[UI] What's next?

[bradallenfuller at yahoo.com]

----- Original Message ----
From: Bill Schwab <BSchwab at anest.ufl.edu>
To: ui at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Sent: Saturday, September 1, 2007 9:48:34 AM
Subject: [UI] What's next?

> Do any of you have any regrets about installing Gary's packages?
> I am tempted to load them into my working 3.9 image.  
> Any reports of bad experience would be appreciated.

I haven't found a problem except the one I mentioned to Gary, and it must have been my fault, so no need to elaborate on my errs ;-)


> Without any implied lack of gratitude, the changes are thus far simply
> eye candy.  

perhaps, with the excepttion of the taskbar at the bottom, which may be helpful to some for auto-arranging the desktop. 

Gary's work is much appreciated and I can't wait until he finishes it!

>  As impressive and helpful as the changes are, I will stick to my long-standing assertion
that Squeak's real GUI problems are feel related.

I don't agree that it's exclusively feel related. There are many "look" issues as well. I contend that "look and feel" go hand-in-hand and maybe we should approach it this way?

>  Does this group want to tackle that problem?

YES!

>  How?  

I still push the idea that we need guidelines first. But, i wanted to hear from more on this discussion topic before I said anything else (plus, I've been swamped too!)

> Do we want to adopt Gary's work as a foundation?

Foundation for what? 


> I am tempted to vote in the affirmative on the latter, and
> hope that we will go further by taming the mouse-over activation and
> focus madness. 

This could be easily remedied by first agreeing upon a keyboard focus rule(s) and then implementing the rule into the standard image (maybe for 3.10?.) With the rule in place, software authors will at least know what the rest of the community believes to be best practice. They can violate it if they want in their own apps, but at least it's stated.

Maybe this could be our first project. 


> Preferences are fine: I would not want to force
> convention on others any more than I want to subject my users to (what
> would appear to them as) random behavior as they move the mouse.

Preferences settings has been a long standing feature in Squeak. Frankly, I don't know how good it is. I like it, but there are some good arguments against this (see Raskin.)

> Gary's work is yet another illustration that native widgets are not
> necessary to achieve any particular look, and I am confident we can
> illustrate the same re feel. 

Sorry, I always get confused on what "native" means. Does it mean native to the hosting OS, or native to Squeak?  Maybe we should not use the word "native" and use "Host" or "OS" and "Squeak": e.g.: OS-widgets, Host-widgets; Squeak-widgets, Host-derived widgets -- ???

To comment on your comment, I believe that Squeak-derived widgets forces easy portability between hosts. 

brad