guidelines released shortly after Win 95 
officially deprecated MDI, although in their classic Do As I Say Not As 
I Do form they've used it for years since.  But the reasoning given for 
the deprecation was sound:  MDI is a sort of mixed metaphor, and in 
testing users find it measurably more confusing than SDI or multi-pane 
alternatives.

It may take a while to see the eventual purging of legacy MDIs from 
common use, but it bodes well for us multi-platform types:

Apple's already standardized on Intel processors and multi-button mouse 
functionality.  When the Windows crowd drops MDI completely and Apple 
moves the menu bar to the top of the window, most significant 
differences between GUIs will do away.  There will still be room for 
distinction, but it will be more like comparing different cars than 
comparing cars and trucks.

As GUIs continue the inevitable adoption of universal standards, our 
work becomes ever easier.

That is, until something comes along that has such revolutionary new and 
compelling benefits over current GUIs as the GUI did over the command 
line.  Then we'll have another two decades of challenges until the world 
standardizes once again.


>> But of course cross-platform HIG adherence will only be pervasive in the 
>> Rev community to the degree the tool makes it easy.  If folks have to jump 
>> through hoops just to adopt conventions, must of their work will look out 
>> of synch with modern conventions, reflecting badly on RunRev.
> 
> I agree.  One thing that does annoy me is a lack of decorations in modal 
> dialogs under Windows with Rev app's.  I can fake it easy enough - but I 
> wish I didn't have too.

What differences do you see?  Have you logged a BZ request to address them?

>> So for the benefit of RunRev Ltd and all of us, for your voting pleasure:
>>
>> <http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=5186>
> 
> Will vote as soon as my ISP gets http working again (it seems to be down 
> right now).

Thanks.  With just a little visibility I'd like to believe that the two 
most pervasive hurdles to cross-platform HIG compliance (window 
backgrounds and system fonts) can be simple set-once-and-forget-about-it 
properties in v2.9.

To RunRev to do anything less would make life harder than it needs to be 
for their company.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com