Default button placement in Linux GUIs

[Richard Gaskin]

Peter Alcibiades wrote:
> The Apple gui design guidelines, or human interface guidelines in general, 
> well, they were great in the eighties, but time has moved on.  At least for 
> Linux users.  Uniform look and feel of apps is simply not a factor for us.

Both the Apple and Microsoft HIGs are updated with each OS release, so 
while the ones written in the eighties were great in the eighties, the 
ones published just this year are hopefully as useful for us all today.

While the "What, me worry?" approach certainly makes my own life easier 
as a developer, I'm not important here.  The only important thing is the 
experience of the end user.  The evolution of human cognitive psychology 
hasn't changed much since the eighties, so the foundations of user 
interface design, such as the consistency principle, are as important 
today as they were back when they were first identified.

These niceties may not matter much to tech-savvy early adopters, but if 
Linux is to take over the world, as I believe it can, these things will 
become increasingly important.  This is especially true when we consider 
where the growth of Linux on the desktop is most likely to explode over 
the next decade:  in developing countries where it will often be the 
first computing experience for many who use it.

Fortunately the good folks who maintain the HIGs for the various WMs 
seem to appreciate the importance of their work, as demonstrated by the 
daily activity on the GNOME User Interface discussion list and 
elsewhere.  They have passionate debates about the seemingly smallest of 
things (this week's discussion of "caplets" is a good example), and I 
love them for their attention to detail.

Since Ubuntu is currently the leading distro and its default WM is 
GNOME, I'm happy to go with GNOME conventions for now.

But if KDE starts to regain its former lead, it will benefit all who 
advocate Linux to encourage reconciliation of such inconsistencies.

I wonder if there may be other cases where it would be useful to know 
which WM is running.  Can you think of any?  Could this is a useful 
feature request for RunRev?

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