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Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Posted Feb 9, 2006 0:31 UTC (Thu) by frazier (subscriber, #3060)Parent article: Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
In advance, please forgive me for any factual errors here. I'm not a GNOME developer.
That stated, I have done my share of UI work over the years. Here's some thoughts:
- The GNOME HIG doesn't have a "Where the UI belongs" section like Nokia has in the Series 60 UI Style Guide. This section is good thing because it keeps focus on where the UI is, what it is, and what it does, which allows for a more focused environment to be constructed. Obviously the scope for a general desktop environment like GNOME is much wider in terms of functionality and hardware used than the Series 60 platform, but it still advisable to have a target range in mind. Don't Limit Your User Base in the HIG makes sense, but so does focusing on common use cases. Part of what makes Series 60 UI Style Guide nice is that the UI is weighted towards performing a primary set of tasks well.
- GNOME should consider a Mission Statement or something similar, and if there is something like this in existence it should be made more obvious.
The GNOME HIG does a lot of things well (use of display edges comes to mind) but from my outside view (other than using GNOME) the HIG would benefit from having a better stated purpose. Perhaps more of GNOME would as well.
-Brock
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Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Posted Feb 10, 2006 18:24 UTC (Fri) by jmmc (subscriber, #34939) [Link]
Enjoyed your comment. I'm also not a GNOME developer, but have a keen interest in software and industrial interfaces (of all kinds). I use the GNOME regularly (Slackware [pre-10.2] and Ubuntu).
I admit I was impressed some years ago that that the GNOME folks even _produced_ a HIG for their project. It reminded me of something you'd see in Industry, which gave me the idea that there were some 'long view' developers involved with GNOME.
Indeed, I think GNOME's mission should be clarified and positioned better to avoid what I see as these "gray area arguments/bickerings" (neither party - GNOME or Novell - really understanding where the other party stood in regards to development - hence, chapped and bruised feelings du jour).