Usability and look-and-feel (was Re: [squeak-dev] The future ofSqueak & Pharo (was Re: [Pharo-project] [ANN] Pharo MIT licenseclean))

Ian Trudel ian.trudel at gmail.com
Wed Jul 8 06:33:37 UTC 2009


Hello people,

There was a message for which I wanted to reply to but got lost
somewhere. Let's write something out of the blue in regard to
Usability and Look-and-Feel.

Polymorph has been mentioned but this is not a solution to the
look-and-feel, this is just a skinning framework on top of an UI.
Pharo has it by default and they have simulated existing UIs. Fine, it
looks all right. But it seems to me over doing the thing and
especially not to offer something genuine nor native UI. What's the
point? (It's rhetorical question, friends)

One has pointed the basics of the look-and-feel are not right. And I
absolutely agree with that. There is a lack of coherence in general.
My primary idea about a look-and-feel for Squeak is really a plain but
reviewed UI, a little bit more formal maybe. There are simple UIs,
which are still appealing or even colourful, like BeOS GUI, Scratch,
or some trendy Adobe AIR applications / Apple Aperture (black on black
is not for everybody's taste though).

It really doesn't need to be polymorph nor like any existing OS. There
is probably an overhead using Polymorph anyway, right? As long as it's
not ugly, newcomers will try Squeak. They will try it especially if
it's not ugly. As long as it's coherent, balanced in its colour
scheme, it's easy to spend hours after hours with Squeak for the
others.

Usability is also a big concern and would use of some simplification,
reorganization, and so on. I'm trying to get first hand experience
with a newcomer in regard to this, hopefully I'll be able to get some
data to share.


The overall attitude of some in the community is pretty much "don't
like it? change it.", "don't like Squeak? Fork it." Etc. Considering
that someone has pointed out some of us uses Squeak for more than 10
years, it's not just about usability and look-and-feel anymore, but
the big question is:

	have we got too comfy with Squeak and accepted its general state?

That's a question everybody should think about and share their
thoughts on the list. =)

Regards,
Ian
-- 
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/



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