LiveCode for the rest of us

[Roger Eller]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 5:32 PM, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com>
wrote:

> Roger Eller wrote:
>
> > On 22.09.2015 22:46, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> >>
> >> Heck, on Windows I'd be thrilled if LC could just not underline menu
> >> mnemonic characters until the Alt key is down.  I haven't seen any
> >> other software work like LC since maybe Win95,
> >
> > I use LC every day on Windows, and have never even noticed the
> > mnemonic characters were visible all the time. Nor has it bothered
> > me.  But now it probably will.  Thanks for that Richard!  :)
>
> Happy to help. :)  But a big part of the thanks goes to Bramanathaswami's
> co-worker who was put off by the incorrect text baselines in LC's
> "standard" button style.
>
> His story reminded me of questions I've heard from newcomers over the
> years, but since I spend a lot of time with long-time LC fans I don't hear
> them often enough.  I've been reflecting on that story a lot since he told
> it here.  It may well be the most important UX persona we have.
>
> A lot of us have been using LC and related languages so long we no longer
> see them directly.  A part of our consciousness has adopted a habit of
> explaining away anomalies to the point that we no longer see them at all.
>
> When I got started with HC, I was thrilled to be programming at all that
> it didn't matter much to me that HC's buttons didn't look like standard Mac
> buttons, or that scrolling a window required some novelty palette rather
> than just being able to put scrollbars in the window.
>
> When SuperCard came along I finally had a toolkit that gave me true
> Mac-looking buttons and scrollbars and such, but then I needed to deploy to
> Windows and moved to what was then called MetaCard.
>
> Being a long-time Mac-only guy, I was so thrilled that I could write stuff
> for other platforms that just ran at all that I didn't care much about the
> many ways its UIs looked a bit off.  And by the time I'd gotten enough
> experience to have known better, I was hooked, so enamored with what then
> became LiveCode that I'd already developed the habit of not seeing.
>
> But newcomers have no such habit. And newcomers are the future of this
> platform.
>
> By its nature, most of the feedback on those sorts of things can't be
> captured, since a newcomer who chose not to use LiveCode isn't posting on
> this list, isn't a member of the forums, and will never be invited to
> participate in a customer survey since they didn't become customers.
>
> So it falls on us to try to regain our fresh vision, to see things as they
> are and anticipate where people like Bramanathaswami's friend might say,
> "Really? Why would I bother?" - and having anticipated that, reduce the
> space between here and "Yes! This is what I was looking for!"
>
> --
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World Systems
>  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
>  ____________________________________________________________________
>

In recent years, or was it months?, the OS look-N-feel is changing way too
frequently to keep up.  Therefore, I prefer to just go custom with my
application interfaces in most cases. I don't particularly care for the
flattened, colorless, boring icons that all OS's seem to be embracing.
Many of the icons no longer visually represent their tasks at all.  And
when one OS does it, the others soon follow also in the 'genericising' of
app appearance.  I am liking the bright colors being used in Material Design
<https://www.google.com/design/spec/style/color.html#color-color-palette>
though.