3 ms·

There are a lot of prominent counterexamples though: - Blender (Blender's UI is pretty odd and entirely un-platform-like, but very efficient) - Photoshop (cas

by PeCaN 10y ago

There are a lot of prominent counterexamples though: - Blender (Blender's UI is pretty odd and entirely un-platform-like, but very efficient) - Photoshop (case in point, Ctrl-Z; I'm very glad Adobe didn't follow conventions—Photoshop's Ctrl-Z behavior is good for Photoshop) - Chrome (I guess it's standard on Android now, but when Chrome was released it was very unlike a typical Windows or OS X UI, and it was so good that everyone else adopted it) - Vim - Emacs - Snapchat - AutoCAD Personally, I do prefer 40 unique UIs optimized for long term user happiness. That's kind of the Unix way: bc, awk, find, and dozens of other tools with different patterns that are geared very well to their niche.

anexprogrammer 10y ago
Chrome - also interacts marginally with my multiscreen util. By breaking windows guidelines for topbar size the multiscreen icons get overwritten by tabs if I open enough. Workaround = have a somewhat larger top bar than standard or wanted. Still it no longer hijacks clicks to the icons which it did for quite a long while. "so good that everyone else adopted it" Yeah, about that. FF copied Chrome wholesale, causing a couple of forks and quite a lot of anti-Australis outrage. Now there's a ton of hacky addons to restore FF to a relatively sane UI (none manage it completely). Will be interesting to see what happens when FF deprecates current addons and theming. That's actively user-hostile. vi, emacs and AutoCAD are from long before GUIs, I don't think they count. vi and emacs made choices for 2400 baud terminals. Similar for the whole unix toolset - they were the standardisation being part of the OS. Much later we would argue sys V Solaris vs SunOS instead or CDE, vs KDE, vs OpenWindows, and start to consider GUI/OS standardisation. Every time I want to do something on Windows I feel it, and don't do enough on Win to be bothered learning much powershell. I usually end up with a quick zsh script via network. Who on earth thought batch files were a good idea. :) We're digressing though - GUI gestures in a slew of phone apps are rather different to a neatly focussed command line set. Photoshop's overloading is sane, and I can't really disagree - I also prefer the dark theme. But it can, and does, break things.
Daishiman 10y ago
All the examples you mentioned are productivity apps in which an optimal workflow which needs to be learned is more important than a familiar but not necessarily ideal workflow. If I use an app 5 minutes a day, i want it to be familiar because I don't want to muck around learning how to use it. Whereas if I'm using an app all day to make money, I will assume the initial learning curve if it means increased efficiency.

by PeCaN 10y ago

anexprogrammer 10y ago

Chrome - also interacts marginally with my multiscreen util. By breaking windows guidelines for topbar size the multiscreen icons get overwritten by tabs if I open enough. Workaround = have a somewhat larger top bar than standard or wanted. Still it no longer hijacks clicks to the icons which it did for quite a long while. "so good that everyone else adopted it" Yeah, about that. FF copied Chrome wholesale, causing a couple of forks and quite a lot of anti-Australis outrage. Now there's a ton of hacky addons to restore FF to a relatively sane UI (none manage it completely). Will be interesting to see what happens when FF deprecates current addons and theming. That's actively user-hostile. vi, emacs and AutoCAD are from long before GUIs, I don't think they count. vi and emacs made choices for 2400 baud terminals. Similar for the whole unix toolset - they were the standardisation being part of the OS. Much later we would argue sys V Solaris vs SunOS instead or CDE, vs KDE, vs OpenWindows, and start to consider GUI/OS standardisation. Every time I want to do something on Windows I feel it, and don't do enough on Win to be bothered learning much powershell. I usually end up with a quick zsh script via network. Who on earth thought batch files were a good idea. :) We're digressing though - GUI gestures in a slew of phone apps are rather different to a neatly focussed command line set. Photoshop's overloading is sane, and I can't really disagree - I also prefer the dark theme. But it can, and does, break things.

Daishiman 10y ago

All the examples you mentioned are productivity apps in which an optimal workflow which needs to be learned is more important than a familiar but not necessarily ideal workflow. If I use an app 5 minutes a day, i want it to be familiar because I don't want to muck around learning how to use it. Whereas if I'm using an app all day to make money, I will assume the initial learning curve if it means increased efficiency.