http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/2367 - 2.1.0 GUI

[Kevin M Stange]

Sean Egan wrote:
> On 8/7/07, Matt Geske <mgeske2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> allow a user to right click a toolbar and choose which
>> toolbars/buttons should be shown. MS Office is actually the most flexible of
>> all, allowing the user to both turn on/off toolbars and customize which
>> buttons are shown in each.
> 
> Over the weekend, I read a bunch of really interesting articles from
> http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/11/10/the-office-2007-ui-bible.aspx
> which explain the evolutions of the MS Office UI.

Interesting indeed.  I am actually a fan of this UI model they presented
and I was reading the article describing the issues in making it work
with Outlook.  The blog claimed they had adapted it to Outlook, unless I
misread, so I downloaded the trial and installed it on my Windows box to
see how it was handled, and it seems they ended up NOT using it for Outlook.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/01/18/514300.aspx

In the interest of designing a UI that is consistent between
applications, they have FAILED.  They just re-themed the applications
they didn't "get to" so they look the same color as the other office
applications, but they do not follow the same UI conventions.  They also
disregard their OWN UI conventions for Windows with every office
release, which makes me wonder if anyone at Microsoft talks to anyone
else there.

Please accept my apologies for crossing between threads now....

In my disappointment with all this inconsistency, I am reminded why I
like the idea of the infopane mimicking the blist node so much, and why
I somewhat dislike this new concept of creating several new UI
conventions to save space, rather than utilizing the, if sometimes
redundant, existing conventions to convey the information in the same
way across the UI.  I realize, Sean, you don't think status information
on tabs, for example, is important, but I feel it's something that fills
an informational gap that helps me track activity on tabs, and I'm
getting a bad feeling about filling that gap with a different UI
convention people have to remember separately from pretty status circles.

Kevin

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 252 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://pidgin.im/pipermail/devel/attachments/20070808/2d225516/attachment.sig>